Way back in December, our Christmas Gift Guide featured our pick of the many OS X-related books out there. One of the recommendations was the (very excellent) Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass - commonly referred to as 'The Bible' in the Mac development community.
At the time the book was a little outdated -- however in the last couple of weeks an updated third edition has been published. New sections feature Objective-C 2.0, Core Data, Garbage Collection, Xcode 3 and Core Animation, meaning this third edition is all ready for many of the new technologies in Mac OS X Leopard.
At just $32 (via Amazon.com), this updated version clearly ought to be on every developer's bookshelf (and aspiring developer's wishlist).
You may recall us posting about Apple's winter iPhoto promotion. This promotion provides 20% off of books and calendars. This promotion was set to expire on February 29, 2008; However, according to Macworld, Apple has extended this promotion until March 7 (giving you a couple extra days to stock up on calendars and photo books). A recent thread on the Apple Discussions board prompted Apple to extend the promotion due to errors that users were experiencing during checkout.
The codes for North American users are:
NAWinterBook08 for books
NAWinterCal08 for calendars
We haven't heard if this extended promotion applies to UK users or not, however, if you would like to try, the codes for the UK books / calendar are: EUWinterCal08 and EUWinterBook08.
iPhoto users in Australia and New Zealand can finally purchase iPhoto books, calendars and cards from Apple. You'll need iLife '08 with iPhoto at version 7.1.2. Picture Books start from $39.99, calendars are $26.99 and postcards and greeting cards range from $1.99 to $2.69.
Now that you've got access, here are some cool things you can do
Scott Stevenson has posted a very short but sweet preview of Delicious Library 2, due out sometime after Leopard hits next week (according to Wil Shipley, it may be as late as February). The already beautiful program (that coined a generation) looks better than ever, and it's made better, we're told, by all the great stuff going into Leopard, from Core Animation to the new Quicklook (you'll be able to drag books and DVDs out of the library to make little files of their own, which will then be viewable in Quicklook itself). And there's other touches, too-- selected items glow, when you delete a book it "shatters," and details don't just appear, they "pop into view" like on the iPhone.
And there are updates behind the graphics, too-- a faster barcode scanner, some super seekrit features (that is "worth the purchase price" for parents-- ??), and sharing features, which means finally, this program has a real purpose other than just staring at the stuff you own. You'll be able to share your collection with friends and even strangers-- can't wait to see how that works.
Sounds like fun. Stevenson says he wants Delicious Library 2 to set the benchmark for the first generation of Leopard apps, so we can definitely expect big, shiny stuff from these folks. Please, Delicious, show us how it's done.
The venerable David Pogue has worked his relentless magic yet again to conjure up yet another manual that apparently should have been in the box with iPhone: The Missing Manual (though one could certainly argue that there would have been no way to fit a typical book in the iPhone's impressively compact packaging anyway). As the promo email that I just received states, Pogue's iPhone coverage is summarized into four primary categories: the phone and organizer, the iPod, the Internet, and the hardware and software. Pogue even tackles such issues as synching an iPhone with multiple machines and ways to solve the iPhone's lack of a spam filter. Heck, Mr. Pogue is so into the iPhone, he even sang about switching to it.
If you're already hooked and itching to both buy and read, O'Reilly is offering a bundle deal right up your alley: though the $20 book doesn't ship until sometime in August, you can purchase a $24.99 bundle to get a PDF copy right now. Either way, you can find out more details at O'Reilly's product page for iPhone: The Missing Manual.
Tim O'Reilly, he of the animal books (as I like to call them), often posts about how O'Reilly's book sales can be indicative of tech trends in general. Thanks to zealous statistic keeping Tim has a wealth of knowledge about his sales (as as good business man should). The latest trend that Tim has set his sights on is OS adoption, specifically that of Vista/Tiger. Clearly, O'Reilly has sold more Vista related books vs. OS X books (darn marketshare), however, after 6 months Tiger books completely replaced sales of Pather books while XP books are still selling strong (though Vista sales are 50% higher than XP).
What does this tell us? Mac users, at least those that buy tech books, are more likely to upgrade their OS to the latest version while Windows users are taking a wait and see approach with Vista.
How many of you are planning on upgrading to Leopard as soon as it comes out?
It's time yet again for Ask TUAW, our weekly questions and answers column. This week we'll be tackling questions from last week about putting the Trash in the Finder sidebar, problems with Mail, keeping track of Books, and more. As always, please leave your own comments, and ask more questions for next week either in the comments to this post or using the tip form. Now let's turn to this week's questions.
You'd better get out those credit cards boys and girls, as the Delicious Monster Gambler's Sale has entered its fourth and final week. For those not familiar with this type of sale: Delicious Monster set aside a secret number of Delicious Library licenses and put the app on a four week sale. Each week, they drop the price by $5. Herein lies the catch: the sale ends when either four weeks are up, or the secret number of licenses is sold - whichever is first.
This is the fourth and final week of the sale, and Delicious Library has hit $20. I just purchased my own copy, but only Delicious Monster knows how long you can keep waiting to taking advantage of a killer sale on a killer app.
We have established that I have a fairly large collection of books (and I'm not just talking Powerbooks and MacBooks here). I am constantly on the lookout for programs that can help me keep track of what I have.
Books for OS X is an open source book cataloging app which is pretty full featured (and you can't beat the price). Sadly, it doesn't have iSight integration (yet) but if you have an ISBN it will autofill.
Keep it Simple with GarageBand promises to teach you the ins and outs of Gargageband through a series of simple musical tasks. You start off my 'laying down of fresh tracks,' as people in the biz say, and you end up adding your vocals to the project.
The best part is that each segment of the project is available for download, so you can compare what you have with what you should have. You'll be ready to rock out in no time flat. Watch out, Chemical Brothers!
The books clocks in at 96 pages and will set you have $14.95 ($19.95 CAD).
Fire up
Software Update, folks, as the iLife apps have received a boost. Specifically, iPhoto is at version 6.0.1, iDVD is at
6.0.1, iWeb reaches version 1.0.1 and the all-mighty iTunes has 6.0.3 ready to go. According to Apple, specifics on
each update are as follows:
iPhoto 6.0.1:
"This update to iPhoto
resolves issues with photocasting, viewing thumbnails in large libraries, and ordering cards, calendars and books. It
also addresses a number of other minor issues."
iDVD 6.0.1:
"This update to iDVD 6 resolves issues with integration with the other iLife applications, importing of
legacy projects and some theme related issues. It also addresses a number of other minor issue"
iWeb 1.0.1:
"This update to iWeb 1.0 addresses issues related to publishing and
blogs. It also addresses a number of other minor issues."
iTunes 6.0.3:
"iTunes 6.0.3 includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.2."
Thanks to all the TUAW readers who sent this in!
Update: iMovie (6.0.1) has been added as
well. Thanks, Taylor!
My love of AppleScript knows no bounds. I often tell people that they should be using AppleScript to help them
automate everything from mass file renaming to making their beds (well, not so much that last one. Wouldn't that be
cool though?). With that said, AppleScript fails the 'Mom test,' meaning my mother wouldn't have a clue how to use it,
however, the same could be said for any scripting language.
Luckily for those who want to learn (including
my mom, though I doubt she would be interested) O'Reilly has just released an completely revamped edition of 'AppleScript: The Definitive Guide' (though the dog on the
cover is still the same). This edition covers Tiger and has lots of new examples that should help you navigate the
shoals of AppleScript.
I spotted this via James Duncan Davidson's blog, where he began talking about it by noting, "The best way to describe it is 'It's like iTunes for eBooks.'"
The program is called VitalSource Bookshelf and allows you to "Simply download entire books to your computer for as low as 99 cents." Unfortunately, not all of the books are $0.99. On the homepage to the VitalSource Bookshelf store, the highest priced book is Medicine by Mark C. Fishman for $31.99. On the other hand, there are several books which can be had for free, including St. Augustine's Confessions. You have to register for an account to download books, but the interface is very clean and nice, and once you download an ebook for reading you can highlight sections and take notes along the way. Davidson hits the coolest feature in his post, where he says, "Once purchased, the books can be downloaded and viewed on any client machine that you own." Nice. Check it out.
Way back in December, our Christmas Gift Guide featured our pick of the many OS X-related books out there. One of the recommendations was the (very excellent) Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass - commonly referred to as 'The Bible' in the Mac development community.
You may recall us 
iPhoto users in Australia and New Zealand can finally 
The venerable David Pogue has worked his relentless magic yet again to conjure up yet another manual that apparently should have been in the box with 
Tim O'Reilly, he of the 
It's time yet again for 
We have established that I have a fairly large collection of books (and I'm not just talking Powerbooks and MacBooks here). I am constantly on the lookout for programs that can help me keep track of what I have.
Fire up
Software Update, folks, as the iLife apps have received a boost. Specifically, iPhoto is at version 6.0.1, iDVD is at
6.0.1, iWeb reaches version 1.0.1 and the all-mighty iTunes has 6.0.3 ready to go. According to Apple, specifics on
each update are as follows:
My love of AppleScript knows no bounds. I often tell people that they should be using AppleScript to help them
automate everything from mass file renaming to making their beds (well, not so much that last one. Wouldn't that be
cool though?). With that said, AppleScript fails the 'Mom test,' meaning my mother wouldn't have a clue how to use it,
however, the same could be said for any scripting language.
I spotted this via 
