Happy New Year! Start 2012 with an Edinburgh MacMacDev!
macMacDevs[118] will be held at Mezz, 49-51 London Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6LX on Thursday 12 January 2012 from 19:00 until whenever.
Turn up, talk code, discuss new resolutions.
If you’re planning on coming along, please let me know – david@macmacdev.com or @pyrusmalus
Looking for some good books – either printed or ebooks – on Mac and iPhone development? Fancy 50% discount on some ebooks?
Apress, in conjunction with MacMacDev, are offering 50% off Apress ebooks.
I’ve been reading my way through a number of the Apress iPhone development books, and I’ve been impressed with the content and presentation. I’ll bring some of the titles along to the next MacMacDev meetings so you can have a flick through them, and I’ll post my reviews of the titles later on.
If you want to take advantage of the 50% discount on ebooks, email me – david at macmacdev dot com – for a promotional code to use at the checkout.
If you’d rather have printed copies of the books, Apress are offering 40% discount through a campaign with Macworld through to the end of the year.
Apress are also interested in hearing ideas for other Mac and iPhone book titles, so if you have any ideas, or would like to write for them, let me know.
In the spirit of shameless-self-promotion (also known as talking about iPhone Application Development at the Apple Store next Tuesday), I’m looking for others to do the same!
I’d like to feature iPhone applications by MacMacDev-ers, so if you’ve got an application on the App Store and want to be featured in my presentation send me – david at macmacdev dot com – some screenshots (landscape and portrait would be good), the icon (preferably at 256×256), app name, company name, price, and a brief description.
I’ve still got room for others on the panel discussion, so if you want to take part in that too let me know!
Just updated on the schedule of events for Apple Store Glasgow is my “iPhone Application Development” talk: Tuesday 2 December 2008, 5:00pm-6:00pm.
I’m going to go through the steps involved in writing a (very!) simple iPhone application to give newcomers to the platform – or those who are just keen to see what goes on behind the scenes – an overview of what’s involved. We’ll race through Xcode and Interface Builder, and hopefully get an application that will run on the iPhone, even though the chances of it ever being accepted for the App Store are zero. (For those who were at the Apple iPhone Tech Talk think of my talk as being the exact opposite of their approach…)
Following that we’ll have a panel-discussion – the general consensus was that the panel we had for the Cocoa Development talk was extremely worthwhile – which will give people an opportunity to talk code with other developers.
So I’m looking for volunteers to take part in the Q&A part and shamelessly plug their own apps! If you’re interested in helping me out please let me – david at macmacdev dot come – know.
If you happen to look through the schedule of events for Apple Store Glasgow, you might just find one called “Software Development with Cocoa” on Thursday 18 September, from 18:00-19:00, which appears to have my name on it!
The description is, shall we say, not quite exactly what I submitted: apparently someone in Cupertino thought that ‘Cocoa Cheerleader’ didn’t sound nearly professional enough and upgraded me to ‘Cocoa expert’; nor am I sure how I got to be an ‘insider’ but if this means I get ‘access-all-areas’ in Infinite Loop I’m happy.
So, what will I be talking about? Essentially an overview of development opportunities on the Mac, a look at what’s involved in Cocoa, a look at the developer tools, some quick demos, and anything else that will convince people to think about getting into software development with Cocoa. I’m not planning anything too in-depth during the presentation, but there should be an opportunity to talk code during the Q&A and with developers afterwards.
If you’re interested in turning up that would be awesome: it would be really good to demonstrate to Apple that there are a lot of people interested in developing on the Mac.
I’d really like to have a mini-panel of developers to take part in the Q&A part, so if you’re interested in helping me out please let me know – I promise you won’t have to cheer, or shake pom-pons.
The third virtual MacMacDev -applicationDidShip: award goes to How Fast (Website, Appstore) by Ian Davies of leapingfrogs software.
Ever wondered how fast the train, bus, or plane you’re on is traveling? How Fast uses the location functionality of the iPhone (runs best on iPhone 3G with GPS) to determine your speed, which is displayed on a cool Core Animation-powered speedometer.
How Fast is available for free download. Congratulations to Ian for shipping this fun application and for being the third recipient of the -applicationDidShip: award!
It is finally here: the App Store doors are open, and applications are being downloaded onto shiny new 3G iPhones. Applications which just happen to include three apps written by fellow MacMacDev’ers.
PCalc (Website, AppStore) by James Thomson of TLA Systems is ideal for scientists, engineers, students, programmers, or indeed anybody looking for a feature-rich calculator for the iPhone or iPod Touch. It includes an extensive set of unit conversions, RPN mode, engineering and scientific notation, support for hex, octal and binary, and a paper tape. PCalc is available for £5.99.
Exposure (Website, AppStore) and Exposure Premium (Website, AppStore) by Fraser Speirs of Connected Flow bring the wonder of Flickr to your iPhone and iPod touch. They provide access to your photos, photosets, tags and contacts in one place, and use the location features of iPhone to find photos on Flickr that were taken near you. Exposure is advertising-supported and is available for free downloads; Exposure Premium is advert-free and is available for £5.99.
Congratulations to Fraser and James for not only shipping apps on the first day of the App Store, but also being the first recipients of the (virtual) MacMacDev -applicationDidShip: award!
Apparently the recent addition of our mailing list made Mail very happy, but iCal started to exhibit signs of jealousy. So, in a desperate attempt to bring harmony back to the dock: introducing the MacMacDev calendar!
Subscribe to webcal://www.macmacdev.com/macmacdev.ics and get the latest meeting details delivered direct to iCal.
If your email Inbox is feeling unloved, perhaps even jealous of all the RSS feeds winging their way to your news reader, perhaps this will cheer it it: introducing the MacMacDev mailing list!
Keep the chat going in-between meetings, say all the things you want to say but don’t want to post as a comment on the blog, or just say “Hi!” to Mac developers at the other side of the country. Plus it’ll also have details of upcoming meetings so there’s no excuse for forgetting to turn up!
To subscribe, send an email to list-subscribe at macmacdev dot com, and await your confirmation email. To post to the list, just send your email to list at macmacdev dot com. Any problems, let me know: david at macmacdev dot com.
Finally, in the spirit of “What happens at MacMacDev stays at MacMacDev” there currently isn’t a viewable archive of mail, so subscribe now or miss out!
The Pet Shop Boys advocated that we should ‘Go West’, but Apple said ‘Think Different’, hence ‘Go East’.
Not content with getting started, and joining forces with NSScotland, we’re thinking of going east as well: Edinburgh to be precise. So, who would be interested in attending a MacMacDev in Edinburgh? Should we have them on the same day as the Glasgow meetings (so we can iChat from coast to coast?) or different days (so anyone who wanted to could go to both?)
Give me your feedback – either in the comments, or email david at macmacdev dot com.
