2007 MacTech 25 (continued)
Page 7

John Gruber

More than a 'blogger,' John Gruber is a writer -- it just so happens that he does so in a blog-like format, published on the web. His Daring Fireball website publishes contemporary tips, and (sometimes) code. However, the thing that draws people to his writing is his ability to take a big news item and get to the heart of it, quickly and clearly. The length of piece will always be just right -- sometimes lengthy, and sometimes summed up in one or two sentences.

Don't forget that John contributed Markdown to the world. This plain-text to HTML converter has found a place in major applications and continues to find new homes.

John's on-again off-again (currently on) independent writer status is an oft-written about topic on Daring Fireball. He now runs ads on the site, and offers a membership to Daring Fireball - $19 per year that get you some perks over the standard front-page stories. - erm

John Siracusa

While John may be an employee of Cambridge Interactive Development Corp., he's best known in our universe as the Apple Technology Specialist for ArsTechnica, writing software reviews and technical articles. It's the latter, really, that has kept him in the spotlight. Particularly for new releases of OS X, and particularly Tiger; a release that saw a review and technical overview so detailed and needed that it became one of the most referenced articles on Tiger ever.

In addition to his columns at ArsTechnica, follow him at his blog, "FatBits" -- also at Ars -- and learn a little of his history at his personal site: http://siracusa.home.mindspring.com/john - erm

Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch

Jonathan Rentzsch makes his second appearance in the MacTech 25, and his place is likely assured for a long time to come. His foundation comes from "mach_*" -- two open source functions, mach_inject and mach_override, that allow programmers to inject code into the kernel, and override code in other processes, letting apps do things that Apple doesn't even delve into. Jonathan also writes constantly -- in his blog (http://redshed.net), Apple Developer Connection technical articles, for IBM Developerworks (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks) and others.

How do you top such an impressive record? Start your own developer conference, of course! Called C4, last year's C4[0] was a great success, having many presenters and attendees travel to Jonathan's hometown of Chicago for this three-day event. Look for C4[1] this year in August to be an even bigger success. - erm