Today I decided to go thru the modest collection of EZ-135 and Zip-100 drives that I still have. Yesterday's work getting the PowerMac G4 on a clean copy of Tiger made this relatively easy to attack, but it was still surprisingly slow and aggravating. There's a reason this old machine had a hardware reset button that would instantly reboot the machine whenever you needed it, and I must've poked it a dozen times today. And then there are the other two or three dozen times I used the software reboot. [Read more…]

I'm in the middle of a backup project to (hopefully) end all backup projects. I noticed at one point this spring that you could buy a 6T drive for 0. This is enough room for me to fit all the backups of all other backups on this one drive, and I could then back that backup on my other previous backup drives. This is not a mentally healthy activity, except that it's making me finally get rid of this neurotic wonder I have about what things I do and do not have backed up over the last several decades of computer use.

There are many ridiculous details to this journey, but I'll just mention one here: How I finally got all my 3.5" disks backed up. [Read more…]

I have a multi-monitor desktop setup, as many programmers do, 3 in my case (two apple thunders and one dell 4k in portrait). I use spaces extensively as a regular way of working. I usually have several Xcode projects going for various clients and my own stuff, as well as other projects using other editors and a lot of Terminal windows. Each Xcode project probably has anywhere from 3 to 8 windows open, each usually with a few tabs. Naturally I spread them across the displays as is convenient. (I love the portrait 4k monitor to have one luxurious long view of my main coding window.) [Read more…]

Ok, not that anyone is the wiser, but I'm finally going to rebuild my web template engine / protocol for HTML5. A relatively minor change from the XHTML protocol, but it's also a nice reason to include better handling of javascript, css, mobile devices and some better RESTful methods. Since I'm steeped in Python lately, I'll probably make an engine in that for now, followed by Ruby and F-Script and whatever else strikes me.

But more importantly, I have changes I've been putting off for forever to most of my domains. For one thing, I have to reorganize what domains are doing what. I want to overhaul the OS X Page. I'm still not sure exactly what I want to do with it, so suggestions welcome. I also own CocoaDevWorld and iPhoneDev. I have a Code section to this blog that perhaps should be in one of those other places. And the OS X Apps list? The old version is essentially in archive mode, but there is reason to have an alternate non-MAS listing out there. I don't foresee a MAS-only Mac OS on the horizon (or, if it happens, … that would be a disaster), so there'll always be a need to know what other software is out there. [Read more…]

Despite running a(n obscure) Mac app listing site for years, I've actually been hoping Apple would eventually create their own central, built-in way to find and obtain Mac apps. When iOS devices got one, it seemed like it was inevitable. They've had the pieces in place for a while now, just going unused. 90 days from now, the Mac ecosystem changes completely. So many questions, possibilities, worries.

One indication that Apple should do something came years ago when I went around asking Mac owners how they found new software for the Mac. Did they go to VersionTracker, MacUpate, lesser-known sites (I had hopes)? The answer: they never heard of any of these sites. Only a minority of Mac users that I talked to had anything other than what came on their computer, with the possible exception of Office or Photoshop. Other people thought that all you could buy for Macs was the few items found in the Apple store (or before that, reseller shops). [Read more…]

Haven't blogged in a while. Hi. Long, hot, crazy summer. Now that summer is cooling off, the next big thing coming up for me is the iPhone/iPad DevCon happening in San Diego on the 27^th of this month. I'm both looking forward to it and terrified of it, as I've volunteered to do two talks there. Seemed like a great idea 3 months ago, but now that it's just around the corner, … trying to get organized and make a good set of slides.

My talks will be aimed at people who are new to either subject. One is on blocks in Objective-C, and the other is on scientific programming, but it's going to be primarily aimed at introducing people to the Accelerate framework. These are both subjects that I wanted to get better at this summer, which was part of why I chose them. I'm going to be doing a mini talk on the Accelerate framework this Tuesday (Sep. 14^th) at the CAWUG meeting in downtown Chicago, if you're around and interested.

If you have ideas about what you'd be hoping to hear about on either topic if you were in the audience (and please come!), leave me a note in the comments and I'll see about working it in. [Read more…]

1500 new APIs. 1500. Huge changes, huge opportunities, presuming you can get heard above the noise on the App store. It's not going to be available until summer for 3^rd gen iPhone/iPod Touches, "many things" available for 2^nd gen devices, and not available at all for 1^st gen devices. The iPad gets it shortly thereafter. Dev beta out now.

Great to see Apple constantly firing on all cylinders. We're not always happy with all their decisions, but more often than not I'm quite happy with them, especially with what they provide developers. You can watch the keynote online. Nothing mentioned here wasn't mentioned in the keynote.

Here are some of the APIs that caught my eye that aren't getting much attention from elsewhere. [Read more…]