Jul 11 — 2
I have a Twitter account at @scottstevenson. I usually do more listening than talking on it, but I figure I might as well mention that I have it. See the most recent tweet for more
Jul 02 — 8
Presto is the short that is currently running in front of Wall-E, and it's now available on iTunes. This is by far my favorite Pixar short, and again shows just how much you can do in a brief format with no dialog at all
Jun 30 — 8
A few things about CocoaHeads videos. First, many of the talks are now available from the CocoaHeads Viddler account. We've been thrilled with Viddler — most importantly because of the fantastic quality. In addition, Fraser Hess has seeded two new video torrents
Jun 29 — 10
Travis from the Apple Store in San Francisco sent me this panorama from the CocoaHeads WWDC event earlier in the month. There are a number of other photo sets online as well. The crowd was absolutely fantastic
Jun 27 — 30
Being a great Mac or iPhone programmer means more than just knowing Objective-C and the Cocoa, it means thinking in a different way about designing and writing software. Understanding how experienced Cocoa programmers look at things will help you get closer to becoming an expert
Jun 20 — 20
I got to see an early screening of Wall-E on Monday night. This is by far the most unique and unexpected movie of the entire Pixar roster, but it's challenging to review because there's no point of reference to compare it to — and I'm not supposed to give away major story elements anyway
Jun 07 — 27
I think it's incredible when someone puts a lot of thought into a minor part of an app. It's easy to punt on something like Preferences, but if you do it right, it rounds out the entire experience. CoverSutra probably has one of most meticulously-designed examples of this I've seen
Jun 06 — 12
I'm thrilled to announced that we have an amazing lineup for Tuesday's special meeting of CocoaHeads in San Francisco. The meeting is June 10 from 7pm to 9pm. Similar to last year, we will have several Mac developers talk about the things they've been working on, followed by a group Q&A session
May 31 — 49
I've been looking forward to seeing a dedicated subversion client which is designed from the ground up as a Mac app. The Sofa guys teased us a while ago with an app called Versions, but it never actually surfaced — until now. I just got a chance to play around with a pre-release build
May 29 — 11
I had the privilege of interviewing Aaron Hillegass for InformIT in support of the brand-new third edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. We talk a bit about the book, but a good chunk of the interview is about his thoughts on Mac and iPhone programming in general
May 26 — 16
It looks like we put up some pretty big numbers for video downloads in the last few weeks, and the host throttled our connections. We're looking at other options, but the videos should be available on via torrents. There are also mirrors here and here
May 20 — 60
The video for the Introduction to Cocoa talk at CocoaHeads is now available. Technically, this talk is called Best of Both Worlds, but the bulk of the talk is on entry-level material. We also had several interesting demos before the main talk
May 14 — 8
At the next CocoaHeads Silicon Valley meeting this Thursday night, I'm going to present Best of Both Worlds. This talk is a combination of an introduction to Cocoa, as well as a series of advanced tips and tricks that even relatively experienced Mac programmers may not know about
May 14 — 22
The third edition of Aaron Hillegass's Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is now shipping. I talked about it in some detail previously, but the summary is that this is one book I can easily recommend to new Mac programmers
May 11 — 25
The video from the UI Design Essentials talk at last month's CocoaHeads Silicon Valley, is now available, along with the Debugging with Xcode talk by Joar Wingfors
May 07 — 7
Everyone's schedules are full this week because of the imminent arrival of WWDC. Due to this and other factors, we're moving this month's CocoaHeads Silicon Valley meeting to next Thursday, May 15. The preliminary topic is "Intro to Cocoa and Xcode" — particularly for the folks we've recently picked up for iPhone. We'd like your feedback on this, though
May 06 — 5
The Ratchet and Clank series boasts some of the most polished, relentlessly creative titles on the PlayStation or any other system. I bought a PS3 a few months ago with the specific purpose of playing Ratchet and Clank Future, and it actually goes beyond what I expected
May 04 — 21
Brent Simmons mentioned Theocacao a few months back, noting the "page-in-a-page" technique used in some site designs. I don't know if there's an official term for this style, but I call it visible borders
Apr 15 — 15
We've covered a lot of topics at CocoaHeads Silicon Valley, but we've never had an entire night on user interface design. On Thursday night, we're setting that right. I'm going to present UI Design Essentials on April 17 at 7:30pm at the Apple De Anza 3 auditorium
Apr 14 — 30
I just posted a new tutorial at Cocoa Dev Central. This one is called simply, Learn Objective-C. This tutorial is aimed at programmers who already have some basic experience with C and are looking to jump right into Objective-C
Apr 04 — 6
This month's meeting for CocoaHeads Silicon Valley will be Thurs, April 17. This is a week later than the typical schedule. In the meantime, NSCoder Night Silicon Valley is every Tuesday 7pm-9pm in Campbell at Orchard Valley Coffee. You can also follow @nscodernight on Twitter for reminders
Mar 29 — 7
After a request yesterday, I sat down and moved Cocoa Blogs over to the new server. The first step is just that the RSS feed will be updated, then I'll take a look at the web site itself. Also, it's now free to everyone — even those who have not made a donation
Mar 20 — 11
Many Mac developers understand that a high-quality visual design for their web site helps the visitor understand both the company and product, but language design is just as important as layout and screenshots. It's in your best interest to make specific statements about what your software does, and to not talk down to the reader
Mar 17 — 8
Michael Jurewitz, Apple's Developer Tools Evangelist, will talk about Instruments at CocoaHeads Silicon Valley this Thursday, March 20 in Garage 1 at Apple. Instruments is Apple's brand-new performance measuring tool for Leopard
Mar 11 — 2
Just a quick heads up. We're in the midst of sorting out the venue for this month's CocoaHeads Silicon Valley. Typically, the meeting would be this Thursday, but it's more likely to be March 20. I'll post something when the date is confirmed. In the meantime, NSCoder Night is tonight at 7pm in Campbell
Follow your bliss.
