Knowledge@Wharton, the online business journal of The Wharton School, has published an interview with Steve "Woz" Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, notorious prankster and a somewhat reluctant entrepreneur. It's one of the more in-depth interviews with him that I've read, covering the past, present and future, his relationship with Steve Jobs, his unique brand of humor and digging for further insights on otherwise ubiquitous information.
If you woke up this morning wishing you could peer inside the mind of a major player in the history of personal computing, and hoping for a dash of humor and a side of Apple insights, you're in luck. And if you never read iWoz, this interview is practically a CliffsNotes ... so you can pretend you had the fortitude to at least peruse the 288-page tome.
Shawn Blanc has wrapped up his series of great software reviews, and now dives into the scariest of waters: those of the major minds in Mac journalism. And he goes first after the biggest shark in the ocean (or at least the one with the sharpest teeth), everyone's favorite Daring Fireball, John Gruber.
The interview is first about interviews, and then goes on to cover Gruber's past (he worked with Bare Bones and Joyent before going on to write the blog full time). Gruber also gives out some great tips for writers, from things as practical as setting a goal the night before to guide your workday and always drinking coffee black, to ephemeral tips like how to become a better writer without actually writing anything (save about a dozen books' worth of message boards and blog posts).
Gruber also talks specifically about Daring Fireball, his favorite stuff on the site, and where he wants to take it, and how far. Definitely a great read -- as always, Shawn makes sure to hit on all the important notes and leave no stone unturned, and Gruber reveals lots of insight on what it's like to put his posts and the Linked List together every day.
Mike Lee, the "world's toughest programmer," and official Major-domo for Delicious Monster sat down with Scott to show off some features coming to Delicious Library 2. We know a lot of you are itching for the release of this one, and Mike gives an answer to when it'll ship... sort of.
Other items in the video: - sharing your library - media launching - more categories (now tracks gadgets) - .Mac (and more) publishing options - metadata support - robust import/export tools - one click backup - why no pro version? - scripting support! - plus a first look at a feature that will have Cory flipping out
Mike also talks about charity, and his efforts to help in Madagascar. The read link will take you to Mike's Club Thievey where you can help.
In our continued meanderings around Macworld we found Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont shooting some video of the Apple TV. Once again we asked for a little perspective on the keynote.
We were lucky enough to run into Walt Mossberg, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, co-founder and host of D: All Things Digital. He shares his thoughts on the keynote and Apple's new products. What was the biggest surprise for him? Watch and learn.
The interview is mostly about NetNewsWire-- the inspiration for its various features, and the development process Simmons goes through (he writes way more code than he ever uses, and calls himself an "anti-packrat"). There's also a picture of Simmons' workspace (above)-- he works on a Cinema display hooked up to a 17" iMac, with a 17" PowerBook around for PPC testing. He also has a HappyLite Sunshine Simulator right there-- I would think shining a light in my face every morning would wear me out, but he says it helps his Seattle existence, and if it gave us NNW (3.1 is on the way, we're told), I won't argue.
Always a good guy, that Simmons, except that he's a little indecisive-- he told us his favorite feature was the Attention Report, and now he says it's the spacebar. Make up your mind!
Wolf Rentzsch is another Mac developer so devoted to his craft that he comes to WWDC just for the fun of it. Wolf loves code so much, in fact, that he started C4, an "indie conference for indie developers." Scott sat down with Wolf to talk about Mac dev work, his own work, iPhone and C4.
NOTE: This should be the last of the "Perpendicular Subject" series, we hope you've enjoyed the side views!
Finishing up my interview series with notable Mac OS X developers is Allan Odgaard of Macromates, makers of the most excellent TextMate text and code manipulation app. Allan now joins Brent Simmons, Wil Shipley, Paul Kafasis and Gus Mueller in sharing some thoughts with us on the delay of Mac OS X Leopard, the iPhone and what it's like to develop on the bleeding edge.
The interview train just keeps on chuggin', and this time we have Gus Mueller of Flying Meat Software, developer of VoodooPad, FlySketch and FlyGesture, on board. Just like the other interviews I've done with Brent Simmons, Wil Shipley and Paul Kafasis, Gus had some great thoughts to share on the Leopard delay, whether to develop software for one specific OS, words of wisdom from a Nintendo game developer and how Apple's past behavior can hint at the possibility of the iPhone opening up up to 3rd parties sometime in the future. Amazing fact from this particular interview: Gus's mobile phone just turned 7.
In the first interview of this new mini-series, Brent Simmons of NewsGator / NetNewsWire shared some of his thoughts on Apple's delay of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in light of the iPhone. For this second installment, Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster / Delicious Library steps up to the plate on feeling like a new programmer again, a reason to be happy that Leopard was delayed and why the iPhone's release is a great time to work at Delicious Monster. Wil has a great perspective on Apple and their products, and - as anyone who reads his Call Me Fishmeal blog will know - an entertaining way with words. Read on for Wil's responses to my questions after the jump.
Apple's announcement that Leopard has been delayed until October was quite the shocker, especially since we apparently have the iPhone to thank. This of course elicited nearly every response you can think of from every walk of life, but we don't often hear from what I feel is one of the most important building blocks of the Mac OS X community: 3rd party developers. Sure, developers blog about stuff like this on their own, but not everyone is down for sifting through posts about the inner workings of Mac OS X for the insightful opinion pieces on what things like a Leopard delay mean to Apple and its users. And that isn't a bad thing, especially since it inspired me to bring the developers' thoughts to you in an interview series with some of Mac OS X's biggest hitters, including Wil Shipley (co-founder of Omni Group and Delicious Monster), Paul Kafasis (CEO of Rogue Amoeba), Gus Mueller (of Flying Meat software) and Allan Odgaard (of Macromates).
I wanted to get their thoughts on Leopard, the iPhone and where Apple is headed as a company in light of Mac OS X delays and Apple's gadgets which would (or should) make great venues for their products. Thankfully, all the developers responded positively and offered some great insight on these issues. These guys have a unique perspective on the state of Apple and its products, and I'm thankful that they all took the time to lay it down as only a Mac OS X developer can.
First up (only because he was the first to reply) is Brent Simmons of NewsGator fame. Read on for thoughts from the man who brought RSS and blogging to the Mac masses with NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (which was acquired recently by Red Sweater Software).
Wow - you overwhelmingly asked for it, and here it is. I was blown away by the response to the 'TUAW edit' of my Guy Kawasaki interview, so the extended remix is ready for download. This one clocks in at over 55 minutes, so it should satisfy the fans of Guy in the crowd. It was an honor to speak with Mr. Kawasaki, and as you'll discover, we touched on so many more topics throughout the rest of the interview. We covered being a venture capitalist, Guy's surprising humility, what a car from Apple would be like, whether Guy bought a Wii, how he gets his blogging on and so much more. I was admittedly speechless at times around Guy, and I'm glad Laurie Duncan, who graciously came along to handle the recording aspects, was there to help me keep from stumbling. You'll hear her pitch some great questions to Guy a few times throughout the interview.
There is, however, one catch even with this extended cut: we wound up chatting with Guy for so long that the recording equipment we used ran out of juice just before we wrapped up. Don't worry - you have virtually all the juicy stuff we talked about, but I just wanted to give a heads up on the use of the canned conclusion.
At long last, my Macworld interview with Guy Kawasaki, for which you told us what to ask, is ready to go. Sitting down in the same room with The Guy™ during the week of Macworld 07 was quite the experience, and we had a good time chatting about the iPhone, where Apple is going as a company and more.
There's a catch with this podcast, however. Since many TUAW readers have expressed their interest in shorter podcasts, I chopped our interview down to just over 16 minutes. This means I have roughly an hour or so of chatting with Guy which I think is still interesting stuff. So, we decided to put a vote to you readers: after listening to what I put together here, do you want to hear the rest of the interview with Guy? We kept on chatting about the rest of the industry, why no one's buying software, evangelism and its place in business today... the guy really knows his stuff. If you're interested, leave a comment to let us know, and I'll publish a part 2.
I have to admit: it's virtually impossible to keep up with our own Peter Rojas of Engadget and Weblogs, Inc. I swear the guy must have ripped off Michael Keaton's idea from Multiplicity to get around the way he does. Hadley Stern at Apple Matters recently snagged some time with Peter to wax poetic about the iPhone, Apple TV, and how there simply ain't no web like the Mac web.
Peter brings an interesting perspective to Apple's recent announcements, pointing out that the iPhone and Apple TV aren't necessarily ground breaking products - but they *are* Apple's classic play of doing old, stagnant things in refreshing new ways. The interview is a good read, especially if you're looking for thoughts from someone whose job it is to report on similar products from tech companies across the entire industry.