Slashdot Mirror

EccentricAnomaly writes "Apple has announced the winners of this year's Apple Design Awards. And the winners are: Best New Mac OS X Product: Toon Boom; Most Innovative Mac OS X Product: Watson; Best Mac OS X User Experience and Best Mac OS X Technology Adoption: OmniGraffle; Best Mac OS X Open Source port: TeXShop; and Best Mac OS X Student Product: MacJournal." The last one appears to be down, due to "excessive bandwidth consumption." Maybe the Apple Design Awards people should've gotten together with the Apple iTools HomePage people.

David Macfarlan asks: "My father owns a small medical practice and has always desired to get information to himself and his patients rapidly. With recent advancements of 802.11b and powerful Pocket PC's he's developed an itch for information-on-demand through a wireless handheld (preferrably color) while he is in the examination room. A database for the knowledge he's looking to access already exists, and can be queried via any browser. He has approached me on implimenting a system of reliable, fast PDA's which could deliver a browser-based wireless access (within 100 feet) of this system. Is there anyone who has experience with the PPC's, and could offer any suggestions as to which is best suited to such an application?"

ZigMonty writes "Apple has updated their Kernel Programming docs (May 1st). They are a lot more substantial now (read: they say something other than 'don't')."

NunDLess asks: "G4 PowerBooks have absolutely dreadful wireless range due, I've been told, to the fact that the internal antennas are underneath that slick Titanium case. Has anyone heard about a way to set up an external wireless antenna on a PowerBook? I've been looking for supported PCMCIA wireless cards, but haven't found one with Mac OS X drivers."

snyperm writes "stepwise.com indicates that the April 2002 Developer Tools have been seeded to developers and is scheduled for release sometime in the coming weeks. The improvement of gcc 3.1 alone is noteworthy as arstechnica indicates there should be somewhat substantial increases in speed ahead for Mac OS X. One step closer to 10.2!" Also included, according to the story, is a ProjectBuilder 2.0 beta.

cpk0 writes "As more and more 'free' web-based email services fall, and stop offering all their services for free (e.g. Yahoo! won't offer pop-forwarding for free anymore), Apple once again proves its cool-factor by beta-testing a webmail page for use with their iTools e-mail account members. You will find a beta login page, with a link to a feedback page. Now's the time to tell Apple what you guys want to see in this new feature."

cpk0 writes "As more and more 'free' web-based email services fall, and stop offering all their services for free (e.g. Yahoo! won't offer pop-forwarding for free anymore), Apple once again proves its cool-factor by beta-testing a webmail page for use with their iTools e-mail account members. You will find a beta login page, with a link to a feedback page. Now's the time to tell Apple what you guys want to see in this new feature."

Juanvaldes writes "Apple posts $40 million profit for the second quarter on revenues of 1.5 billion up 4% from this quarter last year..." I thought Apple was dead. Hm!

cpk0 writes "Well, we finally have Photoshop on Mac OS X. Now that must have been one heck of a year over at Adobe, cause this piece of software is pretty elegent. Even on my iMac 600 it's pretty swift and smooth. There's no official Adobe press release yet, but there's a VersionTracker page for it, and that makes it official enough for me."

Aqua OS X writes "Chimera, the new Gecko-based Cocoa Mac OS X browser, has just reached version 0.2. It is available for download and it includes native Quartz rendering, new icons, expanded menus, and a spiffy new fading splash screen. Unfortunately, plugin support did not make the cut like it was supposed to. Check it out, this browser should be awesome once it is done."

Blackstealth sent in linkage to an attractive and clever mod for the Apple iBook. The TronBook takes the idea of a transparent iBook and takes it a few steps further. I wish we'd see more laptop mods of this quality.

soquelraj writes "Blizzard has released the long awaited patch they promised three months ago at MacWorld SF 2002 to allow Diablo II and Diablo II LoD to run native on Mac OS X. This was the last reason I was booting into Mac OS 9 for any reason (I could never stand not having direct access to my video hardware running the game via Classic). The performance (at least on the first quick spin I took tonight after downloading) under OpenGL looks to be much smoother than anything previous -- but regardless, this makes my Mac OS X experience complete."

Justen writes: "CBS has a story on the Philadelphia trial over the Children's Internet Protection Act, signed by President Clinton in 2000. This is the first challenge to come to trial, challenging the act which aimed to censor pornography and other "inappropriate" websites in libraries and other government-subsidized public Internet access-points. The big shocker? The challenge has the support of a large number (3,000) of libraries, librarians, and library patrons."

nattt writes "The Register is reporting that a Californian firm, Maz Technologies has been granted a patent for application independant file encryption, and is now going after other companies with its lawyers to press its claims. It seems that the US patent office doesn't check very well for prior art, and their laxity is causing small firms that get attacked on infringing these bad patents a lot of money to defend themselves."

sobchak writes "In an article from the latest issue of Linux Journal, Doc Searls and Brent Simmons review Mac OS X. It's a fair and balanced analysis, but is a definite thumbs up for Mac OS X from (yet another) respected Linux source. They stop just short of calling the new OS 'developer nirvana,' but did say, 'Last week we put Mac OS X on a Titanium laptop. It blew our minds.'"

spoon00 writes: "AOL is collecting information on what Netscape 6 users are searching for on sites like google.com. IP address, the date Netscape was installed and a unique ID number are other bits of information AOL is also collecting."

mattsimerson writes "Looking for a more secure and reliable alternative to BIND for serving DNS on Mac OS X? Look no further than the article I wrote up on the topic. I use djbdns extensively in a large network environment (hundreds of thousands of zones and servers) and it works just as well on my G4 laptop. If you're a heavy duty DNS guy, you might enjoy my other DNS links." Excellent. I am just a dumb programmer, not a sysadmin. It takes me hours to figure out how to configure something relatively simple in NetInfo, so this HOWTO is very welcome.

wadeb writes: "NCSoft Austin is running a beta of Lineage (the popular MMORPG ^? from Korea) for Mac OS X (10.1.2 required). Lineage is the world's most popular MMORPG, with over 2.7 million active subscribers worldside. The demo is available from the website as well as through Apple's iDisk."

Slashback items below bring you updates tonight on connecting to the net by satellite, the feasability of porting OS X to Intel-type hardware, speeding tickets via GPS, and European patents.

RTFPrint An Anonymous Coward writes: "As I'm sure is true of many others among the Slashdot faithful, I was ecstatic to see the culmination of this story earlier in the week. It seemed that Comcast's leadership had experienced a sudden and uncharacteristic attack of common sense. As a former @Home subscriber being moved to Comcast's network, I'd balked at the new terms of service Comcast required (particularly the part about giving Comcast permission to track my browsing). So, if Comcast swears that it won't track users' browsing anymore, why does it still ask for permission to? Exhibit 1: Comcast's "Subscriber Agreement". May I direct your attention to section 5, entitled "Collection, Use and Disclosure Of Information On Subscriber Use", in which Comcast requests that you give permission for them to track (and sell) information about your browsing habits. I particularly like the part about how collecting information on users' browsing is "necessary to provide the Service". Note also that this exact "Subscriber Agreement" is required for ex-@Home users to move to Comcast's network. How fortunate that I just last week got notified about the avaiability of DSL in my area...."

It's not as simple as averaging "W" and "Y." marktwain writes: "Gene Steinberg probably has the most sensible rebuttal on his website http://www.macnightowl.com/ to Robert Cringely's recent article which Slashdot linked to, commented about, and which deserves a rebuttal. The whole idea of porting OS X is not only inane but is an idea which was flogged to death a year ago. And if Cringely's article wasn't bad enough, Slashdot kicked off with the equally inane "but Apples are so expensive" garbage. In today's world, dominated by the Wicked Wizard of Redmond, the penguins and the mac heads need to hang together and understand each other."

Getting the most of sky-high satellite costs. Jason Nunnelly sent in a note that he's updated his information on connecting a home network to the Net using satellite, a feat that can be difficult and expensive. Of course, when all your options are difficult and expensive, it might look like a pretty good idea. Read this information if you want to know how to save money on the connection and the hardware required, and some sobering words about technical support. (Check those hourly rates, too.)

Novel idea: require patents to have one. Cecil Bumfluff writes: "An update to a recent /. story regarding European proposals for software patents. It seems that unlike the US system, the vendor must prove they have made a "technical contribution to the state of the art". This seems a lot tougher than current US patent law. Check out the story at The Register"

Judge Dredd, or Judge Milquetoast? spellcheckur writes: "Remember the ACME Rent-a-car and GPS fiasco? The Boston Globe is reporting that ACME has been ordered to cease the practice and refund the money. One of the interesting conclusions in the article, they say the increased liability of a speeding car amounts to about $0.37 in insurance cost, not the $150 they were charging. Why is it then that my insurance gets to jack my rates two hundred bucks a year when I get one lousy ticket?"

Conrad Albrecht-Buehler writes "ScienceNews is running a brief overview of a new theory that attempts to explain ball lightning. The theory is quite persuasive and argues that aerosol particles are formed by charged plasma ions moving outward and collecting water molecules in the air. The aerosol particles form a shell around the plasma that maintains its shape. Certainly a fascinating read!"

hype7 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story about the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development's Gene Bank, which appears to be running out of funding. It seems a terrible shame, because the Bank has managed to accumulate thousands of Australian and foreign endangered species; a kind of modern day Noah's Ark. At the moment it's in limbo, using funds diverted from other projects to keep it in ER, but the prospects aren't looking good."

lizardboy writes: "This is for the Lego loving computer geek with large backup needs. The Lego DAT Tape changer. It can be interfaced with any platform supporting Lego mindstorms. I have used it with OSX and Linux using dump and NQC with some custom shell scripts. It also works under a Mac OS 9 using Retrospect and RCX."

Wheeler asks: "I am currently writing a book ('The Directory Services Cookbook', shameless self-plug), which I plan to publish under some form of open license, once it's finished. At this point I am really looking for clues on which license would be appropriate for your classic, not-necessary-digital work of creation. And while we're at it: Can other OS book projects share experience on how to tackle the process of writing in general. I personally think a little Linus T. should be in every project doing editing, checking for style and layout, the works. Any comments?"

Vanth Dreadstar asks: "While MP3 is okay, I have begun researching other codecs that would be suitable for my home music use. Lossy codecs such as Ogg Vorbis, AAC, and MPC all seem to have promise, not to mention the lossless codecs such as Shorten (otherwise known as .SHN), LPAC, and FLAC. I would like to know what non-MP3 codecs people are using out there, and why."

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I help at a small youth club that has various events on different nights. For awhile now we have had a snack bar of sorts and have been thinking of developing a pre-paid system. We have access to plenty of computers and magnetic card readers (wit blank cards) but any ideas on the software? Also, would there be any way of also using this to keep track of a CD sign-out system?"

pauljlucas asks: "My company is developing custom server software for an instant messaging type server (under Solaris). Every client maintains a TCP connection to the server when it is 'logged in'; the server maintains state of who's logged in where. For large-scale deployment, there are two problems: scalability and fault-tolerance. A single server can handle at most around 64000 open sockets. To go beyond this, you need many servers. Another way would be to 'fake' a TCP stack in user-space (by reading/writing raw TCP packets) thus not having one real socket per connection. For fault-tolerance, ideally one would like N servers to maintain the exact state, at least for the server process, so that if one goes off line, the other(s) can pick up seamlessly. I'm thinking that both of these issues must have already been solved without having to write lots of custom software. Is anybody aware of off-the-shelf software and/or hardware solutions (either commercial or freeware)?"

Slashback this evening brings you news and updates on several previous stories, including (not limited to) @home service, Linuxgruven, and some followups to Slashdot book reviews.

More news you can use on the @home front. Anubis333 writes: "After a while talking with customer support, I have learned that Comcast@Home (Soon to be ATT Broadband) has instituted a network-wide cap on user upload to 15KB! (Thats not much more than dialup) Also, they have now capped Usenet news access. What am I paying 50 dollars a month for again? More info on usenet here.

Upon even longer hold times, I found out that when Comcast switches over to ATT the cap will be set to 128KB and the usenet caps will be lifted, also they will support more groups. The full change over will be complete by the end of Feb. Any users in the Savannah Ga. Area, they will start here Jan. 15 and end in early feb. Call support for exact local dates if interested."

Yessir, about oh, yea big by a few more inches ... Dave contributed a link showing a side-by-side comparison of the current Apple laptop line, including the new bigger iBook. Shame about the resolution, though ...

By their fruits ye shall know them. zsazsa writes: "According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has sued James Hibbits and Michael Webbs, the two founders of Linuxgruven for deceptive business practices. He alleges that interviewers were actually salespeople paid to enroll job applicants in training programs costing up to $3,150."

Would the FSF call Sun "GNU-minded"? maitas writes: "It seems that Sun has removed Solaris for Intel from its free download list. It's really sad to see a company that promotes its 'GNU minded' culture to go back on the few good things it had made. They even removed the Solaris source code from their site! Sad, sad, sad."

That them thar' book larnin' Stardance points to an interview at Salon with Steve Grand, in which the "designer of the artificial life program 'Creatures', talks about the stupidity of computers, the role of desire in intelligence and the coming revolution in what it means to be 'alive.'" You may remember Grand's book Creation: Life & How to Make It, reviewed on these pages. Speaking of reviews, several readers have contributed links to the New York Times' review of Lawrence Lessig's new book.

Slashback this evening brings you news and updates on several previous stories, including (not limited to) @home service, Linuxgruven, and some followups to Slashdot book reviews.

More news you can use on the @home front. Anubis333 writes: "After a while talking with customer support, I have learned that Comcast@Home (Soon to be ATT Broadband) has instituted a network-wide cap on user upload to 15KB! (Thats not much more than dialup) Also, they have now capped Usenet news access. What am I paying 50 dollars a month for again? More info on usenet here.

Upon even longer hold times, I found out that when Comcast switches over to ATT the cap will be set to 128KB and the usenet caps will be lifted, also they will support more groups. The full change over will be complete by the end of Feb. Any users in the Savannah Ga. Area, they will start here Jan. 15 and end in early feb. Call support for exact local dates if interested."

Yessir, about oh, yea big by a few more inches ... Dave contributed a link showing a side-by-side comparison of the current Apple laptop line, including the new bigger iBook. Shame about the resolution, though ...

By their fruits ye shall know them. zsazsa writes: "According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has sued James Hibbits and Michael Webbs, the two founders of Linuxgruven for deceptive business practices. He alleges that interviewers were actually salespeople paid to enroll job applicants in training programs costing up to $3,150."

Would the FSF call Sun "GNU-minded"? maitas writes: "It seems that Sun has removed Solaris for Intel from its free download list. It's really sad to see a company that promotes its 'GNU minded' culture to go back on the few good things it had made. They even removed the Solaris source code from their site! Sad, sad, sad."

That them thar' book larnin' Stardance points to an interview at Salon with Steve Grand, in which the "designer of the artificial life program 'Creatures', talks about the stupidity of computers, the role of desire in intelligence and the coming revolution in what it means to be 'alive.'" You may remember Grand's book Creation: Life & How to Make It, reviewed on these pages. Speaking of reviews, several readers have contributed links to the New York Times' review of Lawrence Lessig's new book.

Many readers have submitted news of a new do-everything media box being hyped at CES. Fofer writes: "Steve Perlman, the founder of WebTV, is attempting to infiltrate the living room again, but this time it looks like he's on to something. Officially unveiled at CES 2002, the Moxi Media Center is a souped-up digital media server with an 80-gigabyte hard drive. It can deliver, to as many as four televisions, video recorded from a TV signal off of its integrated cable/satellite receiver, video or audio downloaded to the hard drive or from a built-in DVD/CD player. ... Articles with more info are here(1) and here(2)." When a product is still vapor, it's pretty easy to make it buzzword-compliant, too, and this one is supposed to work with Macs and IBM-style PCs, be based on Linux, work with Firewire drives, etc. Read the linked PR stuff to find out more.

mlknowle writes "Wired has just posted a great interview with former EFF president and ACLU associate director Barry Steinhardt. In the interview, Steinhardt expresses concern that next year will be an even worse year for civil liberties. He does offer tips on what to do to help, however."

Canyon Rat writes: "According to this story, less than a quarter of a percent of desktop users have adopted Linux. The survey was based on web surfers so it may be accurate." Anne Onymus adds a link to an interesting reaction over at lowendmac.com.

Michael Simmons contributed this review of what he claims is the best of the very few books out there for folks who want to learn Cocoa programming. The field is so small, in fact, that he can give a nutshell review along the way of the only other one he's encountered, O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa. Update: 12/13 15:45 GMT by T : Please note: Simmons is thanked in the acknowledgements of Hillegass' book. He explains: "I went to the Big Nerd Ranch, where the author teaches an amazing Cocoa course. While there, I received a pre-release copy of the book (it's the coursebook, actually.) I had found a bunch of errors and typos, and helped Aaron correct those errors and inconsistencies, so I'm guessing he is thanking me for my contributions to quality." Just to clear that up! Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X author Aaron Hillegass pages 416 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 8.5 reviewer Michael Simmons ISBN 0201726831 summary Learn to program OS X applications

Intro to Cocoa
If you're interested in programming for Mac OS X, you've definitely heard of Cocoa by now. Cocoa is the name of the library of frameworks that gives you the ability to write advanced applications with ease. The Cocoa frameworks enable you to perform tasks that used to take a decent amount of code and implement it in a very straightforward manner. The hardest thing about learning Cocoa is that because it's so simple, it takes some getting used to.

You can write Cocoa applications with either Objective-C or Java. If you aren't familiar with Objective-C, it's an extension to the C language that makes it object-oriented. I'm not sure why Apple decided to offer Java support for Cocoa, since almost every source of information on the Internet and all Cocoa resources seem to only refer to Objective-C. Since Java-written Cocoa applications will not run on any platform other than OS X, it was probably done as a marketing "thing" -- Apple is giving Java programmers the ability to program Cocoa applications, opening up the potential for more Cocoa engineers.

Until today, there was only one book if you wanted to learn Cocoa. That book is Learning Cocoa , which is published by O'Reilly and written by Apple Computer, Inc. The new kid on the block is Cocoa Programming for OS X, which is published by Addison-Wesley and written by Aaron Hillegass of the Big Nerd Ranch. With two books out, Cocoa programmers now have an actual choice of which book to buy. Which brings us to the point of this review -- which book is better?

Is it really O'Reilly?
Since Learning Cocoa was out first, I'll start with my analysis of it first. When I heard that O'Reilly was going to start publishing OS X programming books, I was stoked. O'Reilly books have historically been amazing -- very complete and straightforward sources that any programmer would be proud to have in his or her arsenal of knowledge. Unfortunately, Learning Cocoa falls short of the O'Reilly tradition, and makes me wonder if O'Reilly actually supervised the printing of this book.

There are some good points about the book. It was the first and only Cocoa book, so when I got my copy back in May, I was looking forward to learning the language. It does provide some good examples on how to write Cocoa applications, which allows one to dive straight into Cocoa programming. The introduction to Cocoa is really good -- it gives a very in-depth description of Object-Oriented and Cocoa program design, which I really like. Additionally, it gives a very good background to the concepts and techniques of using Cocoa.

However, there is a real problem with this book. This book reads more like it was meant to be an internal reference at Apple, rather than a book for the beginner. Another problem is that the layout and order of the content is confusing. Unlike past O'Reilly books and other quality programming books, it seems like this time they took a bunch of internal technical documents on Cocoa, and sent them to the binding machines without further editing. That the book credits "Apple Computer, Inc." as the author provides good evidence for my theory.

The heart of the problem is that the reader has to really dig and explore through this book to find that info that he or she wants. When learning a new language or programming concept, a book should be easy to follow and it should allow the reader to focus on learning the actual concepts, and not having to figure out the flow of the book.

Aaron hits a home run
The "flow" statement is a perfect segue into my analysis of Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X. Right away, I could tell that I was going to like this book. The author, Aaron Hillegass, wrote this book like he is a friend speaking directly to the reader -- he takes you through each concept like he is right there with you. This book teaches you Cocoa by specifically having you write applications, and in each new chapter, you add new features. As you add each new feature, you'll learn an important Cocoa concept.

O'Reilly's book also has the reader write applications and add features, one by one, but it does so in a very sporadic way. I was never really sure what the purpose of adding a certain method was, whereas with Aaron's book, each chapter is focused on an ordered and very specific concept, making it very clear what I was about to learn, and why.

Another part of this book that I really appreciate is the chapter on Objective-C. In just one chapter, I understood Objective-C. You must already know C and at least one object-oriented language (like C++ or Java,) but after reading this chapter, you will be able to write Cocoa applications in Objective-C.

This book comes with an online counterpart, powered by Techstra. Techstra is an online engine that allows you to enter any page of the book and get "extras." The extras include examples not in the book, solutions, errata, and even input from readers. It's very cool and very helpful.

A final and very strong point of Aaron's book is that it reflects the latest update of the Mac OS X development tools, Project Builder and Interface Builder. Apple just updated the development tools to version 10.1, substantially changing the UI and functionality, and the latest version is reflected in Aaron's book.

Conclusion
It's clear to see which book I'm giving the nod to. I know it appears like I'm being biased towards Cocoa Programming For OS X, but if can get to your local bookstore and actually compare the two books side by side, you'll see why I'm so enthusiastic about Aaron's book.

I think having both books is a good choice, as the O'Reilly book does offer very in-depth information, which is useful once you learn Cocoa using Aaron's book. If O'Reilly changed the title to After Learning Cocoa, I think my perception of the book would be different.

Cocoa allows programmers to write powerful applications in a very short amount of time. I am amazed at the power and simplicity of the Cocoa frameworks, and can't wait to see what myself and other programmers end up creating in the future. I'm sure other books will come out in the future, but for now all we have is two. The one I'd recommend is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, but you already knew that. :)

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the book review guidelines first :)

Michael Simmons contributed this review of what he claims is the best of the very few books out there for folks who want to learn Cocoa programming. The field is so small, in fact, that he can give a nutshell review along the way of the only other one he's encountered, O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa. Update: 12/13 15:45 GMT by T : Please note: Simmons is thanked in the acknowledgements of Hillegass' book. He explains: "I went to the Big Nerd Ranch, where the author teaches an amazing Cocoa course. While there, I received a pre-release copy of the book (it's the coursebook, actually.) I had found a bunch of errors and typos, and helped Aaron correct those errors and inconsistencies, so I'm guessing he is thanking me for my contributions to quality." Just to clear that up! Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X author Aaron Hillegass pages 416 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 8.5 reviewer Michael Simmons ISBN 0201726831 summary Learn to program OS X applications

Intro to Cocoa
If you're interested in programming for Mac OS X, you've definitely heard of Cocoa by now. Cocoa is the name of the library of frameworks that gives you the ability to write advanced applications with ease. The Cocoa frameworks enable you to perform tasks that used to take a decent amount of code and implement it in a very straightforward manner. The hardest thing about learning Cocoa is that because it's so simple, it takes some getting used to.

You can write Cocoa applications with either Objective-C or Java. If you aren't familiar with Objective-C, it's an extension to the C language that makes it object-oriented. I'm not sure why Apple decided to offer Java support for Cocoa, since almost every source of information on the Internet and all Cocoa resources seem to only refer to Objective-C. Since Java-written Cocoa applications will not run on any platform other than OS X, it was probably done as a marketing "thing" -- Apple is giving Java programmers the ability to program Cocoa applications, opening up the potential for more Cocoa engineers.

Until today, there was only one book if you wanted to learn Cocoa. That book is Learning Cocoa , which is published by O'Reilly and written by Apple Computer, Inc. The new kid on the block is Cocoa Programming for OS X, which is published by Addison-Wesley and written by Aaron Hillegass of the Big Nerd Ranch. With two books out, Cocoa programmers now have an actual choice of which book to buy. Which brings us to the point of this review -- which book is better?

Is it really O'Reilly?
Since Learning Cocoa was out first, I'll start with my analysis of it first. When I heard that O'Reilly was going to start publishing OS X programming books, I was stoked. O'Reilly books have historically been amazing -- very complete and straightforward sources that any programmer would be proud to have in his or her arsenal of knowledge. Unfortunately, Learning Cocoa falls short of the O'Reilly tradition, and makes me wonder if O'Reilly actually supervised the printing of this book.

There are some good points about the book. It was the first and only Cocoa book, so when I got my copy back in May, I was looking forward to learning the language. It does provide some good examples on how to write Cocoa applications, which allows one to dive straight into Cocoa programming. The introduction to Cocoa is really good -- it gives a very in-depth description of Object-Oriented and Cocoa program design, which I really like. Additionally, it gives a very good background to the concepts and techniques of using Cocoa.

However, there is a real problem with this book. This book reads more like it was meant to be an internal reference at Apple, rather than a book for the beginner. Another problem is that the layout and order of the content is confusing. Unlike past O'Reilly books and other quality programming books, it seems like this time they took a bunch of internal technical documents on Cocoa, and sent them to the binding machines without further editing. That the book credits "Apple Computer, Inc." as the author provides good evidence for my theory.

The heart of the problem is that the reader has to really dig and explore through this book to find that info that he or she wants. When learning a new language or programming concept, a book should be easy to follow and it should allow the reader to focus on learning the actual concepts, and not having to figure out the flow of the book.

Aaron hits a home run
The "flow" statement is a perfect segue into my analysis of Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X. Right away, I could tell that I was going to like this book. The author, Aaron Hillegass, wrote this book like he is a friend speaking directly to the reader -- he takes you through each concept like he is right there with you. This book teaches you Cocoa by specifically having you write applications, and in each new chapter, you add new features. As you add each new feature, you'll learn an important Cocoa concept.

O'Reilly's book also has the reader write applications and add features, one by one, but it does so in a very sporadic way. I was never really sure what the purpose of adding a certain method was, whereas with Aaron's book, each chapter is focused on an ordered and very specific concept, making it very clear what I was about to learn, and why.

Another part of this book that I really appreciate is the chapter on Objective-C. In just one chapter, I understood Objective-C. You must already know C and at least one object-oriented language (like C++ or Java,) but after reading this chapter, you will be able to write Cocoa applications in Objective-C.

This book comes with an online counterpart, powered by Techstra. Techstra is an online engine that allows you to enter any page of the book and get "extras." The extras include examples not in the book, solutions, errata, and even input from readers. It's very cool and very helpful.

A final and very strong point of Aaron's book is that it reflects the latest update of the Mac OS X development tools, Project Builder and Interface Builder. Apple just updated the development tools to version 10.1, substantially changing the UI and functionality, and the latest version is reflected in Aaron's book.

Conclusion
It's clear to see which book I'm giving the nod to. I know it appears like I'm being biased towards Cocoa Programming For OS X, but if can get to your local bookstore and actually compare the two books side by side, you'll see why I'm so enthusiastic about Aaron's book.

I think having both books is a good choice, as the O'Reilly book does offer very in-depth information, which is useful once you learn Cocoa using Aaron's book. If O'Reilly changed the title to After Learning Cocoa, I think my perception of the book would be different.

Cocoa allows programmers to write powerful applications in a very short amount of time. I am amazed at the power and simplicity of the Cocoa frameworks, and can't wait to see what myself and other programmers end up creating in the future. I'm sure other books will come out in the future, but for now all we have is two. The one I'd recommend is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, but you already knew that. :)

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Read the book review guidelines first :)

resistor2004 asks: "My school has recently implemented a program of issuing laptops to all students from 7th grade through highschool seniors, and providing a massive 802.11b network across the campus. As you can imagine, it's a serious nightmare for the IT department. Apart from the usual run of broken laptops we have had a major problem with students usign email during class. Is there any effective way to allow the teacher to monitor the student's activity from his/her own laptop? Some of our teachers have come up with creative methods like installing mirrors in the back of the classroom so that they can see the students' screens, but a method that could be performed on the laptop would be even better." Might VNC be a potential solution to this problem. I would think that with a few creative scripts, and a working VNC client, a teacher can pop up a window to see what students are doing on their school-provided computers. Can you think of other ways teachers may be able to monitor students laptop use in-class to insure that they are at least not horsing around when they should be learning?

Josh Aas writes: "I've been looking for a way to learn PowerPC assembly language for a while now. My search for books only led to extremely out-of-date publications, and the whole ordeal was generally frustrating. I was amazed at the lack of documentation. Even Motorola and IBM's documentation resources (on the web) were lacking anything of use to me. However, it turns out that Apple provides a pretty good free tutorial on the subject. It's tailored for coding in Mac OS X, but I imagine it would be just as useful in any PowerPC environment. For some reason it includes instructions for the Intel architecture. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that Darwin runs on x86 as well."

jutus writes: "I recently relocated for work from Canada to Florida, and on a suggestion, shipped my equipment (well-packed), with UPS Ground. I've posted some images of the destruction my shipment was subjected to by UPS. UPS Ground does not insure international shipments, so basically I'm up shit creek, no paddle. They have been giving me the textbook run-around for the past week. UPS Canada blames UPS in the U.S., and you can imagine who UPS down here in the States blames. As of yet, UPS has not even attempted to negotiate any compensation for my loss due to their severe negligence ... For Gods sake, use FedEX." My luck has gone the other direction -- I've mostly had good luck with UPS and some misdeliveries with FedEx. Would be nice to hear from any UPS employees reading this about what could have led to the damage jutus illustrates.

Johnny Vector writes: "Scientists at Cornell have taken X-rays of fruit flies, with enough detail to see the hairs on their wings. The AIP has more photos. They did it with an "X-Pinch" machine: vaporize a wire, the resulting plasma implodes, producing a tiny (1/1000 inch), fast (nanosecond) pulse of X-rays. I want one of those machines."

UnanimousCoward writes: "I've just downloaded OroborOSX, "A modified Oroborus-based X11 window manager for use with XFree86 and XDarwin on Mac OS X." It's truly a wm worthy of standing side-by-side with Aqua in rootless mode. Here are some screenshots from Jonathan Tyzack (I'm too lazy to create my own, but my experience is the same). Using MacGimp under OroborOSX is awesome ..." The original Oroborus looks interesting as well; the original author has discontinued work on Oroborus, but it looks like the code has found a nice new application.

Xibalba writes: "This is kinda cool. One million children in the UK jumped up and down simultaneously in an attempt to see what would seismically happen." This cries out to become an annual (and international) all-ages event. Bounce! Bounce! Gain weight! Bounce! Repeat.

mlknowle writes: "NPR has an excellent article about the growing trend of 'real' radio stations abandoning streaming media due to concerns about advertising, royalties, and (you guessed it) the DMCA. Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn't increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs. It's a good read (or listen.)" Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.

SONET writes: "Why aren't all laptops made like this? I'm always putting my lappie in my otherwise empty briefcase. Even if it's just Photoshop/GIMP vapor, I really like the idea of a more rugged shell ... and the design is exceptionally clean. I know there are ruggedized laptops for the military and the like, but they really aren't for the average consumer as I envision something like this could be. The page is in Japanese, but the images really speak for themselves." I'm assuming it's just a mockup, the nicer to be proved wrong about ;) For the Exacto knife-and-firesale crowd though, an anonymous reader whispers that "Some guy modded his G4 Cube to have a Propaganda tile mapped inside the case. Looks excellent. That it does.

Moorghan writes: "Thought you might find this site goMOOS.org interesting. When I heard about it on NPR I couldn't help but think of the open-source community and how this is a true and living example of the internet being used for its original intent: the sharing of information and data collected by scientists, scholars, (and whoever) all over the world. goMOOS stands for "The Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System" and it is a collaborative effort by both scientists and the government to help aid... well, just about anyone who is interested in or makes a living by the climatic conditions of the Gulf of Maine's small piece of the Atlantic Ocean. From private ship captains to commercial barges, from lobster boats to luxury cruise ships, from swimmers to scientists, anyone can log in and check an extensive array of weather and water conditions. For all I know this type of thing exists everywhere on the web, but I have found few examples of where the web actually serves such a large community in such a real-world, and completely open, initiative."

Pointing to this Detroit Free PRess article, Pat writes: "The lead paragraph says it all:' Police throughout Michigan, entrusted with the personal and confidential information in a state law enforcement database, have used it to stalk women, threaten motorists and settle scores.' Gotta love these databases." Considering a lot of people have access to ever-consolidating databases about your personal life, this is the sort of thing I plan to point to the next time I hear accusations of paranoia.

More inspiration tonight for anyone planning a low-key entry to space, eyeball feed to celebrate Quake's semi-decennial, and a bit more on Scott McCloud's comic arguments.

Alternate title: Natural Born Fraggers JamesColburn writes: "I just noticed your article on the 5th anniversary of Quake. I spent much of last year with a couple of friends making a 40 min documentary on the game, the gamers and pro game playing ... Broke my bank. But it was worth it."

Are there prizes for other letters, too? gagganator writes: "If you thought that American aiming for space was headed for the darwin awards, check out this brit who seems destined to beat him (to the darwin awards, that is)."

The ten-million dollar X-prize is a pretty good incentive for early adopters, but I might wait until Boeing has done a few test flights, introduced frequent flyer miles, etc, rather than just sit among four strapped-together rocket engines.

If you must draw conclusions, draw them like this. Sudderth writes: "Scott McCloud has posted a reaction to the 'backlash' against his online comic about micropayments."

McCloud wrote and drew what is probably the best explanation of and argument for micropayments as applied to comics (in two parts -- here are the slashdot posts about the first and second parts) that I've ever seen. Seems like not everyone agrees.

gagganator writes: "Machack (that 72 hour nonstop hacking contest) has ended, and here are the hacks voted most interesting. also, Steve Wozniak spoke about everything from phone phreaking to the future of computing." Sounds like a fun event -- does anyone have any other first-hand stories about this year's Machack?

Jay Carlson writes "We've all heard about how Apple's hardware is really fast compared to PCs. ("Supercomputer!" "Twice as fast as a Pentium!" "Most powerful laptop on the planet!") So, if you *aren't* going to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, how fast is it? I care more about integer apps like compilers, so I did some careful benchmarking of a few x86 and PPC Linux boxes. Submissions welcome."

gabeman-o writes: "The Grupo de Lasers e Plasmas has created the fastest Apple G4 cluster. The cluster runs on 16 Dual PowerPC G4/450, 32 processors, 12GB of RAM, .5TB of space, and Mac OS 9. Apparently, they have utilized the AppleSeed technology developed by UCLA. According to the website, the cluster will be used for simulating plasmas. Not too shabby!"

Macler asks: "I'm new to this whole multiple OS on one machine thing.. I have been told that you can choose between 2 OS at boot up but is it possible to setup my system so that I can run Mac OS9.1, OSX and Linux on 1 harddisk and select which to run at bootup..I don't mind having to wipe the drive so any help will be gratefully recieved."

jse75 writes: "This story from the O'Reilly site comments on the state of HyperCard - Apple's much-loved, long-lived, multimedia software tool. Lots of HyperCard stacks are in use today, in all sorts of places - businesses, doctor's offices, museums, and more. Currently there seem to be no plans on Apple's part to update HyperCard to run natively under Mac OS X. The story from O'Reilly contains more info about the International HyperCard Users Group and their quest to get Apple to Carbonize HyperCard. They even had a booth at MacWorld Expo! Join in, maybe together we can convince Apple that continued support for HyperCard is a Good Thing!"

olafva writes: "You may be interested in this new breakthrough! See NASA Press Release and a couple of today's local stories for a remarkable paradigm shift in "Computing Faster without CPUs"." CmdrTaco said he'd believe it when he saw it. Well, they've got pictures. (Update: 03/29 5:02 PM by michael : At NASA's request, we've modified the links in the above story to reduce the load on their Public Affairs website. The same content is at the new links.)