Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 03
Column Tag: The MacTech 25

The MacTech 25 [3]

The 25 most influential Rock Stars, MVPs, Prophets, and Pundits in the Apple Technical Community

by Dennis Sellers and Edward Marczak

The MacTech 25 is a community driven recognition of leading influencers in the Mac and Apple environments. More importantly: it's a measure of non-Apple employees. We all know that Apple people can get things done and change the direction that Apple takes. When people outside of Apple do this, though, that's where it gets interesting. Important, even. Without an active community, vendors have nowhere to sell their products. Without community leaders and influencers, there is no cohesion around products, services and best practices. (Yes, I just said "best practices").

At the end of 2009, we wrapped up the year by placing an on-line poll asking people to nominate their three top choices for influencers in the Apple community. The only restrictions were that the nominee not be an employee of MacTech Magazine or Apple (yes, yes, we know Steve Jobs in an influence). We tallied the totals for each nominee and four runner-ups for a total of 29 people. We're not out to put any one person on the top of this heap, so here, we present in no particular order, 2010's MacTech 25.

Adam and Tonya Engst

While we present this list in no particular order, Adam and Tonya do have a place at the top: they've been consistently voted into the MacTech 25 each year running. This husband and wife team truly work together to make magic: Together, they are responsible for the oldest Mac-related electronic publication, TidBITS. Adam has written several books, including one of the first books about getting your Macintosh on the Internet (yes, there was a time when doing so was less than obvious to many). He has also not only been nominated in the MacTech 25, but has also appeared in MDJ's and MacDirectory's lists of influencers as well.

Tonya Engst, prior to co-founding TidBITS, has worked at Cornell University and Microsoft. She has written and edited books and articles for MacWeek and Macworld.

Together, Adam and Tonya publish the popular "Take Control" series of electronic books. The Take Control series of books began in 2003-a time when publishing electronic-only books was a bit risky. The risk paid off, and books in the Take Control series are some of the most popular titles for people looking to learn technical aspects about the Mac.

Frankly, the success couldn't be bestowed upon nicer people. If you've ever had the chance to run into Adam and Tonya at the many Mac-related events that they attend, you'll be met by gracious people who are passionate about what they do. -EM

John Gruber

John Gruber is quite the fireball when it comes to expressing his opinion on tech matters. So it's appropriate that his widely popular tech blog is known as "Daring Fireball" (http://www.daringfireball.com). Some folks find it irritating that he doesn't allow comments on his blog, but he's a pundit that wants you to concentrate on his ideas.

Gruber is also author of the Markdown formatting language (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax). While Markdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters-including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText-"the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email," says Gruber. He also co-hosts the "Talk Show" (http://thetalkshow.net/) with Dan Benjamin, which covers everything from the World Series to Apple's latest hardware.

Gruber received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University. He worked for Bare Bones Software from 2000 to 2002 and Joyent from 2005 to 2006. Gruber lives in the greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. -DS

Scott Stevenson

Scott Stevenson has been programming with Cocoa for seven years, and runs Cocoa Dev Central (http://cocoadevcentral.com), one of the top destinations for programmers who want to learn Cocoa. Amazingly, he does it without any formal training. Talk about your self-made man.

Stevenson also owns a company called Tree House Ideas (http://treehouseideas.com), which published the DataCrux framework. DataCrux provided a high-level interface to SQLite, and was used to create several Mac apps, including MemoryMiner, LogTen, and Mindburn. Plus, he cofounded a web development company called Maxify in 1996. The company did work for a several Bay Area companies and created AltaVista's first company-wide intranet.

Stevenson was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, though he lived the first three years of his life in London. He now lives in Sunnyvale, California. -DS

Matt Legend Gemmell

He's a Legend in the Apple community. Matt Legend Gemmell, that is. He's a Mac OS X (Cocoa) and iPhone developer and user interface designer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can hire him for your own projects via his site at Instinctive Code (http://instinctivecode.com), which specializes in bringing you Mac OS X, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad apps.

Gemmell also does a lot of public speaking, with his primary topics of focus being, not surprisingly, software user interface and interaction design. He's especially interested in the iPad, iPhone and Mac platforms, and multi-touch interfaces and devices.

Gemmell also does a regular segment on "The MDN Show" podcast (http://www.mac-developer-network.com/category/shows/podcasts/mdnshow), entitled "The World According to Gemmell." Plus, he's developed such software applications as Favorites for iPhone (which handles speed-dial, messaging and email), and Shady for Mac (which dims your Mac's screen more than Mac OS X allows). -DS

Jacqui Cheng

Jacqui Cheng - the only woman in our top 25 list - is a former developer turned associate editor of "Ars Technica." She's also the head tweeter at @arstechnica.

Cheng has covered topics ranging from "A look at Apple's love for DRM and consumer lock-ins" to "For the young, TV's passivity is passe." Her tech coverage has landed her at number 34 on a list of online editors among a list of "Media Power Grid" moves and shakers (http://www.mediaite.com/powergrid/person/?q=Jacqui+Cheng).

Cheng is a graduate of Purdue University, with a B.S. in Interactive Multimedia Development and another in Computer Information Systems Technology. She worked as a developer for several years before shifting her focus to "Ars."

What's more, Cheng is a longtime violinist. She also describes herself as a "casual runner," "kitchen chemist" and "amateur seamstress." -DS

Joe Kissell

Joe Kissell is a self-described "author, computer geek, cook, punster storyteller, traveler and dreamer" living in Paris with his wife and their cat, Zora. Apple fans will know him as the author of roughly a bazillion books, ebooks and articles.

Among the books he's written are The "Mac Security Bible," "Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups," "Take Control of Apple Mail," and "50 Fast Mac OS X Techniques." Kissell is also the senior editor of "Tidbits" (http://www.tidbits.com), the world's second-longest-running Internet publication, and a senior contributor to "Macworld" magazine.

His interest goes beyond technical things. Kissell is also one of the brains behind the "Interesting Thing of the Day" site (http://itotd.com), which is simply a "virtual museum of interesting things" that he, his wife and occasional guest columnists wish to write about, including food, travel, history, philosophy and more. The husband and wife team also run SenseList (http://senselist.com/), a blog consisting entirely of lists of all kinds, Such as "13 Creatively Named Bars and Restaurants," "Seven Fresh Delicacies you can Order Online," etc. -DS

Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch

It's pretty impressive for a pure developer to consistently make this list of influencers, but that's just how Jon rolls. He's been nominated in the top 25 for each year that the MacTech 25 has run. Perhaps it's easy to see why: Jon is not only a top-notch developer, but he's actively engaged in the community.

Aside from his constant writing-he manages several blogs and a Twitter feed-he's often found speaking at Mac-related events. Oh, in addition to his career as an independent developer/freelancer/consultant, how does he fill his time? Well, at least part of the year is spent planning and then running a successful developer conference. After feeling a void in Mac-related developer conferences that had honest, real-world information and great peer interaction, Jonathan started his own conference. Called C4, it's four years in the running now and only getting more successful. It runs annually in Jon's home state of Chicago.

Jon represents an ideal in deeply technical people: incredibly intelligent, but also pragmatic and approachable. -EM

Dan Lyons

Apple CEO Steve Jobs' influence is so huge that one Steve Jobs wasn't enough. So tech journalist Daniel Lyons begin blogging as the "Fake Steve Jobs"-the persona behind "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs"-in 2006. It became an Internet sensation, and Lyons was able to maintain his "secret identity" for over a year before his cover was blown by "The New York Times."

Currently, Lyons is the technology columnist for "Newsweek." Before joining "Newsweek," Lyons spent 10 years at "Forbes." Over the past 25 years Lyons has written for a wide range of publications, including the "New York Times Magazine," "GQ" and many technology trade publications. He's also published a novel, "Dog Days," and a book of short stories, "The Last Good Man."

Lyons has spoken at corporate campuses and industry conferences and events, including the Web 2.0 Expo and Thinking Digital in Newcastle, England. He has taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Toledo. He holds a B.A. from Bradford College and an M.F.A. from University of Michigan. -DS

Fake Steve Jobs will apparently live on. A TV satire based on Lyons' work will be on little-known cable channel/VOD service Epix. According to Mike Fleming at "Deadline Hollywood" (http://www.deadline.com/print-post/?posttoprint=28580), "the show's lead character, Tom Rhodes, is a composite of Jobs and other Silicon Valley titans, and the comedy is described as a savage satire; a study of ego, power and greed." -DS

Brent Simmons

Brent Simmons is a tireless promoter of the Mac platform, but is perhaps best known as the author of NetNewsWire, the wildly popular RSS news aggregator for Mac OS X, and the founder of Ranchero Software, which was acquired by NewsGator Technologies.

At NewsGator Technologies (http://www.newsgator.com), which develops social computing products, Simmons works as a product architect. He's also the brains behind TapLynx (http://www.taplynx.com), which lets you create iPhone and iPad apps with your content.

From 1997 to 2002, he was a developer at UserLand Software, working on web site publishing systems. Simmon's personal weblog is www.inessential.com.

Jeff LaMarche

Jeff LaMarche is a programmer and author currently focused on the iPhone and Mac platforms (though he has lots of experience developing enterprise software, as well). His Mac and iPhone books (written with Dave Mark) are published by Apress and include "Learn Cocoa on the Mac," "Beginning iPhone 3Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK" and "More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3."

LaMarche also writes articles for Apple's ADC web site. If that's not enough, he also has the iPhone Development web site (http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com), which looks at "application development for the iPhone using Apple's official SDK."

LaMarche lives with his wife and children in New York. When he's not writing or programming, he sculpts and does photography to "engage the other side of his brain." -DS

Leo Laporte

Tech journalist Leo Laporte can be found, well, just about everywhere. He's on the radio, TV and Internet. He's the host and producer of a nationally syndicated radio talk show, "The Tech Guys" on the Premiere Radio Networks. You can also find him on such shows as "The Daily Giz Wiz," "Windows Weekly," and "TWiT and TWiG" ("This Week in Tech" and "This Week in Google"). He also blogs semi-regularly on Facebook, Twitter and his Google Profile. All Laporte's shows are available free on iTunes and stream 24x7 at "TWiT Live."

You may also remember him from such TV shows as CNBC's "The Personal Computer Show," MSNBC's "The Site," ZDTV's "The Screen Savers and Call for Help," and "The Lab with Leo" on Canada's G4techTV.  Speaking of TV, Laporte has also pursued acting, playing Uncle Charlie in the movie "Phoenix Rising."

A native of Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry. For more info, check out Leo's "Leoville" web site (http://leoville.com). -DS

David Pogue

When Apple bows out of the annual Macworld Conference & Expo, and Steve Jobs isn't around for a "one more thing," who are you gonna call? David Pogue. At the 2010 event, he wowed the crowd with a keynote that combined music, comedy and a talk show setting.

When he's not filling in for Jobs (and let it be noted that Apple's CEO doesn't sing or play the piano like Pogue) he's the personal-technology columnist for the "New York Times." Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column, an online video and a popular daily blog, "Pogue's Posts." He also has over three million books in print.

Pogue wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "for Dummies" series before launching his own series of informative-yet-funny computer books called the Missing Manual series in 1999. The series now includes over 100 titles. Pogue lives with his wife and three young children in Connecticut. His web site is http://www.davidpogue.com. -DS

Wil Shipley

Who else could follow the effervescent personality of David Pogue? Why, only Wil Shipley. Of his many accomplishments, Wil is a charismatic speaker and writer that shows up in expected (WWDC) and unexpected places (hanging out with Matt Groening). He can certainly lay claim to something no one else in this has achieved: being honored by appearing in not one, not two, but three "Penny Arcade" comic strips.

Wil is, essentially, never short for words. His blog, Call me Fishmeal, has entries that are, shall we say, verbose. Despite the length of some, they're all written in a style that will keep you entertained while you learn.

What were some of Wil's accomplishments that we referred to earlier? First, he's the co-founder of The Omni Group. Originally developing for NeXT Computers, The Omni Group understands Cocoa and Objective-C like few others. After leaving Omni, Wil founded Delicious Monster in 2004. Their first product, Delicious Library, won an Apple Design Award the very next year in 2005.

Wil is known for his experience in software usability and design and is usually found pushing the bounds of the graphical interface. -EM

John Siracusa

Whether he's reviewing the latest version of Mac OS X or talking about Steve Jobs' time machine John Siracusa "Ars Technica" (http://arstechnica.com) writes with wit and insight on the world of Apple.

The Apple Technology Specialist for "Ars Technica"-a web site that specializes in original news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice on a variety of topics-Siracusa is a programmer by day and a freelance tech writer by night (and on weekends). He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University and has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and has spent the last decade as a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.

When he's not covering the tech universe, he enjoys gaming, exercising his TiVo, writing open source software, and, in his words, "pining for the pizza and bagels of his childhood home of Long Island, NY." Why is he pining? Because he currently lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. -DS

Don McAllister

Don McAllister, the host and producer of "ScreenCastsOnline" (http://www.screencastsonline.com)-a weekly video podcast covering primarily Mac based software tutorials-also blogs on all things Apple at "The Mac Screencast Guy" (http://themacscreencastguy.com/blog/author/themacscreencastguy). It's here he talks about whatever strikes his fancy, whether it's lambasting those who say that the iPad is for "old people" or looking at the latest device from Elgato.

"ScreenCastsOnline" launched in 2005. The show originally started out as a hobby with a tutorial every week. McAllister soon found he was spending more and more of his free time working on the show to try and make increasingly polished screencasts. Eventually, it got to the point where he decided he could make a business from his efforts and went full time. It was obviously a smart move.

McAllister does things a bit differently when it comes to membership sites, including not auto-renewing his memberships. But his methods have endeared him to the Mac community. McAllister lives in Liverpool, United Kingdom with his wife. -DS

Craig Hockenberry

Craig Hockenberry is iconic-in more ways than one. He's been designing award-winning software for over 30 years. He's currently a principal at the Iconfactory (http://www.iconfactory.com), a company that has been changing the face of the computer desktop since 1996. Their work includes the design & production of icons for Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and other leading software companies.

Hockenberry is also a real Renaissance Man. He enjoys writing software, building robots, processing satellite imagery and creating effects filters for Photoshop.

Craig majored in Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine and minored in Fine Arts. He also studied Italian and Printmaking at Coastline Community College, and Art History at the Power Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney in Australia. He lives in Laguna Beach, California, with his wife. -DS

Aaron Hillegass

Aaron Hillegass is a Big Nerd. Well, at least the cowboy hat-sporting guy is the CEO of Big Nerd Ranch (http://bignerdranch.com), which offers tech training to individuals and companies in the US and the UK.

Hillegass started programming at the age of 10. After graduating from college he took his first full time job, working for the Mitre Corporation in their Advanced Signal Processing Lab. He's also worked for NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Apple (and which Apple acquired in 1997). At NeXt, he created ClassMAX.com, the search engine for classes and seminars, before launching Big Nerd Ranch.

At the Ranch, Hillegass teaches Cocoa development and Cocoa consulting projects. He's the author of "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" and the co-author of "Advanced Mac OS Programming."

Hillegass has been known to speak at Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference. He also gave the keynote at the "Voices That Matter" iPhone Developers Conference in 2009. Hillegass lives with his wife and two sons in Decatur, Georgia. -DS

Andy Ihnatko

There are few more recognizable faces in the Apple universe than that of Andy Ihnatko, author, humorist, tech pundit and the brains behind "Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth" (http://ihnatko.com). He's been a paid tech journalist since he was a teenager.

You can read him every week in "The Chicago Sun-Times" and once a month in "Macworld" magazine. He's also a regular on "The CBS Early Show." If that's not enough, Ihnatko is also involved in several podcasts, such as "MacBreak Weekly" and "TWit." His entertainingly insightful work is peppered with references to US popular culture, P. G. Wodehouse, comic books, cartoons, and science fiction.

He's authored such books as "iPhone Fully Loaded," "The Mac OS X Tiger Book," "The iPhone 4 Book," "The Garageband Book" and "The iLife '04 Book. Ihnatko-also credited with coining the term "Macquarium" to describe an aquarium made out of the empty shell of an early Macintosh computer-lives in Massachusetts. -DS

Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman can tell you about every computer he's ever owned. And that's a lot of computers. A technology journalist, he contributes regularly to "The Economist," "Popular Science," "Macworld" magazine, and other online and print publications. He's been a columnist for "The Seattle Times" since 2000, and appears frequently as a guest on KUOW-FM's afternoon arts and the culture program, "KUOW Presents."

Fleishman owns and operates the daily news site, "Wi-Fi Networking News" (http://wifinetnews.com/), which offers daily reporting on wireless data networking. A contributing editor at TidBITS, he has written several books, including "Take Control of Back to My Mac" and "Take Control of Screen Sharing in Leopard."

Fleishman founded one of the earliest Web development firms, Point of Presence Company, worked at Amazon.com from 1996 to 1997. He also runs isbn.nu, a book price comparison service.

When he's not writing, he commutes by bike and practices the "religion of structured procrastination." Fleishman lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two sons. -DS

Jason Snell

Jason Snell is the editorial director of Mac Publishing, the publishers of the U.S. edition of "Macworld." Besides serving as the mag's head honcho, he pens a monthly column for the publication.

He's been writing about tech for almost two decades (though you wouldn't know it from his boyish looks). In 1991, while attending the University of California, San Diego, Snell founded "InterText", an early Internet-based magazine, which was originally distributed via FTP and e-mail in plain-text and PostScript formats. In 1994 Snell began working at the U.S. edition of "MacUser" magazine, which launched his career writing about the Apple universe. When "MacUser" merged with "Macworld" in 1997, he made the move to the new magazine.

His projects outside of work include "TeeVee" (http://www.theincomparable.com/), a television site, and "Idiots Write About Sports" (http://sports.intertext.com/), a sports weblog. Snell lives in Mill Valley, California, with his wife and two children. -DS

Ric Ford

Ric Ford is the publisher of "MacinTouch" (http://www.macintouch.com), which has been in publication since 1994, making it one of the oldest Mac sites around. It continues independent coverage of the Mac platform today, along with iTunes, iPhone and such other core topics as technological innovation, networking, security and privacy.

"Macintouch" operates as it has for years. It "takes" news from its own readers by email submission, then posts that news, opinion, or review by simply stating: "Macintosh reader so-and-so notes that... " followed by the text of the email. And it just works. "Macintouch" captures the essence of community without bells and whistles or gizmos and gadgets.

What's more, Ford has provided professional consulting and information services to businesses since 1984. Clients include Advanced Music Notation Systems, Cox Educational Services, Eisai Research Institute, Hayden/Prentice Hall,  HyperMedia Communications, Imagine Publishing, ON Technology, Open Software Foundation, The Support Group, Ziff-Davis and others. -DS

Christopher Breen

You may not remember a Macworld without Christopher Breen writing in, on and about it. He's has been writing about the Apple products since the 80s for such publications as "MacUser," "MacWEEK" and "Macworld."

Breen is currently a senior editor at Mac Publishing, a division of International Data Group, which publishes the U.S. edition of "Macworld." He also writes "Macworld's Daily Tips," as well as "Game Room," the magazine's monthly games column.

Before working at "Macworld," Breen was contributing editor and Help Desk columnist for the U.S. edition of "MacUser" magazine. He's also the author of several best-selling books, including "Secrets of the iPod," "The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide," "Mac 911," "The Macintosh Bible Guide to Games" and "My iMac."

When not writing about the world of Apple, Breen works as a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives in Northern California with his wife and daughter. -DS

Daniel Eran Dilger

Daniel Eran Dilger-a tech consultant and writer in San Francisco-always has an opinion, and he's always ready to share it with you at "RoughlyDrafted Magazine" (http://www.roughlydrafted.com), a site focusing on Apple news, its products and marketing strategies.

More than 75 "RoughlyDrafted" articles have seen more than 25,000 unique visitors each, and more than 10 articles have been read by between 50,000 and 140,000 viewers. Of the more than 500 articles on his site, at least half have had more than 5,000 visitors.

Dilger has also managed software development and information technology projects for 12 years, ranging from the open networks of academia, to the high security healthcare field working in the public sector, to Internet startups. When he's not offering commentary on tech matters or doing consulting work, Dilger likes riding motorcycles and working on art projects. -DS

Steve Scott

Steve Scott runs MDN, the Mac Developer Network (http://www.mac-developer-network.com/), which produces podcasts and tutorials for developers (or aspiring developers). The most well known of these is the "Late Night Cocoa" series.

Based in Tetbury in the United Kingdom, MDN was formed in 2007 to be part of the "Mac development empire" of Scott, also known by many as Scotty. He also helps run the NSConference (http://www.nsconference.com/), a two-day (10 session) conference with presentations from some of the world's top Mac developers aimed at intermediate to advanced Mac developers.

Scott also runs Mamooba (http://www.mamooba.com), which makes "useful software while having fun." Their main product: TrackTime, lets you track the time you spend against multiple projects as well as monitoring your iTunes listening and web browsing habits." -DS

Jim Dalrymple

Jim Dalryrmple, better known as The Beard to some, has a long history in the Mac journalism business. He was one of the early core members of "MacCentral," a site eventually purchased by Mac Publishing. He was an online editor of the "Macworld" web site until he launched his own site, "The Loop" (http:///www.loopinsight.com).

Dalyrmple has appeared as a tech expert on television stations such as CNN, Fox, CBS and ABC. He also does radio show interviews, both Internet-based like "Your Mac Life" and "MacNotables" and traditional radio.

Dalyrmple is also a guitarist and does a lot of writing about music. His favorite artists include Ozzy Osborne, Black Label Society, Godsmack, Disturbed, Eric Clapton and Van Halen. You can often find him backstage at concerts by ZZ-Top and other bands.

In his free time, he plays in bands around his home town of Bedford Nova Scotia, where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a dog. He's been a guitar player for 20 years and records music on his Mac using GarageBand, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase, Line 6, Native Instruments, IK Multimedia, ToonTrack, FXPansion and other applications. -DS

We couldn't stop at just 25 entries. The following three people placed so close that we couldn't leave them out. Again, presented in no particular order, here are this year's MacTech 25 runners-up.

John Welch

Writer, analyst and tech geek John C. Welch describes himself as "colorful and not very shy." Since he's one of the three "Angry Mac Bastards" (http://angrymacbastards.blogspot.com/), we'd say that's a fair assessment.

However, he's not always angry. Sometimes he writes (relatively) peaceful articles for "Macworld" magazine or writes/co-writes such books as "Beginning Shell Scripting." Welch has over 10 years of Mac experience in the trenches of the IT world, having served as a UNIX/open systems administrator, IT manager, consultant, assistant network manager and Mac/PC administrator. Plus, he's a regular speaker at the Macworld Expo.

Welch lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, where he enjoys "verbally beating people until the stupid goes away." -DS

Marcus Zarra

Marcus Zarra is the owner of Zarra Studios (http://www.zarrastudios.com) based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He has been developing Cocoa software since 2003, Java software since 1996, and has been in the industry since 1985. His Cocoa apps include seSales and iWeb Buddy.

In the past he's been a senior developer at Verizon and ExtraQuest, as well as a developer at ICG Communications. Currently Zarra is producing software for Mac OS X and doing consulting work for other businesses interested in developing software for OS X. In addition to writing software, he assists other developers by blogging about development and supplying code samples.

Zarra has penned such books as "Core Data: Apple's API for Persisting Data on Mac OS X" and "Core Animation: Simplified Animation Techniques for Mac and iPhone Development." In addition, he's a co-author of "Cocoa Is My Girlfriend" (http://www.cimgf.com/), a popular blog covering all aspects of Cocoa development. -DS

Walt Mossberg

Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in "The Wall Street Journal," which has appeared every Thursday since 1991. He's also the guy lots of other tech journalists hate because he gets the latest toys from Apple before they do.

But we digress. Mossberg is also the co-creator and co-producer of the technology industry's annual conference, D: All Things Digital, and is the co-executive editor of the technology web site, www.allthingsd.com, which extends the experience of the D Conference to the web. In both ventures, he partners with the prominent blogger and author, Kara Swisher.

In addition to Personal Technology, Mossberg also writes the Mossberg's Mailbox column in the "Journal," and edits the Mossberg Solution column, which is authored by his colleague Katherine Boehret. He appears regularly on television and Internet video as a commentator on technology issues. In his non-existent spare time, he's a weekly contributor to the Fox Business Network, and has been interviewed on programs like "Charlie Rose" and "The News Hour," as well as on National Public Radio. -DS

Dennis Sellers is a long time journalist. He started in the newspaper business, but has been in the online journalism business for the past 15 years. He's the editor/publisher of Macsimum News (http://www.macsimumnews.com)

Ed Marczak is the Executive Editor of MacTech Magazine. He has written the Mac in the Shell column since 2004.