If I were a Mac developer building a product I'd hope to sell or nurturing an open source application My latest Apple Developer Connection article, titled Test Driving Your Code with OCUnit, explains why Automator.
I'm headed home from WWDC. The ol' brain is full and I'm exhausted in that good kind of way. Last year we got an enticing preview of Tiger, but we couldn't really dig into it. This year was all about how to put the bumper crop of APIs and technologies in Tiger to good use, and for the good of users. Most of the sessions I attended were directed hands-on exercises.
Frankly, I could care less about the Intel news. I didn't buy a Mac for the chip inside; I bought it for the whole experience. Then again, I don't have to port a Mac application over to a universal binary. But with the number of applications that have already been ported just this week, I don't think this will be as big a deal as one might have thought walking out of the keynote on Monday morning.
Some take-away points for me this year:
Version 2.0 of the .Mac SDK is hot! It's all about the collaboration. More on this later.
Automator seems to be under-utilized. Yeah, there are over 500 actions already out in the world, but the energy level in the sessions wasn't as high as I expected. I'm wondering if it's an adverse reaction to AppleScript. Perhaps it's just too early to call.
The Apple campus bash feels like a rock concert, with a very long line to get into the gift shop. It was cool to be where all the magic happens.
The Rails meme has spread wider than I thought. It came up several times in hallway conversations at a Mac conference, and not once did I have to explain what it is.
Never underestimate how much you can accomplish in a 5-minute face-to-face conversation with a client. James and I got a lot of work done this week meeting with our Rails client team every day for lunch. Just another example of rapid feedback.
This is a great developer conference!
My latest Apple Developer Connection article, titled Test Driving Your Code with OCUnit, shows you how to integrate OCUnit with Xcode and write automated OCUnit tests for your Cocoa/Objective-C code.
The DHL guy dropped off the box on Tuesday morning and was kind enough to wait around a couple minutes while I filled it with my ailing PowerBook.
This morning, Thursday, the same guy returned bearing a much-improved PowerBook. It now has a rap sheet—the following were replaced:
DA FUJITSU V40+ 2.5" 4200 RPM 80GB HDD (that explains the ka-chunk sound) DSPL, 15.2, XGA, AU, PB15" (the infamous white spots) FOAM DIFFUSER ASSY, PE, DSPL, PB15" (no idea) THERMAL MODULE ASSY, PB15" (will it keep my legs from roasting?) KYBD ASSY, BACK-LIT, PB15" (it was mushy from all this typing) ASSY, INVERTER, PIEZO, TOKIN, PB15" (sounds cool)
That was a fast turn-around, but what do you do in the meantime if your PowerBook is your computer and you're staring at deadlines? Well, the Mac Mini has a 14-day return policy with a 10% fee if opened...
That big server in the sky called .Mac just became a digital hub for your Cocoa application. At no cost to you, and no network programming, users of your application can enjoy all the benefits of the .Mac services, including global credentials, synchronized preferences across machines, and lightweight collaboration. As an added bonus, for each new .Mac subscription that your application generates, you collect $15. Not too shabby for giving your users a network-aware application that feels like home wherever they go. (Do I hear the rumblings of an open source project?)
My first Apple Developer Connection article, titled Using the .Mac SDK, shows you how easy it is to embed the DotMac Kit in your application. And it might be the easiest money you've ever made...
I'm a wannabe switcher. Ask anybody who knows me and they'll tell you it's true. Really. I've tasted the Kewl-Aid and it's yummy. Reality distortion field? Consider me ultra-warped.
See, I've already taken the leap, mentally. But I made a public and personal pledge that I'd wait for the new 15" PowerBook. You know, the one with all the 12" and 17" goodies, but that's not too small and not too big. Well, it wanted to be mine yesterday. Indeed, it has been relentlessly seeking me since we met on the Internet. And yesterday we were to finally meet in person.
And as I watched the WWDC Keynote fed by satellite into a big-screen at my local Apple Store, I was so ready. Panther? Great! iChat AV? Killer! XCode? Oh baby! G5? Stunning! New 15" PowerBook? <deafening silence> New 15" PowerBook? <sobbing> Come on, Steve, you brought me this far now please let me buy something before I leave! Or just say something -- anything! -- about the medium-sized laptop that could. We could have had a good life together... starting today.
I'm Mike and I'm a wannabe switcher.
At long last, I now own the latest PowerBook. I wish I could say I'm blogging from it presently, on a backlit keyboard with the lights turned off, but my local Apple Store isn't stocking them yet. Trust me, I was there -- before the doors opened this morning. The salesman mumbled something about not getting a pre-emptive shipment before the announcement because then Apple employees would have known the secret. OK, but I've been reaching false summits since June, and I really don't think the world is that incredibly shocked by the announcement. Relieved perhaps, if only because I'll finally shut up about wanting one, but not surprised. So in this case, I think making them available everywhere on the day they are spoken into existence, and when the buzz is at its zenith, trumps a potential leak of long overdue news.
Nevertheless, my order shipped out today and it's due to land on my doorstep in the next day or two. The UPS driver has absolutely no chance of bringing the vehicle to a full and complete stop before I pounce. I'm already prepping my current laptop for a lobotomy. Since I obsessively store everything of value in CVS, it should be a fairly short and painless procedure.
Of course the real fun, and part of the reason for the switch, will be learning a new environment and set of tools. Between that switch and my explorations into XQuery and other languages (more on that later), it's the end of the world as I know it. A new world awaits.
I'm still ruminating on the events at last weekend's geek fest. It takes me a while to unwind the stack after those events. I tend to sponge up everything I can while I'm there, then let the 'ol brain churn on the data for a while.
Believe it or not, there's one thing that keeps nagging at me after this weekend. No, it's not the news that web services may not turn out to be exactly what we dreamed. (Actually, it is what we dreamed... about 20 years ago.) OK, what I'm still quite enamored with is the new Mac OS X. The PowerBook is everything I want in a laptop - elegant form factor, beautiful user interface, and Unix under the hood. It's what I was looking for a few years back with Linux, and more!
I just noticed that new drops of Eclipse (my IDE of choice these days) will include a Mac build. It's a plot to rope me in, I tell ya. It doesn't help that everywhere I happen to go these days there's that illuminated piece of fruit like a siren song.
Anyway, it's a strange situation for me because I've never paid homage to the Mac cult. But I must admit, they've got me thinking...
I've very happily rebooted into a new world. It's a bright and colorful world where things work for me, not against me. This world has an incredibly pleasing and productive facade, yet provides all the tools to hack it and build new things. Every day I wake up to this new world I find something new and different, yet consistent with the journeys of the day before.
My conversion took much less time than I anticipated. Indeed, I've had more trouble switching from one Windows box to another. Perhaps it was all that shovelware I had to wade through with new Windows systems. You'll find none of that in the box or on the desktop here. A PowerBook ships fresh and clean, ready for you to make the world into your own. It just works, though you'd never know it judging by the lack of any noise under the hood. James nails it.
A tip for anyone wanting to get their hands on one of these fast: Buy it at your local Apple Store if you have one nearby. My local store was getting frequent shipments. Had I got on their list I would have had a new PowerBook days earlier than ordering it through the online store.
From today's Wired article:
"We're going to fight illegal downloading by competing with it," said (Steve) Jobs. "We're not going to sue it. We're not going to ignore it. We're going to compete with it."
I like a company with that brand of courage and confidence. It's one important way our industry learns how to innovate. And I love iTunes Music Store. It was great on the Mac, and it's even better now that I'm easily sharing songs between my Mac and Windows boxes.
Advanced Rails Recipes
May 2008
Agile Web Development with Rails
December 2006
Pragmatic Project Automation
July 2004
