Pro Objective-C Design Patterns for iOS

Chapter 3. Prototype

Back in the old days when printing wasn't common, people used to use some sort of wooden stamps (later they became rubber stamps) to print some commonly used graphics and text on paper. Many years later, people realized that by combining different commonly used stamps, it could be one of the easiest ways to mass reproduce the same information on paper. Without using the same stamps for printing the same glyphs on paper, distribution of information and knowledge would be much more expensive and time-consuming.

In many object-oriented applications, there are objects that are just too expensive or complex to create. It would be a lot easier if we could recreate the same object with slight changes only. A typical example could ...