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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T19:02:54+00:00

I am coming from iOS background and starting to learn Cocoa. On iOS unless

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I am coming from iOS background and starting to learn Cocoa. On iOS unless we have multiple targets for iPad and iPhone we usually have one Window and manage the screen using UIViewControllers. Where every new screen will most of the time will map to a UIViewController.

However on cocoa this seems to be the otherway around where a new screen/window is manage by NSWindow and it’s subcomponents are managed by NSViewController. So if I have multiple window app I should have separate NSWindowController for each window.

Is this approach correct or am I having a misunderstanding ?

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  1. Editorial Team

    With iPhone SDK and Leopard SDK, they introduced view controllers, or NSViewController and UIViewController. As their names suggest what they do is to manage views

    The view controllers are for managing views. Current trend in UI design is Single Window, Multiple View. What it means is that there is one Window and inside of it, different group of views designed for different purpose can be swapped in and out. So, the View Controllers handles these for programmers for well-established pattern.
    Currently view controllers are very important for iPhone and iPod touch programming, because the platform is based on Single-Window and Multiple View model. However, it doesn’t seem to me that using view controller is very popular for Mac.
    how about the window controller like NSWindowController? Its counterpart, UIWindowController doesn’t exist for the iPhone and iPod touch environment, because there is only one window for those environment.
    Unlike view controllers, the NSWindowController is for document based programs. Well, document based program can use multiple window. So, it is reasonable to think that NSWindowController is for document based programs as Apple’s document says.

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