The Apple Developer Connection website has added a new section that provides, among other useful tips, a collection of Business & Marketing Frequently Asked Questions, information about specific markets (like education, science & technology...).
I think it's worth a read if you are a Mac developer.
In languages like Java and actionscript, the "runtime" manages memory, using what is called a garbage collector, that reclaims the memory occupied by an object once it determines that object is no longer accessible. In Objective-C, the programmer must release the resources that he or she has previously allocated to be used by the program.
Memory management is not difficult by itself, because the developer must follow only a few rules, but it is the source of many memory leaks, specially when the program behaves in an unexpected way.
So, what happens when we need to throw exceptions?. How can we be sure that we are not producing memory leaks?. Chris Hanson writes about it in Cocoa memory management & exceptions
In the last weeks there have been some interesting posts about Cocoa. In Theobroma Cacao, Scott Stevenson has posted two articles about key-value coding:
In Mac Geekery, codepoet has posted two tutorials about Core Data:
Informit published an article a few days ago about memory management in Cocoa, called A Java Programmer's Introduction to Objective-C: Memory Management.
The article focuses on the differences between Java and Cocoa regarding memory management, and it can be useful as an introduction to the most important, powerful and complex aspect of Objective-C, which is the lack of a garbage collector.
A Java Programmer's Introduction to Objective-C: Memory Management
Which is just an Apple-branded Safari Bookshelf, but that promises to be focused on Mac related titles.
I am still not sure if I like the idea of buying things that in fact I am just renting instead of buying, but...
Smart crash reports is an enhancement to Apple's CrashReporter.
It allows any Cocoa developer to register its application so if it crashes, the crash log is sent to the developer and to Apple.
It is free for the users and developers, so if you are a Mac user, install it and help developers fix their bugs and make their apps better!
AquaticPrime is an opensource framework that allows developers to implement secure registration methods in shareware applications, using RSA encryption.
There are three implementations ( Cocoa, Carbon and PHP ).
Support for localization in Cocoa is really good. But keeping track of the changes in an application when you are rolling frequent releases can be a nightmare.
Localization suite is a powerfull application that helps developers create and maintain localizations of our products.
And best of all, its free.
NSSlider is one of the subclasses of NSControl. It's one of the last classes in the UI controls inheritance chain, with other classes like NSButton, or NSTextField. Those are the three controls that we are going to use in this example.
It implements methods to get and set its value, its minimun and maximum value, and it can execute an action continously while changing its value, or it can execute that action when the user releases the mouse. It can have markers, and its value can be changed continously or only between the markers.
There are two things we like here at design-nation: dices, and Mac OSX applications. So, we have developed a little application ( you guessed it, a dice ) just to show how is the development process under Mac OSX. This tutorial will cover all the development process, using XCode 2.1 and writing Objective-C code.
As every possible tutorial about XCode in the world, this one is obscured by the tutorial that you can find at the Apple Developer Connection. Go read it!
But first, take a look at the final result:
Well, today it's the "Oh, my" day. The hell has frozen and Apple has announced that will made the switch to Intel.
I'm still a bit shocked, and I still don't have a clear opinion about the switch, but, XCode 2.1 is available for download for all ADC members. And Apple has also published an Introduction to Universal Binary Programming Guidelines.
Update: Some more info about XCode 2.1
Update: Release notes