Monthly Archives: June 2007

Skylark Tappers And Linda Sohl-Ellison & Monti Ellison Tonight

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Tonight Jennifer is performing tap dance with the company she belongs to called Skylark Tappers. Here’s an upcoming link with more info.

I am helping out back stage, and went to the dress rehersal last night – it’s pretty darn good! They have a few numbers that are quite innovative, and Jennifer has a small solo in one of them that, IMHO, she kicked some butt on.

Linda Sohl-Ellison and Monti Ellison are their guest performers tonight, and I hear they are quite good.

If you are thinking about attending, feel free to sign up for upcoming.org, and add yourself to the list. Tickets are $25, which seems expensive to me, but I think it’s going to be a pretty good show, with the guest performers I expect it will totally be worth the money.

More about my NYC trip sometime soon. I am still debating about getting an iPhone tomorrow. Or trying to get an iPhone.

Checkout ADC Article

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I just finished reading this really great article on a point of sale application called Checkout by Apple’s Developer Connection group.

The interesting part in my eye is that it’s written in Python and calling Cocoa. I’ve never used Python, but I hear there is a lot more built in support for this in Leopard.

Having worked on Quicken for 3 years and QuickBooks for 3 years, I’m always interested in new entries into this market. In my opinion Intuit never fully supported their Macintosh products, and any new entries like this help Apple and help the Macintosh ecosystem.

I’m still looking at the new entrants into the personal finance market, to replace Quicken.. I’m frustrated with continually giving my money to Intuit without getting something new and exciting in return.

CocoaHeads Silicon Valley Tonight

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I made my way over to the Apple Store in San Francisco tonight to attend the CocoaHeads Silicon Valley meeting tonight.

Wil Shipley, Daniel Jalkut, and Gus Mueller all gave short presentations on different topics about being an independent Macintosh developer, and then they were joined by Brent Simmons for a long Q & A session where they took questions from the crowd.

They all did a great job. Gus talk about the various things you need to do to stay focused during the day, because, well, it’s only you. Daniel talked about payment processing, which in my mind seems to be the hardest part when one is actually ready to start charging people to use your app. Wil talked about hype.

Tidbits that are good to remember:

• Give out eval copies to people who want to review it. If they sell one copy, you are ahead.

• Give free copies to anyone with an apple.com email address. Really because these people are the Macintosh’s biggest fans, and they’ll push your app when people ask for a suggestion.

• Work on a great product that people want to use – don’t worry yet about a company or marketing.

• Do your own leaks – consider giving an exclusive to a rumor site, which a TON of people read.

• Watch your weblog traffic, see where traffic is coming from and keep track of it (regarding the last tidbit)

• Advertise on the Google search network, not on the Google content network.

• Have a thick skin. Always apologize to your customers.

When I remember more, I’ll try and post them.. it was well worth the no dinner until after the talk. (Which, well, hasn’t arrived yet in my hotel room).

Oh – on my way back up to the hotel room another guy who went to the meeting was in my elevator.. I asked him what he though, and he said “it was great, but I don’t want to give up my day job”. I laughed and said ya, but perhaps it will inspire us who have day jobs.

WWDC 2007 Swag

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WWDC 2007 Stuf, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

The stuff we get this year.. the bag is nice, the t-shirt similar, and well.. that’s it. Nothing else. I hope they are saving for iPhones.. :)

WWDC Rumination

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what we might see at WWDC next week, and I don’t normally like to write posts like this.. I have no insider info, but my friends still work at Apple, and I know where they work and when they are busy and not..

But, in no particular order is my thoughts on what we’ll see at WWDC:

- The ‘secret features’ we were promised. These have to appear. Something called the secret features has to be announced by Steve. I have a few thoughts on what they might be, but I think the biggest one is going to be a new look for Aqua. Or something to replace Aqua. Things have just felt bolted on to me in the ‘shall not be mentioned’.

- Free iPhones for all the attendees. Yes, I still remember the free iSights from a few years ago. Yes, deep down I hope Steve surprises us with the ability to either get free iPhones, or buy the first 5000 without having to line up at a store. Deep deep down I hope we can pick one up with our DVD of Leopard. But then I wake up and realize it’s not going to happen.

- No SDK for the iPhone. I haven’t worked on any sort of SDK, but I’ve been around Apple and Apple developers/evangalists/cocoa api engineers enough to know that they aren’t going to have time to rush out an SDK for third party developers. I hope they have time to finish the iPhone to a good enough quality to not spoil the first day purchasers experiences.

- New enclosures for the Mac Pro’s and monitors. We’ve had these encloses for a long while, I think a good 3 years correct? I understood this at first – hey, we’re switching to Intel, but they’re still Macs! Don’t worry, stick with us. Now.. well now, here we are.. everything is Intel based, we’re on second revisions of chip sets, sometimes third. Let’s see what Jonathan Ives and his folks have been doing.

- Wednesday night is TBD. I think we are going to see Ratatouille on the big screen before the June 29th release date. Which would suck because I want to also go to the Cocoaheads meeting at the Apple store in San Francisco.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on what we might see.