Reddit mentions of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition)

>I liked the book with a scooter on the front...

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

I also recommend that book, along with Programming in Objective-C which I feel gives a more in-depth overview of the underlying Objective-C base of Cocoa.

I know you pointed out that you're interested in OS X, not iOS, but the reality is that most of the good, up-to-date materials on development for the Apple ecosystem are centered around iOS.

There is a Big Nerd Ranch book on OS X development with Objective-C, but it's from 2011. The advent of Swift should give publishers an incentive to update their material on OS X development. A new, Swift-oriented version of the book I linked above is slated (as per Amazon, anyway) for release next month. I look forward to purchasing it myself.

raywenderlich.com also has great tutorials. Most are iOS-oriented, but I found a couple for OS X:

Getting Started With OS X and Swift Pt1

Getting Started With OS X and Swift Pt2

Getting Started With OS X and Swift Pt3

Core Controls and Swift Pt1

Core Controls and Swift Pt2

Don't get discouraged about your lack of experience. The fact of the matter is that app flow in the OS X and iOS realms is not easy to understand at a glance. I can assure you that everybody who writes software in the Apple ecosystem was once confused about the same exact issue.

Apple's website is a fantastic reference, but it's not great for learning the language itself. This book has been considered the bible of Objective-C programming.

A fair amount of iOS devs I know say that starting with a background in C can definitely help you in the long run, so I'd highly recommend K&R for that.

After you're done with that, you're definitely going to want to learn the Cocoa API along side Objective-C, and Hillegass does that quite nicely. Once you're familiar with that, this book will help you familiarize yourself with the language further.

Bonus round dice roll:

If you want to make a game, I recommend learning some opengl.

Since you're on a Mac, if you're looking at OS X and iOS development, I'd recommend Objective-C.

As for books on the subject, I would recommend Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and for you to also read the free online tutorial BecomeAnXcoder.

You might also want to look into getting Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide should you want to further your Cocoa and iOS knowledge respectively.

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As for Mac IDEs, for Objective-C or C++, look at XCode (take a look in the Mac App Store).

For Java, I think Eclipse is pretty much the only option?