When building a shared library for an iOS application, we have no choice but to either provide the source files or a static library that developers can link to. But when building a library for Mac OSX applications we have the option of providing that functionality in the form of a framework. Specific to Mac OSX, frameworks are similar to a dynamic library but provide several key advantages.

My first foray into Objective-C was, for lack of a better description, a sink-or-swim situation. Our lead iPhone developer had just been laid off and the boss was in my office the next day asking me how quickly I could "get up to speed". "You know Ruby", he said, "How difficult could it be?" It was time to get some books.