Last year, I resolved to learn a new language, preferably Cocoa, and I ordered a book from Amazon to this end. I ordered it on February 9, 2009.
It was delivered last Friday, February 26, 2010.
Now I admit, it was on preorder last February. But it had a release date of late May. They were offering it for preorder. Surely it would be available on schedule.
The other half of this order, for the free shipping, was A Dance With Dragons. Also on preorder for November 2009, and also not released. Knowing Martin, it’s probably not even done.
Lots of people blamed Martin. And while I’m rather annoyed with him myself, he didn’t put that release date up there. He didn’t jerk all of his fans around by their credit cards. Amazon did that.
Why do you do it, Amazon? You don’t charge for the preorder until it ships, so you aren’t making money off of it. So why do you offer things for preorder that you know will not be available on the release date?
That being said, Learn Cocoa on the Mac by Dave Mark is excellent, both readable and instructive. I’ve reached chapter 3, and when I’m finished with it I’ll give it a full review, from the perspective of one whose sole programming experience is a year of C++ in high school ten years ago.
