Wow - video iPods!
And you buy music videos and TV shows… Very cool.
Oh yeah… iTunes 6 came out as well.
NetNewsGatorWire
Newsgator continues to buy up some of the top talent and products in the shareware industry. A few months ago, they acquired FeedDemon and hired Nick Bradbury. Today they acquired NetNewsWire and brought Brent on board.
Congratulations Brent!
—
Here’s some interesting quotes about Macs from the Q & A:
Q: Did the Intel switch play a role in this decision?
Greg: No, although the timing was certainly coincidental. I think Apple may likely increase their market share as a result of the switch, but we believe the Mac market as it exists today is interesting enough to make significant investments in.
Brent: And I should mention that we have internal builds of NetNewsWire that run on the Intel-based Mac. Thanks to help from folks at Apple, we’ve had this working for months!
…
Q: Will Brent be the only Mac user at NewsGator?
Greg: No! I have a shiny new Powerbook sitting right next to me. Seriously, though, we’re starting to circulate Macs throughout the office to certain folks…so Brent is definitely not the only one.
Q: If the support staff are all Windows users, how will they support NetNewsWire users?
Brent: NewsGator’s support team is coming up to speed very quickly on NetNewsWire; I don’t anticipate any problems whatsoever. And like Greg said, I’m not the only one who uses a Mac. In fact, I already have people emailing me asking how to do x, y, and z on their Macs – hello, switchers!
Fellow Mac blogger in the path of Rita
I was looking for good resources on how to design and create Mac icons, specifically the slick and huge Mac application icons that show up in the Dock. I found a good article titled How To Make An Icon The RAILhead Design Way by Maury McCown. But what’s kind of shocking is that his personal blog has his ongoing evacuation story from the path of Hurricane Rita. He’s got a more Mac focused blog as well that has stuff like his iPod nano review. Hopefully he stays safe in San Antonio and gets reunited with his cat.
must. have. nano.
It’s amazing to me how Apple continues to innovate. They obviously have read The Innovator’s Dilemma because they aren’t afraid to just blow away a highly successful product line and replace it with a new one. The iPod minis are now gone and replaced with the iPod nanos, which are like a hybrid of the shuffle (because it can be worn on a lanyard and it uses solely flash memory), the mini (in terms of capacity), and the Photo, since it displays digital pics.
Coolest innovation: a lanyard that is also the headphones.
What’s next: Mac nano?
Apple Special Event - Live
MacWorld is covering the Apple Special Event - Live.
The big rumor is that there will be an iTunes phone. We shall see.
Buy Mac stuff, help the hurricane victims
In my previous post, I wrote about how I had a yard sale to try to raise money. Well, the folks at MyMac.com had the same idea, but have come up with much better things to sell than a wacky dancing, singing reindeer which skis.
Instead, they’ve got Mac stuff! All the proceeds of sales, including Paypal fees which will be paid by MyMac.com, will be donated to charities that are helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Even better, most of the goods are priced at a discount.
I bought a subscription to MacTech, the magazine for Mac geeks like myself, for the discount price of $30 (it normally sells for $47.) It was donated by the kind folks at MacTech.
So if you’re a Mac user, check out the Mac Users Helping the Victims of Katrina page. They’ve got some good stuff, including 3 more MacTech subscriptions, iPod stands, laptop bags, and a bunch of software.
Also, if you’re a company selling Mac software, hardware, or accessories and want to donate to the cause, email the publisher of MyMac who is coordinating the effort, Tim Robertson, at Publisher@MyMac.com.
[via AppleMatters]
Finally found a DC Mac Programming Group
Last week, I finally found a DC Mac Programming Group. It is the Programming SIG of the Washington Apple Pi (WAP), which is the big Mac Users Group in the area. We met over in Reston, VA in a _really_ nice club house room with a big projection screen that hooked up to our PowerBooks. The chairs were plush and comfortable. Only thing missing was soft drinks and pizza (like we have at the NOVAJUG.)
We talked about all sorts of technologies from Cocoa to Python to SQLite to AppleScript. We presented some code and showed off some apps. All good stuff. In today’s age, where you can connect with experts from around the world, I still think there is a good place for talking with people who share your passion in person.
We meet every 4th Thursday of each month. So if you’re programming on a Mac, come on by! Email me for more info.
How to have a stable hostname in OS X Tiger
I’ve got DHCP at home and at work. Its definitely a lot easier than the early days of network administration, where everyone had their own static IP.
There is a problem though: with DHCP, my hostname keeps changing whenever I get a new IP address, specifically when I reconnect to a network. This is not that big a deal, except for apps like Perforce, which want you to have a specific hostname.
So how can you have a stable hostname on OS X Tiger? (Note this will work on Panther as well.) Well, it turns out that you have to get into the Terminal and edit a system configuration file: /etc/hostconfig
I personally like to use vi: sudo vi /etc/hostconfig
Then you need to either edit a line that looks like HOSTNAME=-AUTOMATIC- or if that line doesn’t exist, then just add something that looks like:
HOSTNAME=myHostName
I believe you have to reboot to get this setting to stick, but I think you can execute this command to tide you over if you don’t want to reboot right away:
sudo hostname myHostName
Check out more about this in the OpenDarwin FAQ.
Business is starting to like OS X
Jupiter Research reports that 17% of medium businesses (250+ employees) and 21% of large businesses (10,000+ employees) use Mac OS X on the desktop, while 9% of medium and 14% of large businesses use it as a server. It seems to be mainly taking away marketshare from UNIX (and Linux I guess) and somewhat from Windows.
[via Macworld]
I expect this trend will accelerate with the release of OS X 10.5 Leopard and Intel-based Macs, especially if Linux / Windows can be run on those, as a sort of compatibility layer for “legacy” apps.
Getting more plugged in locally
Once upon a time, there was this new technology called Delphi, which was meant to be a Visual Basic killer. When it was released, a young man started using it and was enamored with it and wanted to get together with others who shared this passion. So, he started up the D.C. Delphi Users Group or DCDUG for short (perhaps I played too much Dig Dug when I was younger.) That young man was me in 1995.
It was short lived, for I soon got into Smalltalk and Java, but I discovered how great it was to meet up face-to-face with other people who share your passion. Its why I love to go to conferences. There’s just something you can’t quite get through a bulletin board, email, IM, or Skype.
Fast forward 10 years and I find myself at the Washington Apple Pi (or WAP as it is known) meeting which I attended yesterday morning at 9AM. WAP is the largest Apple user group in the DC area and was founded all the way back in 1978. As many people know, I’m very into Macs, especially programming on them and for them, with Eclipse, Cocoa, and Rails. Pat, the VP of WAP, gave a good presentation on her trip to MacWorld Boston and also on upgrading to Tiger. I joined up and am hoping to meet many more fellow Mac users in the coming years.
Also, I signed myself up for the NOVARUG - the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group. I don’t know exactly when they’ll meet again, but I added myself to the wiki page so I can get notified.
Of course, I’m a member of the NOVAJUG (Northern Virginia Java Users Group) and I’ve previously been a founding member of the DC Design Patterns Group.