From the Editor, September 2008
Volume Number: 24 (2008)
Issue Number: 09
Column Tag: Editorial
Love is a funny thing. You can really, really love someone or something; but shift that emotion just 5 degrees or so and it turns into something completely different. Some might say compassion is love with no strings attached, but that's a philosophical debate for another day (and magazine). "Mac people" are amazing because we have this same kind of love for Apple, Inc. (and let's not get started about Wall Street and their "love" for Apple). I'd say this situation arises due to the dichotomy between Apple—the—company and the products that Apple makes. We pretty much always love Apple's products: MacPro, Xserve, MacBook Air - all beautiful stuff, right? However, Apple—the company—can do some things that just annoy us — developers particularly.
The issue you're reading now was intended to be a bit of an exposé on iPhone development. We have articles on various iPhone SDK technologies ready to go. However, this can't happen at the moment due to a confidentiality clause in the iPhone SDK agreement. As iPhone developers, when we downloaded the final SDK, the large, looming NDA section was gone - Yippie! However, there's still a stanza in there that basically says iPhone developers can't discuss the contents of the SDK. This has held up all publishing about iPhone SDK development. Worse, it stops developers from speaking to each other to get the support they need (well, legally, anyway).
Fortunately, we've spoken to people at Apple on the iPhone team and they realize how absurd this is, and they're trying to correct the situation as fast as possible - my hope would be that it's taken care of by the time you read this, and our next issue, October, can bring you iPhone development articles. We love the iPhone, but we don't always love the policies surrounding it.
None of this malarkey means that we don't have great content otherwise. If you're a system administrator, scripting can be such a boon to your workflow. Too few sysadmins dig into bash enough to get really proficient. This month's Mac in the Shell gives you a jumping—in point to get comfortable using bash. Greg Neagle also brings a follow—up to using FileVault in an Enterprise setting. Ryan Wilcox also brings us an interview with a sysadmin that needed to get work done, chose AppleScript and succeeded.
On the creation side, Norman Palardy continues to show the power of REALbasic by fleshing out the example skeleton that was built in previous months. Dave Dribin introduces Cocoa Bindings and Key—Value Coding (KVC) for everyone following along in The Road to Code.
In the MacTech Spotlight, we feature Andrew Welch from Ambrosia Software. Funny enough, I was recently cleaning up my computer graveyard, and found my old Quadra 840av. It still booted, and what a treasure trove was found on the internal disks. One of those was Aperion by Ambrosia Software. I wound up playing for an hour or so, and then immediately purchased the OS X native version of Aperion. John and Ambrosia have been mainstays of the Macintosh scene. Check out this month's MacTech Spotlight and find out why.
Until next month, keep loving what you do, and compassion for those still trying to figure it out.
Ed Marczak,
Executive Editor
