Volume Number: 18 (2002)
Issue Number: 101
Column Tag: Editor's Desk

Editor's Desk

by Dave Mark

It's not often that I get to write, but I did want to touch base with you, our readers, this month on a couple of notable events here at MacTech Magazine.

First, as you will see later in this issue, we're winding down the Programmer's Challenge. As the Challenge is now 10 years old, Bob wants to spend more time with his family. We wish Bob all the best, and give him a hearty "thank you" for all the efforts he's made in helping us learn to program more efficiently.

We are considering new kinds of puzzles and contents, what's doable, and what's not. If you have ideas or feedback on what you'd like to see, drop us a line.

As you probably already heard, and see below, we welcome back Dave Mark with open arms. Dave is coming back not only with the "Getting Started" column, but as our new Editor-in-Chief.

We're thrilled to have Dave on board again. We'll continue to cover the kinds of things you want, from REALbasic to CodeWarrior, from Scripting to Network Administration topics. And, we'll look to have even more fun along the way. We're looking for feedback from you all!

Neil Ticktin, Publisher

Ten years ago, before the net was big, before Rhapsody, before Copland, even before Greg Galanos and company begat CodeWarrior, I had a chance encounter with my good friend (and your faithful publisher) Neil Ticktin. If memory serves, Neil was at MacWorld having just put the finishing touches on his deal to purchase a then struggling magazine, known as MacTutor, soon to become MacTech. Neil was a blizzard of activity, signing this and doing that, and I got sucked into the maelstrom.

For those young pups in the crowd, I used to be a regular in MacTech. Wrote a column called Getting Started, and another called "From the Factory Floor".

Wrote a bunch of books as well. If you don't know me, maybe you've stumbled across a well-worn copy of "Learn C on the Macintosh" or one of the "The Macintosh Programming Primer" series.

Since my days with MacTech, I've done a lot of adventuring. I hooked up with Metrowerks, had a lot of fun there, met some awesome people. Metrowerks up and sold themselves to Motorola, time to go, started up another startup with some friends (buy me a drink at the next MacWorld or WWDC and I'll tell you all about that roller-coaster ride!)

Somewhere about a year ago, the events started unfolding that brought me back here.

Way back when, I'd played with all the Rhapsody betas, run the early Mac ports of Project Builder and Interface Builder, messed around with Objective-C. But, I don't know, none of it really rang true for me.

Then, about a year ago, a friend of mine gave me his cube, just so I could play with the Mac OS X beta. I was skeptical. And then Apple shipped the Titanium PowerBooks. And I fell in love all over again.

So I'm out in California visiting my buddy Neil, and he plants the seed. "Dave". "Dave". "Come back, Dave". "Write more books". "Start writing your Getting Started column again". "I'll even make you Editor-in-Chief, Dave". LOL. Well, maybe it wasn't quite like that. But close. : )

So here I am. Back in the fold. Enjoying the heck out of my Mac. Doing a tremendous amount of learning. There is SO much cool stuff to play with now. Cool NEW stuff. Like Cocoa, Objective-C, and Objective-C++. Amazing Java and REALbasic apps that feel totally natural running under X. My old friends AppleScript and QuickTime are still here and incredibly well integrated into this new environment.

On the hardware side, Apple has really hit their stride. The digital hub strategy makes sense to me. There's a gorgeous, focused lineup of machines, each outdoing its predecessor. USB and FireWire are also well integrated and ubiquitous enough in the consumer electronics world to make the digital hub a realistic strategy. And the iPod? The iPod is like the icing on the cake.

Bottom line, there's a lot of cool stuff happening and I am really having a blast playing with all these cool toys and learning to program my Mac all over again.

As you can see if you turn the page a bit, I've started my monthly Getting Started column once again. But this time around, my involvement with MacTech is going to be quite a bit deeper. Part of my role as Editor-in-Chief is to reshape the magazine, to find ways to make MacTech Magazine more useful to you.

To that end, we've created an email address that goes right to my doorstep: feedback@mactech.com

Please take a minute or two to drop me a line. Let me know what you like and dislike about the magazine. Want more OS X-centric content? More on Carbon? How about topics like PHP and mySQL? Though I can't promise to reply to every email, I will promise to read every one of them.

All that said, it is great to be back in the fold. I am really looking forward to working with you all again.

From the Editor's chair...