Macworld 2008 wish list and predictions

• New displays: I hope that Apple will introduce new displays with build-in iSight cameras. I think that the new display sizes will be 20'', 24'' (as they are already used in iMacs, there is no point of having two different sizes) and 30''. A price drop would be nice.

• Apple Aperture 2.0: I wish Apple introduces a new version of Aperture. Aperture 1.5.6 is sloooow, even when running on decent hardware, although it is a very useful piece of software.

• I would like to see updated Mac minis that have dedicated graphics cards.

• I really like to see Apple introducing a more advanced Mac mini computer -- this could be called Mac Mini Pro or Mac Pro Mini :-). I would like it to support at least 4Gb of RAM, have its own graphics card (the one that comes with the latest 17'' MacBook Pros), and has space for two SATA hard disks and one DVD-RW.
  

Also, it is almost certain that Mac OS X 10.5.2 will be out before MacWorld 2008.

The Waffle Weblog

I was reading Bagelturf blog when I first saw about the Waffle weblog.

Waffle weblog is a technical blog about Apple subjects. Recommended!

Mac-related magazines that I read

• MacTech
• MacWorld
• Macuser.co.uk

The World’s Most Famous Photoshop Fakes

Although not directly related to programming, this post (from photopreneur.com) presents the world's most famous photoshop fakes.

Sometimes the same happens to computer programming and operating system design and implementation!

My Dashboard at home

The MacTech.com Widget that you can see in the screenshot is fully explained in my eBook. It is a Widget that reads RSS feed and displays it - I use it every day. I also use the Perl Disk Information Widget that is also explained in the eBook.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

My Dashboard at work

The Two Kinds of Photographers

I just found a gem in Ken Rockwell's photography site. The article is called "The Two Kinds of Photographers" and can be found here.

His point is that "There are two kinds of photographers: those who make pictures, and those who talk about it".

A small part of his article says the following:

"I had an epiphany in 1989. When I searched through over 15 years of my archives dating from 1973 looking for some of the great shots I knew I must have made, I found nothing! The good shots only existed in my imagination! I realized that all I ever did was tell myself that I was a great photographer just because I knew every nuance of technique and camera and lens design. I had nothing to show for it. From that point on I decided to stop worrying about the technology and focus my considerable expertise and creative instincts on creating photos instead of reading about it."

More or less the same applies to programming! Please read the rest of the article.

Blogs that I regularly visit

• Scott Kelby blog
  
• Ken Rockwell site
• Inside Aperture
• Popular Photography flash
• MacWorld magazine

PostcardViewer: a free Flash image viewer

I just found a very nice free Flash image viewer. It is called PostcardViewer.

You can find an example here.

The UNIX Philosophy

It is very impressive that little things have changed in the UNIX philosophy since 1969 when UNIX was first introduced. The UNIX philosophy can be summarized in the following "rules":

• Each program has to do one thing and do it well.
  
• Utilities (programs) must work together.
  
• Programs must handle text streams well because text is universal.
  
• It is better for a program to be clear than clever.
  
• When a program fails, it must fail as soon as possible with error messages. When a program runs well, it is better to say nothing.
  
• Design for the future because it will sooner or later come.
  
• Preserve programmers' time in favor of machine's time.
  

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

SpeedMark 5 results

Macworld magazine updated its SpeedMark results for SpeedMark 5 (the latest version of SpeedMark).

I am publishing a small part of the results for reference:

• Power Macintosh G5/Dual 2.0GHz: 166
  
• 15-inch PowerBook G4/ 1.67Ghz: 92
  
• Mac Pro Xeon/3 GHZ Quad Core: 274
  
• 15-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo/2.2GHz: 185
  
• 24-inch iMac Core 2 Duo/2.8 GHz: 262
  
• Mac mini Core 2 Duo/2 GHz: 172
  

Of course, the results do not show that my PowerMac can have up to 8Gb of RAM whereas a Mac Mini can have up to 2Gb of RAM.

The important thing to notice is that a MacBook Pro is as powerful as my PowerMac G5 DP @ 2GHz!

Google will offer its Gadgets to Dashboard!

According to MacWorld, Google will offer (on Thursday 29.Nov.2007) its Gadgets to Dashboard!

Google Gadgets are similar to Dashboard Widgets.

Google will publish its API that will allow the programming of its cross-platform Gadgets.

The Hello World! program in Objective-C

//
// File: helloworld.m
//
// Programmer: Mihalis Tsoukalos
// Date: Friday 21 April 2006
//
// Use: gcc -Wall -lobjc helloworld.m -o helloworld
// to compile it.

#include <objc/Object.h>

@interface Mtsouk:Object

{

// This is left empty

// Usually, instance variables are declared here.

// In this example no instance variables

// need to be declared.

}

- (void)hw;

@end

#include <stdio.h>

@implementation Mtsouk

- (void)hw
{
 printf("Hello, World!\n");
}

@end

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
 id myMtsouk;
 myMtsouk=[Mtsouk new];

 [myMtsouk hw]; 

 [myMtsouk free];

 return EXIT_SUCCESS;

}

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

The Objective-C Programming Language

Objective-C was introduced with NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is mainly used in combination with the Cocoa framework (a collection of libraries) under Mac OS X although you can program in Objective-C without using these libraries if you want to.

Objective-C is an extension to the famous C programming language that adds support for object-oriented features. What Objective-C does is to add Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language.

Mac OS X is based on the NeXTSTEP operating system. In 1993, the set of libraries found in NeXTSTEP were renamed OpenStep and then Cocoa.

I very nice book for learning Objective-C is "Programming in Objective-C" by Stephen G. Kochan. I highly recommend this book. You can find more information about it here.

The back cover of the Programming Dashboard Widgets book

The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Stanford Cocoa Programming Class!

I was very surprised when I found that the famous Stanford University offers a Cocoa programming class. You can find more information about it here.

The course may help you learn Cocoa by following its assignments and reading its lecture notes! The proposed textbook is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass, second edition. You can find more information about the book here and here.

Disadvantages of Widget plugins

• It is more difficult and time consuming to program a plugin for a functionality that is also supported by JavaScript.
  

• It is more difficult to debug a plugin.
  
• You have to learn Objective-C.
• You also have to learn Cocoa.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Advantages of Widget plugins

• Nobody can change your Widget plugin.
• You can create commercial Widgets.
• Your source code is hidden and more secure.
• You can do things that simply are not possible with JavaScript and the built-in Widget functions by using the Cocoa framework.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Basic skills for creating Widgets.

Creating basic Dashboard Widgets is not a very difficult task and there is a great chance that you already have most of the necessary skills to create your own basic Widgets! The absolute musts are HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript and the ability to use a program for designing graphical images.

An older article that I wrote for SysAdmin magazine may help you understand the basics of Dashboard Widgets.

Did you find the above information helpful? You will find a lot more information in my eBook "Programming Dashboard Widgets". The eBook describes how you can create Apple Dashboard Widgets using many programming languages including JavaScript, Perl, Objective-C, and PHP. You can buy it here.

Choosing a Mac OS X Editor

A very serious decision that every programmer has to make is to decide about her editor.

This is a decision that is hard to change afterwards, especially after getting used to working in a certain way. The most obvious choices in the Mac platform are the following:

• TextMate: This is my favorite editor. I typeset my eBook using TextMate. A lot of Microsoft Windows users want a Windows version. I like the fact that I use it with my shell scripts, LATEX, Perl, PHP, C, C++, Objective-C, SQL, PL/SQL and text files that I write. . . It is not very expensive. Need I say more?
• TextWrangler: This is the freeware version of BBEdit. Nevertheless, it is a very capable editor that you may use without problems.
• BBEdit: This is the editor of choice for a lot of Mac users, especially before the release of TextMate. A very capable editor, indeed! It is relatively expensive for my taste. I would suggest that you try TextWranger first and then consider paying for BBEdit.
• vi: This is the old time classic UNIX editor. Before using TextMate, vi was my editor of choice. I am still using it for administrative work. It is free, reliable, very capable and comes with Mac OS X.
• Emacs: UNIX people usually fight about their editor of choice. The two opponents are vi and Emacs! I have never used it but I know that it is a powerful editor and you will not regret it if you choose to use it. It is free.
• SubEthaEdit: SubEthaEdit is an editor with unique characteristics not found in the other editors. It supports collaborative text editing features, which means that two or more people can edit the same file at the same time! It is also a powerful editor and is not very expensive.

In order to understand the capabilities of an editor, I should tell you that I typeset my whole book in LaTeX using TextMate!

Book Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Dashboard

Chapter 2: Existing Apple Widgets

Chapter 3: Existing Widgets

Chapter 4: Programming the Hello World! Widget

Chapter 5: Using JavaScript for creating Widgets

Chapter 6: Creating a Widget using Perl

Chapter 7: Programming Widgets using PHP

Chapter 8: Creating Widget plugins using Objective-C

Chapter 9: A Widget that uses UNIX Shell Commands

Chapter 10: Advanced Widget Techniques

Chapter 11: A Widget that processes RSS feed

Chapter 12: A Widget that Interacts with a MySQL Database

Chapter 13: Widget Hints and Tips

Appendix A: A Short Introduction to HTML

Appendix B: An Introduction to CSS

Appendix C: Reading and Understanding an Existing Apple Widget

Programming Dashboard Widgets eBook released!

This is the first post of the official blog site for my "Programming Dashboard Widgets" eBook.

You can buy the book here.

Number of Pages: 370

Number of Chapters: 13

Number of Appendices: 3

Based on standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Dashboard Widgets are simple to build and easy to extend. The "Programming Dashboard Widgets" book contains all that your need to know in order to create and program your own Apple Dashboard Widgets. The book also shows you techniques that help you fine-tune, extend and explore existing Widgets.

You do not have to be an HTML, CSS or JavaScript expert to understand the book as it presents and explains all the necessary HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge. Each book chapter contains bibliographic references that will help you expand your knowledge.

You can find its detailed TOC in PDF format here.

Thank you!

Mihalis.