ruby-on-rails
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24 Hours of Leopard: Ruby on Rails built-in
Feature: The most awesome, easy, groovy, Web 2.0 development platform ever is now built-in to OS X.How it works: Like buttah. Ruby, the language that powers RoR, has actually been built-in to OS X for a while (don't believe me? type "irb" in your terminal right now to access interactive Ruby), but Ruby on Rails has been mostly a pain to install around OS X. Packages need to be downloaded, settings need to be tweaked, and servers need to be config'd. No more. Ruby on Rails, free and installed on every new Mac. Developers, start your developing.Who will use it: Mostly people who develop applications for the web. But even though I personally don't code much, if you've ever done any coding, once you dive into Ruby and RoR, you'll probably have the same reaction that I do: wow this thing is neat! For a start in Ruby, check out the classic Why's Poignant Guide, and for a tutorial on RoR, hit up Curt Hibbs (he's from St. Louis, so you know he's a good guy). You can check out all our 24 Hours of Leopard posts here.
The line between web and "real" apps on the iPhone
Rogue Amoeba apparently wanted to jump in today and be the first devs to thank His Steveness for presenting developers with a complete and terrific iPhone SDK this afternoon. Or-- in their sarcastic case-- the lack thereof.Yes, as you can see in the resulting comments, Mac developers aren't real thrilled that so far, the only way to develop for the iPhone will be to brush up on their AJAX, Javascript, and Ruby on Rails. By saying at the keynote that developers would be able to run web-based applications on the iPhone, Jobs opened a rift that's been widening: OS X developers say that they don't want to create web apps-- they'd rather work on "real apps."Later on in the RA thread, a commenter named Joe gets to the point: web apps are quickly becoming real apps. Even Apple's release of Safari for Windows points to the idea that the ultimate way to be compatible across all systems is to put programs (Gmail, Google Reader, even Twitter) in the browser. Web developers must be thrilled-- they all just became official iPhone programmers today.There's a big drawback, however, and it's not just that Mac devs who want to write for iPhone will have to blow the dust off of their old Javascript books. It's that the trade-off for compatibility is usually quality. If Apple had released an SDK for iPhone today (or when they do-- just because we didn't see it today doesn't mean it won't come next year), Mac devs say they'd be able to make even better applications-- because that's what they do for "real" hardware.
Locomotive: Ruby on Rails on Mac
With his post nominating apps for the upcoming Apple Design Awards (which we mentioned here), Scott Stevenson brought my attention to Locomotive from Ryan Rauum. Locomotive is an environment for developing Ruby on Rails applications on your Mac. It allows you to "try Ruby on Rails without worrying about breaking your current system - it's entirely self-contained." You just download it and "jump right into Rails development the minute you finish downloading." This seems a lot like MAMP, but for Ruby on Rails. So if you've ever wanted to try out Ruby on Rails (which is apparently how all the cool people are developing for Web 2.0) without the annoyances of getting Ruby and Rails properly set up, this is a perfect opportunity.Locomotive is a free download from SourceForge, but donations are requested.[Via Theocacao]
Ruby + AppleScript = RubyOSA
Our friends at Download Squad have discovered a melding of two scripting worlds: AppleScript and Ruby. RubyOSA is the darling scriptenstein of these two languages, and while I don't know a lick of either, I'm willing to bet this could be a popular amongst the code ninjas in the audience. Ruby is a popular language (the 13th most popular, by their numbers), and it's the foundation of the Ruby on Rails framework which has given us such handy web 2.0 apps as Backpack, Odeo, Strongspace and many more.This is about the line, however, that I reach where I would need to start pretending I know more about any of these languages, so I'll let you check out RubyOSA for yourself to see if it gets your coding gears turning.
Ruby on Rails included with Leopard server
Most of the talk about Leopard server is taking place behind closed doors at WWDC this year, which makes sense since most consumers don't give a flying service about the server edition of OS X. Be that as it may, the Ruby on Rails guys (that is the hip, new Web 2.0 framework for building web apps) will be included, by default, with Leopard server.At the moment the included version is slight older, but there are many months with which Apple engineers can use to make sure the latest and greatest is included with the final product.
Iconfactory relaunching
The Iconfactory is one of my favorite Mac sites on the web. Their sense of humor and talent really makes it something special. It looks like the iconic look (get it?) of the Iconfactory is in for an update. At the moment the Iconfactory homepage features a small vignette (the first in a series of 6 it would seem. Possibly to be spread out over 6 days?) entitled 'Workers at Iconfactory on Rails with Ruby.'My best guess is that the entire site will be redone with Ruby on Rails (shocking, I know) and will be buzzword compliant. I can hardly wait, and I know I'll be checking in over the next few days to see how the story develops.Thanks, Mathew.
