Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 04
Column Tag: Editorial

From the Editor, April 2010

It's been an amazing ride for Apple, Inc., and by extension, anyone involved-even peripherally-with the company. (Pssssssst! That means you!). The iPad is selling like crazy. The next iPhone is on its way while new models of MacBook Pros have been released, and Apple stock is going through the roof. All of this leads to a sustainable future, which means that we continue to stay in the sidecar.

It must be quite a wonder for Steve Jobs and the early set of Apple employees. Imagine going from the nascent days of computing-just getting things to work we're pretty amazing-creating the early Apple I and II computers to today. The Apple I and II computers were certainly wonderful pieces of technology. But they weren't sexy. They were beige boxes. Fast forward to today where Apple is an experience. People even get excited about unboxing new products, and will even post pictures about doing so. There's certainly some other great tech out on the market, but I can't think of any that elicit quite this response. That's all simply to say we are in great positions to take advantage of this wave of Apple.

Of course, that means I'm also thrilled about presenting this month's issue. It's full of the information you need to keep providing great solutions to the technical challenges you face.

Michael Swaine brings us playful take on Flash in the iPad. To anyone in the tech field dealing with Apple, it was known and apparent that there would be no support for Flash in iPhone OS. But to the people getting the device because it's the next cool thing, well, it was sometimes a bit of a surprise.

JAMF's Casper Suite is one popular way to manage a fleet of Macintosh machines. Have you thought about using it to deploy Windows to your Macs, though? Criss Myers leads us through doing just that.

In this month's MacEnterprise column, Greg Neagle continues his popular take on FileVault. FileVault is certainly useful in certain situations. If you've upgraded your home directory across versions-since 10.4, specifically-you're likely not taking advantage of one of FileVault's major changes since that time. Let Greg guide you through automating this update.

Long-time contributor José Cruz brings us two articles this month. First, he leads us through some lessons with Git, the popular version control system. Branches are an important, but sometimes misunderstood topic with Git users. José clears it up in, "Branching Out With Git." Then, he demonstrates how to write a plug-in for BBEdit using Xcode in, "Plugging up BBEdit."

More new additions: Objective-C blocks. Dave Dribin tackles blocks: what they are and how to use them in this month's Road to Code.

Rich Warren rounds out and wraps up his series on iPhone/iPad game sprite and physics frameworks. If you've been following along, this final part brings it all together.

Lastly, The MacTech Spotlight shines on Daniel Treiman. I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel at Macworld earlier this year showing off his GameSalad Creator project. I love game development environments, so I was immediately drawn to watch the demonstrations. (Game development environments remind me of really advanced versions of Logo-an easy way to get up and running…but GameSalad is a bit more than that, even). Thanks to Gendai Games for exhibiting at Macworld, and to Daniel for taking the time to chat.

I lieu of my usual ending here, I leave you with this bug report: openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=278401

Enjoy. See you next month.

Ed Marczak,

Executive Editor