KDBDallas

Mike Ash has turned his famous Friday Question and Answer series into a book, available in either iBooks or Kindle versions.

Mike is an amazingly smart guy, who knows more about programming then you could ever imagine.

If you work with Objective-C you owe it to yourself to check out his book and his site.

I was VERY disappointed that I was unable to make it to Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) this year (it was last week).

The sessions are always VERY informative, but it is also a excellent chance to not only meet with other Mac/iOS developers, but you have the chance to talk one on one with the very people who are writing the software and API’s (Application Programming Interface) that we write software for/with.

Apple does make the videos of the sessions (along with the slides) available to everyone that attends, and allows those that didn’t attend to purchase the videos.
Before last year, these videos usually took around 6 months to become available, however last year they had them released within a month.

This year Apple TOTALLY outdid themselves and have released the videos all today!
That is LESS than 1 week!
Not only did they release everything within a week, but Apple has made all of the videos and slides available to ALL registered developers (even the free developer accounts) FOR FREE!!! That is a $500 savings for those that couldn’t attend!

I only have 2 things to say…

First: Good bye to my Hard Drive space (The videos are available in HD and Standard formats this year)

and Secondly… Classy Apple! VERY VERY CLASSY!

Reminder: Even though the videos did not cost this year, they are still covered under an NDA that you agree to when signing up for a developer account. Don’t make them sorry that they were so giving.

Those are the words that come to mind when I see Apple’s latest revision of the Mac Mini.

It’s amazing how few pieces are needed.

Newsprint version 1.1 has been Approved and should start showing up in the App Store shortly!

As an extra treat we are offering Newsprint for 50% off for the next week!

So don’t delay and pick up a copy today.

For more information on Newsprint, please visit: NewsprintApp.com

To access Newsprint in the iTunes App Store, please visit: App Store

*On sale from April 21, 2010 until April 28, 2010.
*50% off is $2.99, based on the normal price of $4.99

On January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs pulled a 128K Mac out of its case in front of a crowd of reporters, turned it on, and let the computer introduce itself to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.

On January 25th, 1982, I was born.

It’s kind of sad that I am only 2 years older then the Mac.

I have been back from WWDC for a little over a week now, but haven’t had a chance to say anything about it or post any pictures. (I will post an explanation shortly)

WWDC (Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, in case you don’t know) was amazing!
This was the first time that I have been able to justify going (it’s not cheap) but man was it great.

I had the chance to meet so many amazing people that I talk to all the time on Twitter, but now I got the chance to meet them in real life.

Besides all the great developers and parties, it was a chance to learn about new and upcoming enhancements to the Mac operating system and the iPhone, as well as learn the best way to do certain things in code, coming from the people that write the language!

Apple also offers what the call labs during WWDC.
Labs allow you to take your code and sit down with an Apple Engineer that works on whatever particular topic you want, and they are there to serve. They will look over code and tell if you how you could have done it better, or they will help you debug an issue you are having, or anything else.

There is so much information flying at you all day that it can be overwhelming at times.

And when the sessions and labs end each day, WWDC does not end….
I have never seen more back to back, double/triple booked parties in my life.
Parties that go until all hours of the morning.

So with sessions and labs all day and parties all night, by midweek you are the walking dead but it doesn’t stop the fun. (and I didn’t even go out every night!)

Around the end of the week Apple throws a big party and this year had the band ‘Cake’ come and perform.

Overall it was a GREAT time and I can’t wait until next year, yet it is always nice to come back home to family as well.

We are talking about Nancy coming along next year and being able to tour San Francisco while I am in the sessions.

My WWDC 09 Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdbdallas/sets/72157620059169940/

I will be honest and upfront and say I don’t know if KillExchangeLocks will be revamped for 3.0.

I have pretty much totally moved away from the entire Jailbrake scene.
In fact out of all 6 devices I own only 1 is Jailbroken and I only keep that one on hand because I have 2 paid apps that I released back during firmware 1.x and before the AppStore.

I am very sorry if this news comes as a disappointment.

Since 2.0 and the AppStore came out Jailbraking has lost its appeal to me as I use AT&T so that’s not a concern for me and since the only reason I ever got into the Jailbrake scene in the first place was to be able to write my own apps and run other peoples apps on a great device that had so much more potential.

Now with the AppStore it seems like Jailbraking is done for one or more of the following: Carrier Unlock, Apps that Apple won’t approve, and Warez.
I don’t care about carrier unlocks, and I don’t approve of Warez (even if you say you use them as demo’s and buy the ones you like, because 99.9% are not doing that), and that just leaves apps that Apple won’t approve. This would be the only thing to keep me around but Apple lets most things in (it might take a couple rejections first though) that I am interested in.

Also, Apple has been getting really good at closing all the holes that made this app possible (as technically they are security holes).
So much so that the last version “oddly” wouldn’t work for everyone, including me.
I spent a ton of time searching for new ways back then and never found anything that I was happy with, and then I finally gave up and just stopped syncing my work email.

(It was a plus for my day job to have me accessible by email all the time and I decided it wasn’t worth the time and work I was putting into not having my personal device locked down)

Of course I understand that this isn’t the same for everyone.
All I can really say is I feel your pain (as if that helps anything), and that in a comment on the post way back about version 3.0 of KillExchangeLocks, Eirik mentioned that a new app has just shown up in Cydia called: “Exchange Unlock”.

With that in mind, let me get the “legalize” (if you will) out of the way.
“Exchange Unlock” is not my work, nor do I have anything to do with it in any way.
I have NO idea if it works, and I can not be held responsible if it blows up your device, literally or figuratively.

I do wish you the best of luck, and encourage you to check out my other work at: HashBang Industries (http://www.HashBangInd.com)

iDeskCal is currently a Featured 3rd Party Download on http://www.apple.com/downloads/, as well as in the Productivity section: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/

Even cooler is the fact that iDeskCal is the #8 Top Download on all of apple.com/downloads!

It is ranked up there with iTunes, Safari, and above Google Earth and Firefox on Apple’s site.

iDeskCal has been downloaded (as of this posting) 10,617 times since Tuesday May 19th (less than a week).

Now lets hope that all of those downloads purchase after the free trial!

(Click the images for a larger size where you can actually see it)

Update: YouTube took down the video claiming Copyright infrigment (even though it was a 3min clip). Search YouTube for “Simpsons Mapple” and I am sure you will find others.

In Mac OS X 10.5 Apple added a new set of API’s for adding an application to the users login items in Cocoa.

In looking for the way to use this new API, I stumbled upon Justin Williams’ blog carpeaqua.com where Justin was nice enough to put together a code example project showing just how to use this new API.

You can grab the sample project at his public code repository http://secondgear-public.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/SGLaunchAtLogin/

Thanks again to Justin for making this available.

Hopefully this page helps with his Google position for people searching for this info.

Read his full post at: http://log.carpeaqua.com/post/27727810/adding-an-application-to-login-items-in-mac-os-x