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MacTech 2010: Wil Shipley on Noogle Noggles, a new Delicious Library and the Mac App Store
Wil Shipley is probably the premiere Mac developer -- he co-founded The Omni Group, and now runs Delicious Monster, whose Delicious Library app pretty much embodies the best of this platform we love so much. Wil kindly sat down to talk with me at last week's MacTech 2010 conference here in Los Angeles, and we chatted about what's next for Delicious Library, what the response was like to his company's Noogle Noggles app, and what he believes is in store for Apple's upcoming Mac App Store. Shipley began by saying he was a little disappointed with the way Noogle Noggles worked out -- the idea was, of course, to beat Google Goggles to the App Store, and Google worked faster than he expected. "We thought we were going to beat them by two and a half months, but they beat us by a day." Still, the app has seen a solid chunk of downloads so far. "Last I checked it was 35,000 people, and I'm like that's a pretty good number of people for working on something for a month." Photo by Flickr user Inju, licensed under Creative Commons.
MacTech 2010: Daniel Jalkut on the Mac App Store and more
Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software (creator developer of MarsEdit, a TUAW favorite app for blogging) gave a talk at MacTech 2010 this morning about unit testing Mac apps, and while his developer talk was mostly over our heads, he did kindly allow us to corner him afterwards to chat about the state of Mac development and what he expects out of Apple's upcoming Mac App Store. Like most of the developers we've met up with at the conference this week, Jalkut is hesitant but optimistic about the way the Mac App Store will work. His most recent issue is with so-called "land grabbers" on the App Store -- some developers are already grabbing up names (since submissions just started recently), and Jalkut is worried that Apple regulations means he won't be able to call his upcoming iPhone app by the same name as his widely used Mac app. "Which, as you can imagine," he told me, "is kind of a challenge and a problem."
MacTech 2010: Andy Ihnatko on the coming of Lion
Commentator Andy Ihnatko took the stage at this week's MacTech conference here in Los Angeles today to give the conference keynote. In his talk, Ihnatko spoke about the upcoming new version of OS X, Lion, and specifically three different features of it. First, he talked about the Mac App Store, and what he thought would be the outcome of Apple bringing an App Store system to its desktop platform. Then, he spoke about what he called "unitasking," and how focusing on just one task at a time both changes the way computers work and the way we do, and finally he mentioned Apple's changing hardware, and how the new MacBook Air embodies Apple's ongoing curve in hardware creation and production. First up was Ihnatko's opinion on the Mac App Store so far, and he said that though he'd been "trying to get upset about it," he actually liked the idea. "The good news," he said, is that "Apple really doesn't care about" developers. Instead, it cares about users, and from users' point of view, the Mac App Store is actually a great idea. Though developers may have issues with it, Ihnatko said that anything that allows more than the around 200,000 (he estimated) Mac users out of 40 million to actually purchase and use apps will end up being a good thing.
MacTech Conference announced for November 2010
Did you miss the Mac IT track at this year's WWDC, with its lively cross-pollination of Mac managers and developers? Good news, then -- there's a new conference in town, and it aims to raise everyone's game when it comes to learning about the Mac. The MacTech Conference will be taking place for three days in LA on 11/3-5, giving Mac IT managers and developers a chance to get it together with leading presenters and instructors. For $899 (or less -- see below for an early bird deal) participants will get a lively two-track event for IT folk and developers, including all meals, sessions and special activities like a behind-the-scenes visit to Griffith Observatory. "The whole idea of the MacTech Conference is to allow members of the Apple community to meet and exchange ideas," said Edward Marczak, the Executive Editor of MacTech and the chair of the conference program. "This will be spurred on by presentations from some of the best and well-known experts in the community." TUAW is happy to be a media sponsor of the conference, and we're looking forward to meeting some of you there. That special early-bird registration option gives you $200 off that $899 registration cost, if you sign up before July 22 -- just click here to register.
