Volume Number: 25
Issue Number: 04
Column Tag: Editorial

From the Editor, April 2009

2009 ticks along and it might be time to review your tech New Year resolutions. What are you doing to improve your skills and offer more? It's a question that you continually need to ask yourself. Learning a new API, learning a new language or learning a new technique are all parts of a continual cycle. Exposure to that which is just outside of your comfort zone works wonders for an assistive push. It takes a bit of an open mind, though. We think the articles presented this month should help with all of the above.

Our cover story this month is Unity3D, and game development environment. Like the Torque Engine that we recently covered, Unity3D allows a creator to design an interactive environment without needing to learn C or C++. Better yet is that Unity3D also has a module that allows development for the iPhone-several of the top game titles on the App Store have been developed with Unity3D. Let author Will Goldstone guide you through the basics of this unique utility.

On the security front, new MacTech author Rich Trouton compares several methods and products for protecting data on disk. Despite many of the protections that you can take with your data, you may be vulnerable in ways that you don't expect. For example, there are certain data that are exposed in cache data - often placed outside of your home directory. This month's "Macintosh Data Encryption" article shows you ways to protect this data, too.

Another new-to-MacTech author, William Smith, a Microsoft MVP (not a Microsoft employee) delves into Exchange's mail protocols, some changes that they've gone through and how they behave with Entourage. Or, as the subtitle says, "[w]hat administrators need to know about Microsoft's newest E-mail protocol."

Greg Neagle covers various ways to integrate your Mac with Active Directory in this month's MacEnterprise article. If you haven't run into Active Directory, there's a pretty high chance you will, as it's popular for several reasons. One of which is that it's a robust, reliable directory (so, give it a chance!).

Dave Dribin continues the Road to Code by getting into more GUI territory. Learn about NSViews: what they are and how you can press them into service.

The Mac in the Shell column has been introducing you to Python on the Mac. This month introduces you to object oriented programming (OOP) in Python. It's a little unlike OOP in other languages, so, even if you think you've seen it before, if you're new to Python, it's worth delving into.

Finally, our extensive Virtual Machine benchmarks are here for your reference. We pitted Parallels against VMWare in real world tests. What are "real world tests?" Well, rather than simply running a benchmark suite like Geekbench, we simulated activities that a typical end user may perform on a daily basis (like Application launch times, document scrolling performance, etc.).

Here's hoping that we're helping you fulfill your own tech resolutions. Have topics you'd like to see covered? Just let us know at letters@mactech.com. See you next month!

Edward Marczak,

Executive Editor