Ask HN: OpenCV and Computer Vision, where do we stand now?

I want to do a project involving Computer Vision. Mostly object detection/identification. After some research, I keep coming back to OpenCV. But all of the tutorials are from 2008 (I guess it was big for a bit then). It doesn't appear to compile in Python on a Mac. I'm using the C++ framework in xCode, but none of the tutorials work (except one) as they're outdated and the documentation sucks from what I can parse.

Is there a better solution for what I'm doing, and does anyone have any suggestions as to learning how to to use OpenCV?

Thanks

P.S. I saw O'Reilly's book, but it's from '08. Check out this review: "Book was good at the time, but no longer applies as opencv has moved on. They should update their book."