The Apple Design Awards for 2006 are open for Mac Developers to submit their shipping apps. This is another good motivator for us who are developing Mac apps but are a bit perfectionist to actually release our apps. Beta apps and non-shipping apps are not eligible. A new requirement this year is that the app has to be Universal.

Only bummer: You don’t get anything if you are a runner up. Well, you would get to use the logo, so that is a big thing that lends credibility to your app. Plus you get a nice trophy for your desk. But it’d be nice if the runner up would at least get a Mac mini. Developers can always use another machine, either to do testing on or to distribute builds to.

Apple released the 17″ MacBook Pro today which was a big surprise to me. Then again, Apple was at NAB so that is a good time for them to announce new hardware.

I’ve currently got the 17″ 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4. So let me do a quick comparison (this is the current 17″ MBP vs the 17″ PBG4 when I bought mine 2 years ago):

Display: 1680×1050 vs 1400×900 – that is a HUGE difference – that’s effectively the same screen size as the 20″ iMac

Processor: 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo vs 1.33Ghz G4 – I’m starting to feel really sloooow now

Standard RAM: 1GB vs 512MB – double the capacity (and it is DDR667 vs DDR333) and twice as fast (though you can still only go up to 2GB)

Trackpad: Scrolling vs just regular (though you can get SideTrack)

USB ports: 3 vs 2 – I don’t know if this is really that useful. I think I’d rather have either an external SATA connector or another Firewire port.

Hard drive: 120GB 5400 rpm vs 100GB 4200RPM – bigger and faster

BTO Hard drive upgrade: 100GB 7200 RPM vs 80GB 5400 RPM – 7200RPM is the fastest you can get – though you give up capacity both times

Optical drive: 2x single-layer DVD-R vs 8x single/2.4x dual

What’s missing? Internal modem (which is where the port space for the 3rd USB came from)

What’s completely new? Built in iSight, remote control, and the MagSafe power connector.

What’s just different? The security connector is on the right hand side close to you vs on the left hand and farthest away from you. Not sure if I like that design.

Price: $2799 vs $2999

There’s no contest. Apple’s premiere laptop has gotten WAY better in 2 years. This is a great deal if you’re looking for the ultimate in mobile computing. (p.s. If you live in the US and are a developer, I would suggest getting ADC Select because you can get a good deal on the MacBook Pros with the hardware discount.)

My only decision now is: Should I buy the 17″ MBP with the 7200RPM HD upgrade or should I buy either the 17″ or 20″ iMac and save the difference towards my “The Life” fund?

Today I opened up my full-text RSS feed of Daring Fireball. I found out that John Gruber has quit his day job at Joyent and is now living “The Life”. (A term he invented and popularized which is now nicely fitting.)

I love reading his stuff and I’m eagerly awaiting my DF t-shirt (the classic style) in the mail. Membership has its privileges. Its also nice to know that you’re supporting someone who is starting to live their dream doing what they love to do.

It is interesting that he concluded that the only way to make a full-time income is to actually do it full-time. The kind of writing that he does is very in-depth and takes a lot more time than the average blog. I imagine he actually self-edits his work too. But I think he will succeed and his gamble will pay off. The reason being that with more frequent articles will come increased traffic and more passionate Mac enthusiasts who will want to have the full-text articles in their NetNewsWire and so will buy memberships.

I hope he has saved up a good amount of money (6+ months of expenses) and has some sort of individual health care plan. I think those two things sadly are what hold a lot of people back from going full time with their dreams. I’m working on those things myself so I too can live “The Life” full time.

In the late 90s, like a lot of people, I was really into investing. I mean it was sort of effortless back then. You could almost throw darts and come out with at least a 20% return. Do some actual research and you could get 70% return. Things are more normal nowadays. One of the good things I picked up then was an interest in analyzing companies.

Today I listened to the Apple earnings call for Q2 2006. In non-financial terms, that means January – March 2006. It can be a bit tedious to listen for an hour. It’s not exactly Fatboy Slim. But if you listen carefully, you can find some really interesting tidbits:

In the Apple Store, 50% are New to Mac. I’m not sure how they calculate this, but this seems to indicate a high percentage of switchers.

Apple is aware that Adobe CS2 not being Universal is holding back some Intel Mac sales. Though consumers are probably fine running Photoshop in Rosetta, Graphics Pros need a Universal Adobe Creative Suite, so Apple is working closely with them. That is reassuring.

Customer demand + appealing to Switchers drove Boot Camp and they are looking for customer feedback on the beta. It will be included in Leopard, but they are keeping mum on virtualization. Though it seemed like if they got enough requests for it, they would seriously consider putting it in Leopard.

Related to this, Apple has no plan nor any desire to sell or support Windows.

1500 Mac Apps are already Universal. And 50% of the Top 500 Mac Apps (not sure how that is determined) will be Universal by the end of April.

They sold 1.1 million Macs in a time of huge transition where I suspect they suffered from confusion from non-Early Adopters with the Intel switch. Apparently Intel iMacs sold quite well. Apple still considers the Mac mini to be a great value and the cheapest way to get into the iLife suite. Lots of questions from Financial Analysts about the iBook, but the execs don’t talk about unannounced products.

And of course, they are continuing to dominate the digital music market, selling 8.5 million iPods! iTunes Music Store continuing to do well too.

Looks like a great time to be an Apple enthusiast, an Apple developer, an Apple investor, or even a Switcher. :)

I used to really like to sleep. I’d get 8 hours on average. I’d be completely rested and wide awake all the time. But I always felt like I didn’t push myself enough. Like I was missing out.

The past few weeks (probably more) I’ve pushed myself to the edge. Like they say in Firefly, I’ve “held myself over the volcano’s edge.” And I’ve found that my bare minimum for sleep is 5 hours. That’s my limit for # of hours awake per day: 19. It’s not sustainable though because I get drowsy during the day.

6 hours of sleep is way better and my current average. 7 is a complete recharge now. So I guess I’ve sort of reset my sleep clock. But it has been worth it. Those extra 2 hours have been critical in the progress I’ve made with WebnoteHappy.

So how about everyone else? How much sleep do you get?

Boot Camp makes it more compelling to buy a Mac nowadays, I think. I talked with a friend on Sunday whose Windows laptop is dying. Now he is thinking about adding a desktop Mac to go along with it, because of Boot Camp. He’ll run Windows and also OS X. I think he’s wanted to go with Mac for a while, but needed to use Windows for some things. What’s interesting is that he’s not particularly geeky. Maybe the iPod Halo Effect will really start kicking in now – he does have a video iPod.

I’m looking at better ways to do Intel testing. I do have great beta testers, but I think there’s nothing like eating your own dog food. And nowadays you have to eat it on your PowerPC plate and your Intel plate. Or is it in Intel bowl and PowerPC bowl?

In any case, I’m looking to buy an Intel iMac. I was justifying this purchase to my wife by telling her about the Intel testing I needed to do. Then I told her about Boot Camp. She did a double take and then said “Oh so the Mac that you were going to get to do Intel testing now does Windows too? Maybe you can wait another month and it’ll do something else.” She’s great and probably her intuition is right. Leopard is coming and I am betting it has some more tricks up its sleeve, like virtualization.

Well I finished my federal taxes and I realized I was getting a nice refund. Plus I had recently read today the brilliant article “Windows is the New Classic“. So I did what a good Mac enthusiast would do and finally bought a Daring Fireball membership!

Now I’ve got access to the Full Article and Linked List RSS feeds. Plus a Large t-shirt is on its way. Yes, reality set in and even though I have started slowly working out again, I don’t think I’ll really be able to fit in a Medium for quite a while.

But I think the best part is the good feeling I get from supporting a fellow aspiring Mac Indie.

Bonus: Check out the Flickr daringfireball tag.

No, Boot Camp is not the latest Ajax-enabled webapp from 37signals. (That’s Basecamp.) Boot Camp is Apple’s really late April Fool’s Joke.

No, that’s not it either. Boot Camp is Apple’s 30th Anniversary surprise! It is an official Apple-supported way (currently in beta) to dual-boot an Intel Mac in both OS X and Windows XP. That is a huge deal! My head is swimming.

Update: There is a FAQ on Boot Camp. [via Backup Brain]

Update: Apple has a “tell a (Windows-using) friend” page that tells them about Boot Camp and that “Macs do Windows, too”. Interesting! Now if only they’d offer to trade in your Windows box for an Intel Mac. [via TUAW]

I’m doing something I’ve never done before, which always makes for a good learning experience, but sometimes can seem quite hard. I’m writing licensing code and also implementing the process around it. I’ve never actually charged for any software before in my life.

And neither have any of the companies I’ve worked for! Well, that’s not entirely true. They certainly charged money, but it was all enforced via contracts, not via a dialog that asked you to enter your username and serial number. Or it was an internal app and they didn’t have to worry about such things at all.

I have gotten help from friends, they’ve been a big help. But still there is so much to do. Let me count the ways… er I mean steps…

1. Set up a business banking account
2. Set up with a payment processor
3. Create a web store
4. Create a license generator
5. Send out email receipts
6. Validate licenses in your app
7. Enforce some sort of trial or usage limitation
8. Optional: Remind the user (aka a “Nag screen”) – I’m leaning away from this right now
9. Optional: Create an in-app store
10. If your payment processor doesn’t handle sales tax: Get a sales tax license for your state and charge sales tax in your stores for your state

So quite a bit of work which I bet most people haven’t done. But done it must be. (Feeling a little Yoda-esque tonight.) As for me, I’m about halfway done with the non-optional steps and fortunately my payment processor Kagi handles all the sales tax issues.

[Luis:] As promised, here is part 2 of Brian Cooke’s take on The Life.

…

[Brian:]

Get more Support

I had only been working on rooVid for a few days when I came across Luis’ WebnoteHappy Lite public beta. I was the perfect customer for WebnoteHappy and I realized that quickly. After playing with the beta for an hour or two I had some bugs to report, some ideas and also wanted to let the developer know that I appreciated the app. So I sent Luis a note and through this a friendship was formed. I didn’t actively plan on forming this friendship, it just happened.

Lesson #4: Befriend or somehow gain access to a fellow Mac dev, their brains are good for picking. Luis has been great about answering whatever questions I run into (payment systems, applescript…) as well as providing excellent criticism on some UI prototypes.

Get to Work but Keep Learning
rooVid Lite isn’t all too complex, but I had to continue to learn a lot. Here’s some advice on working on a project while continuing to learn:

• Use source control. Subversion is the new cvs.
• Check-in often. I try to check-in after each session with a comment describing what I’ve accomplished.
• Delving into something new? Create a new project and play with whatever it is new, in there. This prevents from creating a mess of your real work. An example would be adding AppleScript support to your app.
• If you don’t want to create another project, at least create a branch and make a mess in there.
• Make sure the class you’re about to write doesn’t already exist. A lot of what you’ll need is already provided for you by Apple. Search through developer.apple.com first.
• Do your homework. The web is full of information, I have a cocoa rollyo I use that searches a handful of sites at once. If that fails, I head to google.
• If you fail at your homework, shelf the problem and come back later. Often times you’ll run into a solution along the way.
• If you fail to find a solution along the way, ask. Find the appropriate mailing list and clearly explain your problem and the work you’ve done trying to solve it. So far I’m one for one on asking a question to a mailing list and getting the answer I needed.

Keep Chugging
I procrastinate. I rarely finish the things I start. Here are some motivational tips that helped me finish rooVid Lite (nothing here is new):

• Need your product. If you need it, it’s a lot easier to kick yourself into gear and work through those hard times.
• Break large tasks into smaller tasks and monitor your progress. Every time I finished a tiny task I entered a note in iCal for that day. I find it encouraging to look back through the week and see all that I had done. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but now that the shareware version of rooVid looms over my head I imagine I’ll get back into this.
• Can’t write code? Think. One of my biggest problems is that when I can’t bring myself to work on rooVid I end up surfing the web or reading news I don’t really care about. Instead, try to take some of that time and put it towards thinking, write something down, draw your UI on paper again. Do something that tricks you into thinking you’ve accomplished something.

Have Fun
If this is what you’re supposed to be doing with your time, you’ll be enjoying it, a lot. Well, at least most of the time.

…

[Luis:] Also, if you missed it, here is Brian Cooke’s Take on the Life – Part 1. I’ll be on the lookout to find other Mac Indies to share their unique perspectives in the future.