Even as a newcomer to Mac programming, with the help of these resources I was able to learn enough about Objective-C and Cocoa to write a useful and functional app for the Mac without too much pain and heartache. Your mileage may vary, but this list should get you down the road a bit.

Introductory Tutorials

O’Reilly’s Programming With Cocoa Tutorials
A series of tutorials helpful for introducing the basics of Cocoa programming - Xcode, Interface Builder, how an app actually goes together. Start at the bottom and work your way up as needed. I abandoned them at about the 11th tutorial, but they were very helpful up until that point.

Cocoa Dev Central
Compiled by Scott Stevenson, Cocoa Dev Central has a nice mix of very basic and more advanced tutorials, and links to other resources.

Reference Websites

Cocoa Reference Library
Apple’s own documentation on Cocoa’s various frameworks and classes. Many of the listings can be annoyingly brief, but they generally give a good overview of what methods are available to what classes.

CocoaDev
This wiki run by Steven Frank was by far the most useful resource I found. Some of the discussions were a bit intimidating for a beginner, but the example code written by the site’s users on many of the topics went a long way towards explaining how classes and methods could be put to use. When trying to figure out a coding problem, I would often have to piece together info from several different websites, and it was rare that the search function at CocoaDev wouldn’t point me towards at least some of the information I needed to arrive at a solution.

Books

Programming In Objective-C
This book by Stephen Kochan was a great intro to the Objective-C language. It starts you off writing very simple programs and compiling them in the Terminal, so you don’t even have to worry about figuring out Xcode and Interface Builder right off the bat. Probably not a great book if you have a decent amount of programming experience already - it spends quite a bit of time on some basic programming concepts like loops and variables and such. But if this is your first programming language - or you’re a bit rusty - it’s a good place to start.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
I haven’t actually read this book yet (the third edition wasn’t out yet, and I decided to wait for it rather than purchase the second edition), but from what I understand, any list of Cocoa resources would be remiss not to mention it. Aaron Hillegass’ book is widely considered to be the bible of Mac OS X programming.

So that’s my list. If you know of any great Mac OS X programming resources that I missed, leave a comment to let others know about them.

DomainBrain is a handy tool for Mac OS X that helps webmasters and web designers keep track of server and login information for websites they maintain. I work on quite a few websites for myself and others, and keeping track of URLs, usernames and passwords, and database configuration info for those sites has always been a bit of a pain. DomainBrain is designed to keep all that info in one place with a simple, straightforward interface.

DomainBrain is free for use with four domains or fewer. To keep track of info for more than four domains, you can purchase a license for $14. Visit the DomainBrain homepage to get more info and to download and try DomainBrain. Take it for a spin and let me know what you think.

Earlier today, someone wrote to ask about a desktop picture that I had posted on a previous incarnation of One-Button Mouse. When I redesigned the site, I brought over my old icon sets, but didn’t keep any of my old desktops online.

The desktop she was asking about - “Bison II: Alien Abduction” - had been one of my favorites, so I’ve updated it and reposted it. It’s now available for download in widescreen and fullscreen formats.

Images are for use on your personal desktop only.

Download: Widescreen | Fullscreen

wishes he could view source in iSafari.

Obviously, this was a hole in the market that needed filling, and it sounded like it would make for a fun, relatively simple project. So with some technical advice and code tweakage from Chief Typist Craig Hockenberry, I created a web app called iSource - give it a URL and it will show you the source code for that URL right there in your browser.

Of course, things move fast on the Internet, and so by Friday afternoon iSource’s functionality had been surpassed by ViewS, a similar app created by Shaun Inman that was geared towards improving upon certain areas of iSource.

The original version of iSource only accepted URLs through the form field on the page. ViewS improved on this by allowing URLs to be submitted through query strings, which enables you to create a bookmarklet for the site.

Bookmarklets make a web app like this even more useful, allowing you to avoid a lot of unnecessary typing on your iPhone by letting you jump from any web page straight to its rendered source code. So Friday evening I reworked iSource to allow query strings, and bookmarklets.

Here’s the JavaScript code for the iSource bookmarklet:

javascript:location='http://onebuttonmouse.com/tools/isource/?url='+escape(location)

If you’re not on an iPhone at the moment, you could drag the following link into your bookmarks bar: iSource Bookmarklet. Then you should be able to sync it to your iPhone.

If you want to get the bookmarklet directly on your iPhone, the best way is probably to bookmark this link, then edit the bookmark to add javascript:location=' before the url and '+escape(location) after it (hat tip to Shaun for this method of saving the bookmarklet).

While I was at it, I implemented some of the other improvements Shaun mentioned, such as adopting the browser’s user agent to ensure that you’re viewing the same source code that was used to render the page in the browser. I have a few other improvements in mind for iSource, so I’ll be working on them as time allows.

[Update (11/18/07): iSource now plays nicely with various character encodings.]

Over the weekend I moved onebuttonmouse.com from Dreamhost to Media Temple. Dreamhost was great for the first few years I used them - excellent price, responsive customer service, and any problems were few and far between. Unfortunately, over the past couple of years, that changed. Two of my sites went down three separate times earlier this month, sometimes taking my email service along with them, and that was the last straw.

So over the weekend I packed up the code, dumped the data, and carted everything on over to Media Temple. It’s been weird getting used to how another webhost runs things, but their support people have been very helpful, and they even have 24-hour phone support.

I should also mention an extremely useful article by David Seah, in which he detailed his own move over to Media Temple. Reading over his process really helped me organize my thoughts on how to go about the move, and his post also gave a bit of concrete technical info that saved me a lot of time in one instance - namely his command-line database dump, which I used to get the data out of my Mint database after DNS server propagation left me without easy access to Dreamhost’s web-based mySQL admin tool.

I still have a few other sites to switch over, but I’m not too worried now that this one is out of the way. In the meantime, let me know if you see any problems with the site.

Here’s a photo I took last month while driving around Guilford County, NC - an old barn outside of Summerfield. This is a great example of what some post-processing such as level and saturation adjustments can do for a photo. I wasn’t very pleased with how this looked straight out of the camera, but after some relatively minor global tweaks, it’s now one of my favorite recent photos.

I’ve also recently finished adding to my Southwest Vacation photoset on Flickr. A Route 66 mural, a field of petrified wood, and a relic of roadtrips from an earlier era close out the set.

No, the question I’m referring to is this: “You’re stranded on a deserted island - which 20 movies would you want to have with you?”

I did my best to put together my picks, but I must admit that I’m not fully satisfied with my list. There are many movies - both classics and more recent releases - that I simply haven’t gotten around to seeing yet. I’m sure my list suffers because of that. Let’s just call this my first pass at such a list. If anyone is really offended by any of my picks, you’re welcome to buy me a Netflix subscription for Christmas.

Coincidentally, a few friends of mine - Gedeon Maheux, Corey Marion, and David Miller - have also been stranded on their own deserted islands, and they’ve compiled their own top 20 lists. I’ve marked entries of mine that were also picked by one of them.

So without further ado, and presented in very rough (but not exact) descending order, the 20 movies I’d take to a deserted island:

The Princess Bride
Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles. What more could you ask for? (Also picked by Ged and Corey)

The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Hours upon hours of epic, Middle-Earth fun. The entire trilogy was very well written and directed, the acting is great, the effects are amazing, the music inspiring. (Also picked by Ged and Corey)

The original Star Wars trilogy
Luke Skywalker’s journey from whiny farm boy to whiny Jedi master. (Also picked by Ged, Corey and David)

Raiders of the Lost Ark
The adventure movie by which all adventure movies must be measured. (Also picked by Ged)

Die Hard
The action movie by which all other action movies must be measured. Also doubles as a good Christmas-movie-that-isn’t-really-a-Christmas-movie. (Also picked by Corey)

Moulin Rouge
When I saw this Baz Luhrmann film in the theater I was blown away by every aspect of it - the visual style, the adaptations of modern-day pop songs, the fact that McGregor and Kidman were doing all the singing. I generally don’t care for musicals at all, but Moulin Rouge is in a class by itself.

The Matrix
Just the first one. There are some good parts in the second one, but the third really dropped the ball, which sort of ruins the second one since they are dependent upon each other. Luckily the first can stand on its own. (Also picked by Ged and Corey)

Pirates of the Caribbean
It was just a lot of fun. What can I say. But then, my expectations were pretty low, considering that the film is based on a theme park ride. Of course, it is one of my favorite theme park rides…

Dr. Strangelove
Megatons of paranoid, Cold War goodness.

Alien
Creepy and claustrophobic.

The Shawshank Redemption
By far the best screen adaptation of a Stephen King story, and a great film in its own right. (Also picked by Ged)

Shaun of the Dead
Probably the funniest zombie movie ever made. (Also picked by Ged)

Saving Private Ryan
As close as I ever want to get to actual war. Spielberg does an amazing job of drawing you into the action, particularly in the opening scenes on Omaha Beach. (Also picked by Ged)

Ronin
Some of the best car chases ever, plus DeNiro ambushes someone with a cup of coffee.

Some Like it Hot
“Well, nobody’s perfect!” (Also picked by David)

Happenstance (Le Battement d’ailes du papillon)
A humorous and intricate look at how random accidents bring two people together. It’s great fun to see how some seemingly insignificant event at some point in the film affects things later on.

Better Off Dead
A staple of my cable-tv-fueled youth.

Trainspotting
Hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

The Fifth Element
I’ve only seen this one time, in the theater, but I remember being amazed by the visuals and the story line. I’ve put it on my “to rent” list, so we’ll see if it’s still as incredible as I remember.

A Christmas Story
Perfectly captures the joy and the anxiety of the Christmas season. (Also picked by David)

:::

There are a few glaring omissions on my list. One in particular is that there are no Pixar movies listed, despite the fact that I love their films. I chalk this up to having a 5 year old and a 3 year old who keep Pixar films in a steady rotation through our DVD player. Give me about 10 years or so and I’m sure they’ll be back on the list. In the meantime, feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments.

Update: Travis begins his list.

John Gruber suggests a possible reason for the sudden glut of image editors: CoreImage, Mac OS X’s image processing framework lowers the technical barriers to producing this type of application.

That’s probably a significant factor, but these new apps also represent part of a larger trend.

Anyone who has used Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator for any length of time can probably tell you the exact number of RPMs on the spinning beachball cursor. Though they’re industry-standard apps, they often are slow, dodgy, and filled with features that often go unused. And that’s part of the allure of apps like Acorn.

If other recent software releases are any indication, there’s a definite shift away from feature bloat and huge, sprawling apps, and towards conciseness and simplicity. Freeverse’s Lineform offers a simplified alternative to Illustrator. WriteRoom from HogBay Software is a reaction to toolbar-filled text editors such as Microsoft Word. Of course, in the realm of web-based apps we have 37Signals who have built a brand around the idea of simplified, no-nonsense apps.

The iPod is a great example of this trend in hardware form. Wonderfully sparse, yet intuitive controls, plus a pared down feature set remove the obstacles between the listener and the music. It’s all about the experience.

Simplicity and a limited scope can encourage focus, productivity, and an enjoyment of the task at hand. There’s a market for that.

After taking up digital photography five years ago, iPhoto replaced the binders and boxes. Even more recently, this past spring I replaced my Canon Powershot S50 with a Nikon D80 digital SLR, and replaced iPhoto with Aperture.

Aperture is a great tool for organizing and retouching photos. Apple has done a nice job of making the interface very intuitive, however there are a few simple-but-useful tricks that may not be immediately obvious. Here are a couple that I’ve found.

Go Wide

After launching Aperture, hitting “H” on your keyboard brings up the Adjustments HUD palette. This palette has sliders for adjusting exposure, saturation, and more.

The default size of the Adjustments palette is pretty narrow though, which makes it difficult to tweak the sliders by very small increments. To make your life easier, and give yourself better control over your adjustments, grab the lower right corner of the palette and make it wider.

Doing this gives you more space to work with on the sliders, and allows small movements to translate into small, careful adjustments.

(Yes, you could use the numerical widgets next to the sliders for even more precise control, but I’ve found that they tend to be kind of balky, at least on my older, low-RAM, lame-vid-card G5. Your mileage may vary.)

Leveling the Playing Field

Aperture suffers from the unfortunate absence of a curves adjustment. It does have a levels adjustment, but its default configuration is lacking in power, having only sliders for highlight, shadow, and midtones.

To make the levels adjustment earn its keep, click on the “Show Quarter-Tone Controls” button in the top right corner of the levels adjustment area. This adds two more sliders to your levels adjustment.

By nudging those quarter-tone controls in towards the center slightly, you can increase the contrast of your midtones without losing detail in your highlight and shadow areas, much like using an S-shaped curve in Photoshop’s Curves palette.

RAW vs. JPEG

This last tip isn’t Aperture-specific, but I’m throwing it in anyway: Consider taking advantage of RAW. Apps like Aperture and Lightroom are designed specifically to work with RAW images, and you’re missing out on a lot of flexibility if you’re still shooting JPEGs. RAW gives you 12 or more bits per channel to work with, whereas JPEGs only have 8 bits per channel. Greater bitdepths equal a larger amount of usable data, which equates to more potential detail in your images.

Here’s a practical example. The photo on the left is the master RAW image. The sky around the horse’s head looks totally blown out - the color reads as pure white in Aperture. If this was a JPEG, there wouldn’t be too much you could do with this. Your horse would be stuck riding off into an unnaturally-white sunset.

However, since it’s a RAW image, there is actually recoverable detail in there. Pulling the exposure slider down darkens the exposure and brings out that detail. As you can see in the image on the right, there were actually clouds in that blown out area.

RAW does require a bit more work to get a final image. When you shoot JPEGs, the camera is essentially doing post-processing for you, bumping up sharpness and saturation. RAW images give you data straight from the camera with no post-processing. So they will need a bit more tweaking on your part, but they’ll give you a lot more to work with. If you enjoy processing and tweaking your images to perfection, it’s definitely worth it to give RAW a try.

Aperture is a great digital darkroom. It has some rough edges, but is still very powerful, fun to explore, and it definitely beats a three-ring binder and a dark basement full of smelly chemicals.