Volume Number: 24
Issue Number: 12
Column Tag: Editorial

From the Editor, December 2008

Year-end, and many start to look back. The Apple community has been exceptionally fortunate with a growing ecology and mind-share. So really, it's time to look forward. Now is a great time to be looking to more efficiently manage what you have, and to be evaluating expansion of Apple in your environment. This can include Macintosh, Xserve and, of course, the iPhone.

The iPhone has been praised for its ease of use, its design aesthetic and its ability to access the "full Internet." And that was before the v2 OS shipped. Version 2 ushered in the development SDK and the App Store. There was just one problem - the NDA that seemed like it was never going to be lifted. There was an incredible amount of frustration, derision and disbelief in the developer community. The issue was simple: you couldn't talk about iPhone development outside of your workgroup (ok, that was simplified, but gets the idea across). This included the publishing community. Affecting books, blog posts and periodicals like this - even we couldn't publish articles about iPhone development.

Fortunately, the NDA was lifted, and we can let our queued-up articles fly. This month, we have our first iPhone article, that gives you the concepts, and eases you into creating applications for the iPhone. Rich Warren brings you, "Built for iPhone 2.0".

That doesn't mean we intend to become iPhoneTech Magazine. Greg Neagle brings us another practical MacEnterprise article that teaches System Administrators how to manage non-standard apps, using Firefox as an example.

This looking forward that I'm talking about certainly includes shoring up your own skills and, ideally, learning something new. If you're a System Administrator, there's no better way to expand your skill set and increase your value than learning to create scripts and applications that not only make your job easier, but give power to your users. No matter if it's creating Dashboard Widgets ("A Dashboard Widget that Supports Drag-and-Drop") or learning Python for system administration ("Learning Python on the Mac"), MacTech can help.

For those following Dave Dribin down the deeper path of development, this month, The Road to Code presents an introduction to Core Data for archiving your objects. See how easy and elegant Cocoa handles this traditionally cumbersome task.

For those looking to get a little insight into the thinking of a developer - one of the more prolific on the Mac - this month's MacTech Spotlight features Mark Dalrymple. Co-author of several Mac development books, owner of Borkware, and developer of several cool Google-Mac products, it's always good to hear the perspective of someone into development as deep as Mark.

Looking forward again, next month brings us Macworld, annual gathering for the Apple faithful and more recently, hordes of "switchers." As always, MacTech will be on-site, with a booth and roaming about. So, please be sure to say hello! Have a great holiday and New Year! See you at the show.

Ed Marczak,

Executive Editor