Indie Relief

In the opinion piece I wrote yesterday, I stated that I didn't want to believe the Mac software market was dying. After thinking it through, I really don't think it is, but today I got yet another reminder of why I don't want it to be true: Indie Mac developers are just great people. That was one of the things that attracted me to Mac development back in the days when Mac development really was a dead-end as a career path.

Case in point: Indie Relief. Over 150 Mac and iPhone developers have banded together to offer all proceeds of the sales from their application to Haiti to help with the relief efforts there. Now, if you know about the economics of indie software development, you should realize that this is a pretty big deal. Few indie developers are living the high life, and many scrape by some months. Yet, all the developers listed on the Indie Relief page are donating every last cent of their income from their application for a period of time. We're not talking about donating $10 or $100 dollars, we're talking about basically handing over paychecks.

Take a look over the list, and if there's some software you've been thinking about buying, now is the perfect time to do it.

A Mac App Store

Back before WWDC, one of my long-shot predictions was the creation of a Mac App Store following the same business model as the iPhone App Store. It didn't come true, and now with the various issues surrounding the App Store, I've changed my mind that it would be a good idea. I've come to the conclusion that I like not having Apple as the gatekeeper for what Apps can do.

But, it's nearly impossible to argue that the App Store isn't convenient. It has its issues, but its a great idea, which is why the App Store is flourishing despite all the negative press.

Now, a third-party called Bodega is extending the idea to Mac applications, and it's a snazzy little application.



In some ways, Bodega outdoes Apple's iTunes Store. The interface is clean and easy to use, and it's filled with lots of little touches reminiscent of the Delicious Generation. For example, when you move the window around when the "Featured" option is selected, the little hanging signs you can see in the picture above swing with gravity and creak as they move. It's an unnecessary, yet completely satisfying little touch.

This project is still in its infancy, but it shows a lot of promise and it's one I'm definitely going to keep an eye on.

MarsEdit

My next post will be the first one not written using Blogger's web-based tools. I recently bought MarsEdit from Red Sweater software, and I couldn't be happier about it. I now feel rather foolish for struggling along with the web-based posting tools for so long, realizing that every time I lost a post or spent hours tweaking the layout of code samples was all unnecessarily wasted time.

MarsEdit is a really great program that makes blogging much, much more pleasant and fun. It supports most of the major blogging platforms, is constantly being updated and made better, and it's just very Mac-like and easy to use. Plus, it's developed by an independent Mac developer, which means that by buying it, I'm supporting a peer, not some faceless corporate entity.

Daniel Jalkut (the independent developer behind MarsEdit) also maintains a great blog which has nearly 100 posts dedicated to different aspects of Cocoa programming which you should check out.

Scott Stevenson on "Thinking Like a Cocoa Programmer"

Scott Stevenson over at the Theocacao blog (and no, don't ask me how to pronounce it) has a great little piece on Thinking Like a Cocoa Programmer. If you're new to the Mac / iPhone development scene, this is well worth a few minutes of your time.  Even if you're not new to the platform, it's well worth a few minutes of your time.

Ah.... WWDC still

This is making for a long week. I'm a little disappointed in many of the iPhone sessions. I guess, with the amount of hours I've logged messing with the iPhone SDK, there's been only a few nuggets of truly new information, and the questions I do need answered, I'm having a hard time getting anyone to answer. Very frustrating. I understand why the sessions are like this and don't blame them, but it's still frustrating.

In some ways, it doesn't "feel" like a Mac developer gathering this year with all the press, and the huge influx of people new to the platform. In the long run, this is all good for the platform, but there are growing pains to be suffered. But as long as Steve Jobs doesn't turn into this, I guess I can live with it...

I did get a chance to see a presentation by Dr. Michael "Wave" Johnson of Pixar today at lunchtime. It was one hell of an entertaining talk, but it was more than just entertaining - he was saying a lot of things that a lot of people in that room needed to hear (and a lot of people in the software industry in general need to hear). It's really too bad the session was under NDA, because I think everybody who codes or wants to code should see it. If you ever get a chance to see him speak, go out of your way to do so: You won't be disappointed.

They are doing some really cool in-house development at Pixar. I don't think I'd ever be tempted to become an employee of a big corporation again but there are a few places that I would have to give serious consideration to if they ever were to come calling (as unlikely as that is). That team at Pixar is definitely one such place. Though I probably would end up staying self-employed, I would be sorely tempted. It sure looks like a great place to work and Dr. Michael looks like a hell of a person to work for. 

I've complained a few times lately about being busy, but I haven't given much detail because I haven't been able to. Well, apparently, the wraps are off one of the projects that's been eating up my time. This is a big thing for me in a number of ways. First, it will be my first published book; everything I've had published so far has been much shorter in length. It's also great because I get to work with Dave Mark, who's a great writer and all around great guy, and I'm tremendously proud to be working on this project with him. We have a very aggressive deadline, so if you don't see many posts from me in the next two months, you'll know why.

The other big project I've got on my plate has to stay under wraps for a while longer, but I'll just say that it's of similar magnitude and importance to me. I wish I could say more, but I can't. I promise that I'll share as soon as I'm at liberty.

I Love Mac Developers

I mean that in all sincerity. They really are a diverse and interesting lot, and for the most part, very smart. Most of the people blogging iPhone development right now are from the Mac development community, which makes sense. Since the iPhone SDK is so similar to Cocoa, so these folks have a leg up. 

I haven't been actively participating in Cocoa or Objective-C circles for close to two years, but the release of the iPhone SDK has pulled me back in. It is very refreshing to be immersing back into it.  This is a great and really helpful group of people. Almost every time I've ever had a Cocoa problem that I couldn't resolve myself after researching, I found someone on Apple's Coco-Dev mailing list who would point me in the right direction. It's better tech support than most companies provide their paying customers. It is a community. Now, I know that word gets thrown out a lot with respect to the internet, but in most cases, it's misapplied. Not so for the Cocoa development community.

Anyway, studying the iPhone SDK documentation, I started looking for information on how much memory was in the phone, and how much as available for your application to use. I'm not talking about the widely touted 8 and 16 gigs of persistent flash memory in the phone, but the amount of volatile physical memory. It turns out finding this information is not straightforward at all: Apple does not include this information in the iPhone specs page nor could I find it any an of the SDK documentation. I broadened my search out to the interwebs, which led me to Craig Hockenberry's blog and more specifically this entry. It didn't take long for some smart person (aka Craig, in this particular case) to identify the hole in the documentation and plug it. He could have kept this information to himself, giving him a leg up on a great many developers, but instead, he chose to share it.  For those of you who didn't click the link, the answer I was looking or is that the iPhone has 128 megs of RAM, with 64 being available to a running application.

Of course, once I found Craig's blog, I started reading through the entries. I did this partly because I like the way he writes, but also because part of my (second) job right now is to find out everything I can about the iPhone and the iPhone SDK, and Craig certainly seems to be knowledgeable in this regard. I must say, though I don't know Craig personally, I'm rapidly becoming a fan of his. I especially like this post where he suggests raising the barrier to entry for iPhone development by charging $499 instead of $99 to become an iPhone developer. I know this probably will not prove to be a popular opinion, but it's one I agree with, although I would propose a slightly different approach. Instead of raising the price substantially for becoming an iPhone developer, instead, simply don't make it an option for ADC Free members.