Leopard Tech Talk Review

I’m a bit late posting about the Boston area Leopard Tech Talk that I attended on January 22nd. Both Michael and Daniel were much more prompt in their coverage.

Overall I thought the event was worthwhile if, like me, you weren’t able to attend WWDC. I suspect that if you did attend WWDC this was better as a meet and greet than an educational experience. I will echo what others have said with regard to the exciting APIs coming in Leopard. Much of what was shown really makes you contemplate a Leopard specific version of your applications. My suggestion to people is branch your development to work on Leopard features and put your Tiger code base into maintenance. That doesn’t necessarily mean do it now, but definitely look to take advantage of what Leopard offers as soon as possible.

I think that for the most part Apple did a wonderful job on the Tech Talks, especially considering it was free to attend. Still I think there is room for improvement and I’ll be sure to send these suggestions to Apple.

• Make sure the hotel hosting the event isn’t connected to the internet via a 56k modem.
• Consider tables in addition to chairs.
• Please, please, please consider providing power to us. You ask us to bring laptops knowing well that no laptop (Apple or otherwise) will run for 9 hours yet provide us no way to power them.
• Ditch the box lunches in favor of a buffet. If something runs out at a buffet it is replaced, not true with the box lunches. I wasn’t the only vegetarian there that didn’t score a box. Alternatively poll us for our preference when we sign up so you at least have a semi-accurate count to base your boxing on.

But as I said overall it was great and if you didn’t make it to WWDC and are near one the cities where the tour is going (and it is worldwide now) definitely try to secure a slot.

PagePacker from Big Nerd Ranch

Big Nerd Ranch are known for their excellent classes about many Mac OS X technologies include Cocoa Bootcamp. One of their instructors is Aaron Hillegass, a name you should know if you do any Cocoa work on the platform as he’s written two great books on the subject. He whipped up a small application called PagePacker that lets you print 8 of the DIY Planner templates (or any single page PDF you want) onto a single sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and fold them into a tiny book. I think the UI for selecting the template could use some work, but it is still a nice freebie. Check it out!

Unfortunately my output has most of the spaces in any text in the templates converted to exclamation points. This probably isn’t going to happen for everyone, but I don’t have solution for myself yet. If you know of a solution please leave a comment.

Leopard Tech Talk – Boston

Just received my registration confirmation for the Boston area Leopard Tech Talk! I’m very happy to be able to go. I look forward to meeting other east coast developers as well as learning about cool things like Xray. Hope to see you there!

Save MacXword!

MacXword was my first real Cocoa application for Mac OS X. It has been available since 2002, back when the platform was still fairly young. It was one of those applications that allowed people to free themselves from Classic. At the time creating a Cocoa-Java application was the most sensible approach for me as I came to the platform with a strong Java background. Unfortunately, as the years have passed this has become more of a liability. Apple no longer expands the Cocoa-Java API, and with the move to Intel-based Macs it is just plain broken in some ways. One of those ways affects MacXword. I reported the bug to Apple when I first learned of it and even included a simple example application that illustrates the problem. Alas, it has never been fixed.

Leopard Tech Talks

I’ve “registered” for the Boston Leopard Tech Talk that occurs on January 22nd. So far I have only received confirmation of my request to attend. Apparently we will be notified when (if) we are actually registered. I hope the fact that both Michael and I have registered won’t be a strike against one of us as we’d most likely go to different sessions. So if you are going, I *may* be there