July 2007 Archives

Starting in the July issue of MacTech magazine, I will be authoring a regular column devoted to programming on Mac OS X called "The Road to Code". The focus will mainly be Cocoa and Objective-C, but it's also aimed at someone new to programming on Mac OS X. In fact, I will assume you don't know programming at all, and the first few articles will cover the basics of C. Once the C foundation has been covered, I'll get into object oriented programming, Objective-C, and Cocoa. I'm very excited about this column, so please join me for the ride on "The Road to Code" and pick up a copy of MacTech at your local newsstand.

I wasn't that interested when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at MacWorld earlier this year. Yeah, it was cool, but c'mon! $500 for an iPod and mobile phone combo? You're not gonna sucker me in on this one, Steve. I still had the same phone I got four years ago. It still made phone calls just fine. And as an iPod, it couldn't even hold what my 2nd generation 20 GB iPod could hold. I told myself right then I wasn't gonna buy one. I didn't need it. My phone and iPod worked perfectly. And with a wedding coming up, I'm sure I could put the extra $500 (plus extra monthly expenses) to good use.

Then came WWDC and the "announcement" that the SDK was AJAX. Not that I really expected a full SDK, but I did feel it was at least a little insulting to pass off web apps as an SDK. Yeah, we knew it could browse the web, Steve. How is this sweet? Okay, good, I thought. Yet another reason to avoid the iPhone.

But as June 29th approached, the hype rose. The preview articles started coming in, giving us a glimpse of what the little phone from Apple could do. The reviews gave it mostly high marks, but these guys didn't have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Somehow I still don't trust a review as much when they don't have to part with their own, hard earned money.