O’Reilly & Associates have been at the forefront of publishing technical manuals for computer programmers for years. Many developers, administrators and users alike find the company’s books — distinguished by the animal illustrations that grace their covers — to be totally indispensible. With O’Reilly’s historic emphasis on documenting UNIX, Linux, Web and open source technologies, support for Mac OS X would seem like a natural fit. Today the company announced plans to support Mac OS X developers with a series of programming books for Apple’s new operating system.
Coming in May, O’Reilly will publish three new Mac OS X-specific books. “Learning Carbon,” “Learning Cocoa,” and “AppleScript in a Nutshell” are all expected to be released in May. O’Reilly & Associates say the new publications will have been reviewed by Apple engineers, as well.
O’Reilly & Associates founder and president Tim O’Reilly lauds Mac OS X’s architecture, calling Apple’s move “a bold step.”
“This means that many open source tools such as Perl and gawk are available in Mac OS X, and it’s also possible to run X-windows. In addition, Mac OS X ships with a built-in Apache server and offers support for Java developers,” said O’Reilly.
In related news, O’Reilly & Associates has also opened up the Mac Developer DevCenter, a Web resource that provides news and articles of interest to Macintosh developers. O’Reilly Network managing editor Derrick Story said that his company is interested in providing “one-stop browsing” for developers who are interested in supporting Mac OS X.