TheAppleBlog

I sometimes wonder if the folks over in the Googleplex ever sleep. It seems like we have a new product or service update every other day some weeks. Google is now getting even closer to Mac desktops with the release of Update-Engine, a Mac OS X framework designed to help Apple developers keep their applications [...]

iPhone Developers ’round the world can breathe a sigh of relief today. Seven months after the release of Apple’s iPhone SDK, the restrictive NDA that Apple placed on the SDK has officially been dropped.

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS [...]

The very first panel at today’s Mobilize Conference was on the economics of mobile development.
The iPhone was thrown around a bit (and more specifically, the distribution format of the App Store), but the overall topic was a bit more broad.
Representatives from Microsoft, Adobe, RIM, and others were on the panel to talk about the future [...]

Spotlight importers aren’t the only symbols of Mac-generosity coming from the fine folks over at Google. The Google Gears project has released a beta of their browser code which enables developers to make web apps that behave more like local desktop apps and allow some – or complete – functionality even when you are not connected [...]

I’m in the middle of building an iPhone app (for eventual distribution in the App Store) and, given what happened recently with NetShare, I took a moment to step back and see just how much control Steve & Co. have over the potential livelihood of iPhone developers. It turns out, being part of the iPhone [...]

With this I’m assuming you have a bit of familiarity with the iPhone SDK – you can download it for free from Apple’s site, and follow along here. We’re going to build an RSS feed reader for a simple feed (from The Apple Blog, no less).

Let’s get started

Open Xcode and choose the “File” menu, in [...]

Ever wanted to know how to get great screenshots from your iPhone? It’s really easy. With the iPhone 2.0 software, you can simply hold down the Home button and press the top (on/off) button. The screen will flash and the screenshot will be saved to your iPhoto library. That’s quick and simple, for sure, but [...]

I had the opportunity to attend the July 10th meeting of Seattle Xcoders (a local group where Mac OS X Cocoa programmers can connect) that featured Wil Shipley giving a talk on his latest initiative – Golden % Braeburn.
Golden % Braeburn is a company that has been setup to license the storefront used to sell [...]

It is that time of year again. Time to drool over the best designed apps for Macs and iPhones. Absent from this year’s list, Delicious Library 2, which won Best Leopard App last year. Let us know if you use any of these apps. My favorite thing about these awards is that you get introduced [...]

Forbes has an interesting article up that claims that the DS needs to be fearful of the iPhone come June 9th. Brian Caulfield points out the features of the iPhone combine the motion sensitivity of the Wii with the touchscreen of the DS. While this may be true, I don’t see the iPhone becoming the [...]

Apple releases a security guide for Mac OS X 10.5

“Multi-touch is the future. The mouse and the keyboard has had too long of a reign, it’s time to de-thrown them,” says Bridger Maxwell, a 17-year old from Orem, Utah, who took 4th place in a national science fair for creating a multi-touch display. Apple has already “expressed interest in” him being an intern next [...]

Addison Wesley Professional started shipping the Third Edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass this month. Hillegass’ book is considered my most to be the de-facto intro-to-OS X programming text. I own (and have now recycled) the first edition of the book and have gone through the majority of the Third [...]

Part of Google’s reward for the perpetual servitude of their employees is the ability for them to use up to 20% of their time to make cool stuff. John Skidgel, John Grabowski and Brett Slatkin did just that by creating Google App Engine Launcher for OS X.
Google App Engine is a service created by Google [...]

Some server administrators set share drives to auto disconnect users after a set time of inactivity (ie fifteen minutes). As a user it’s super frustrating to connect to a server every time you need access. I’ve written an AppleScript that first checks to see if the share is mounted, if it is mounted [...]

When you’re coding a huge project in Xcode, and you’ve written all of this awesome stuff, it’s almost done, and the big release is coming soon, that’s when the worst happens:

The hard drive that had all of your code on it dies suddenly
You didn’t have a backup in TimeMachine
Files become corrupted
You remove some important code, [...]

Dan Benjamin of The Talk Show fame posted a general inquiry to the Twitterverse on how to disable the Leopard open confirmation dialog that comes up when you attempt to access a recently downloaded file.
This dialog is a one of Leopard’s new security features called “File Quarantine” and is primarily designed to protect users from [...]

The big day has come and gone and we have many more details regarding the iPhone Development Program. Much of what I discussed in the previous post regarding enterprise support has been adopted by Apple, though only the privileged few that were allowed into the enterprise beta program know the full details (and I am [...]

Given the large amount of “feedback” I receive from many venues on why I’m crazy for suggesting that OS X users employ some type of client-side security software, I wanted to point out a very recent exploit that I saw over at Joel Esler’s blog. The vulnerability is around the IPv6 networking layer of the [...]

I hereby declare this day as Hug A Indie Mac Developer Day. What sparked this spontaneous outpouring of appreciation for these Wizards of Cocoa? Apart from just the standard good will towards the likes of Daniel Jaikut, Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch, Fraser Speirs, Gus Mueller (and a host of others that would turn this into an [...]