Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 01
Column Tag: Editorial

From the Editor, January 2010

We are thrilled-thrilled-to debut "Swaine Manor"-a new monthly column from author Michael Swaine. Michael Swaine is a former columnist for Dr. Dobb's Journal, and is currently an editor at Pragmatic Programmers. He'll be bringing his unique wit and writing style to these pages every month.

The Mac in the Shell regular column brings you its last-for a while-writings on Python. This month focuses on a Python debugger that's integrated into vim. This gives you one place to edit and debug your code. Brilliant!

We also see Michele (Mike) Hjörleifsson's final article on Podcast Producer. Even if you haven't followed the first two articles that he wrote, this one gets into the nitty-gritty of the workflow. Podcast Producer has continued to impress us all. Check out this article for ways you might be able to utilize it, too.

Dave Dribin's "Road to Code" talks about creating custom frameworks. When your programming crosses the line from just a little hobby into something more serious, you may find yourself wanting to reuse the same code again and again. A framework lets you tackle that with ease. Dave shows you how it's done.

This month's MacEnterprise column, written by Greg Neagle, talks about the new screensaver over loginwindow in Snow Leopard. This functionality has been requested by many since the early days of OS X. Now that it's here, let Greg show you how to take advantage of it.

Michael Göbel and Oliver Pospisil continue their column for independent software vendors. This month has some particularly wonderful examples regarding the importance of quality.

William Smith returns with another article focusing on Microsoft technologies and how they fit into the OS X world. This time he illustrates the differences in available Exchange clients. This is something you struggle with-and many do-we have the article for you!

We've done it again: through blood, sweat and tears (or maybe it just seemed like it) this month's issue features our latest benchmarking article that pits Parallels and VMWare. This increasingly routine exercise for us does take an incredible amount of work, but it's worth it. The results are often surprising to even us. I think this latest round is similarly surprising. Check out the article to see which virtualization solution may be best for you.

Another MacTech staff article, "Reducing Xserve Fan Speeds" has some great reminders about physical Xserve maintenance.

Brian Greenstone shares his 25th anniversary memories with us. It's been a pleasure reading the stories people have been sending in. Please, don't forget to add yours to our website.

As always, we bring you The MacTech Spotlight, this month featuring Aaron Smith. Currently living a dual existence, Aaron splits his time between his day job and an independent software development house (read: him). There are some particularly wonderful ideas on his web site: http://macendeavor.com and in what he reveals to us.

Are you planning on going to Macworld Expo? We've written plenty here on why the show should continue to be successful and why we're looking forward to it. We hope you are, too, and that we'll see you there. Please be sure to stop by our booth and say hello!

Ed Marczak,

Executive Editor