Write Truly Great iOS and OS X Code with Objective-C 2.0!   Effective Objective-C 2.0 will help you harness all of Objective-C’s expressive power to write OS X or iOS code that works superbly well in production environments. Using the concise, scenario-driven style pioneered in Scott Meyers’ best-selling Effective C++, Matt Galloway brings together 52 Objective-C best practices, tips, shortcuts, and realistic code examples that are available nowhere else.   Through real-world examples, Galloway uncovers little-known Objective-C quirks, pitfalls, and intricacies that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. You’ll learn how to choose the most efficient and effective way to accomplish key tasks when multiple options exist, and how to write code that’s easier to understand, maintain, and improve. Galloway goes far beyond the core language, helping you integrate and leverage key Foundation framework classes and modern system libraries, such as Grand Central Dispatch.   Coverage includes Optimizing interactions and relationships between Objective-C objects Mastering interface and API design: writing classes that feel “right at home” Using protocols and categories to write maintainable, bug-resistant code Avoiding memory leaks that can still occur even with Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) Writing modular, powerful code with Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch Leveraging differences between Objective-C protocols and multiple inheritance in other languages Improving code by more effectively using arrays, dictionaries, and sets Uncovering surprising power in the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks

Table of Contents:
Preface    xi Acknowledgments    xv About the Author    xvii   Chapter 1: Accustoming Yourself to Objective-C 1 Item 1: Familiarize Yourself with Objective-C’s Roots  1 Item 2: Minimize Importing Headers in Headers  4 Item 3: Prefer Literal Syntax over the Equivalent Methods  8 Item 4: Prefer Typed Constants to Preprocessor #define  12 Item 5: Use Enumerations for States, Options, and Status Codes  17   Chapter 2: Objects, Messaging, and the Runtime    25 Item 6: Understand Properties  25 Item 7: Access Instance Variables Primarily Directly When Accessing Them Internally  33 Item 8: Understand Object Equality  36 Item 9: Use the Class Cluster Pattern to Hide Implementation Detail  42 Item 10: Use Associated Objects to Attach Custom Data to Existing Classes  47 Item 11: Understand the Role of objc_msgSend  50 Item 12: Understand Message Forwarding  54 Item 13: Consider Method Swizzling to Debug Opaque Methods  62 Item 14: Understand What a Class Object Is  66   Chapter 3: Interface and API Design    73 Item 15: Use Prefix Names to Avoid Namespace Clashes  73 Item 16: Have a Designated Initializer  78 Item 17: Implement the description Method  84 Item 18: Prefer Immutable Objects  89 Item 19: Use Clear and Consistent Naming  95 Item 20: Prefix Private Method Names  102 Item 21: Understand the Objective-C Error Model  104 Item 22: Understand the NSCopying Protocol  109   Chapter 4: Protocols and Categories    115 Item 23: Use Delegate and Data Source Protocols for Interobject Communication  115 Item 24: Use Categories to Break Class Implementations into Manageable Segments  123 Item 25: Always Prefix Category Names on Third-Party Classes  127 Item 26: Avoid Properties in Categories  130 Item 27: Use the Class-Continuation Category to Hide Implementation Detail  133 Item 28: Use a Protocol to Provide Anonymous Objects  140   Chapter 5: Memory Management    145 Item 29: Understand Reference Counting  145 Item 30: Use ARC to Make Reference Counting Easier  153 Item 31: Release References and Clean Up Observation State Only in dealloc  162 Item 32: Beware of Memory Management with Exception-Safe Code  165 Item 33: Use Weak References to Avoid Retain Cycles  168 Item 34: Use Autorelease Pool Blocks to Reduce High-Memory Waterline  173 Item 35: Use Zombies to Help Debug Memory-Management Problems  177 Item 36: Avoid Using retainCount  183   Chapter 6: Blocks and Grand Central Dispatch 187 Item 37: Understand Blocks  188 Item 38: Create typedefs for Common Block Types  194 Item 39: Use Handler Blocks to Reduce Code Separation  197 Item 40: Avoid Retain Cycles Introduced by Blocks Referencing the Object Owning Them  203 Item 41: Prefer Dispatch Queues to Locks for Synchronization  208 Item 42: Prefer GCD to performSelector and Friends  213 Item 43: Know When to Use GCD and When to Use Operation Queues  217 Item 44: Use Dispatch Groups to Take Advantage of Platform Scaling  220 Item 45: Use dispatch_once for Thread-Safe Single-Time Code Execution  225 Item 46: Avoid dispatch_get_current_queue  226   Chapter 7: The System Frameworks    233 Item 47: Familiarize Yourself with the System Frameworks  233 Item 48: Prefer Block Enumeration to for Loops  236 Item 49: Use Toll-Free Bridging for Collections with Custom Memory-Management Semantics  243 Item 50: Use NSCache Instead of NSDictionary for Caches  248 Item 51: Keep initialize and load Implementations Lean  252 Item 52: Remember that NSTimer Retains Its Target  258   Index 265