Newton’s Lore

Apple has released a third iPhone SDK. Probably because the previous one had just expired after only some 11 days.

From the mac-dev-jobs list on 27th March:

Looking for an experienced OSX developer to build a native OSX versionof the ZoomFoot application (www.zoomfoot.com). ZoomFoot is a sharedphotograph screen saver and the project is sponsored by a verysuccessful Internet entrepreneur. We’re looking for more than simply acontract developer; we’re looking for a new team member to bringeverything we do in the years to come to world of Apple. This is anopportunity to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure, not just writea new OSX client. 

Mail zoomfootguy a t gmail.com if you’re interested

If you want to apply for an Apple University Consortium WWDC scholarship, today is the last day.

InstallEase from LANrev is now available for free, it can be used to create installers based on before/after snapshots and create uninstaller packages. You can also output to .DMG, .PKG or Iceberg project formats.

From Apple’s java mailing list: 

 

We are looking for a talented, passionate and motivated engineer to join the Java team.  Java expertise, of course, is important, but C and Objective-C (Cocoa) are also essential since you will be working on the frameworks underneath AWT and Swing.  If you or anyone you know is interested, please do apply.  This is an opportunity to have a serious impact on the Mac OS X Java implementation, and start a career at Apple.You can find out more by clicking this link, or by searching apple.com/jobs for Requisition ID 3489430. 

 

Apple’s Security Update 2008-002 seems to break ssh based utilities, causing them to bus error when run. There is some discussion on the Apple support forum.

The Australian Apple University Consortium has announced the 2008 AUC Honours Scholarship recipients who will receive AU$4000 during their honours year. The UWA winner will leveraging FSEvent notifications

A recent article on Slashdot about using FireWire’s direct memory access (DMA) capabilities to rewrite memory on a Windows box reminded me a lot of the 1st place winning 2002 MacHack hack “FireStarter” perpetrated by Quinn, which wrote a QuickTime movie of burning flames on the screen of any Mac you plug in via FireWire. As mentioned on TidBITS at the time.

Some of Quinn’s hacks are here.

After introducing the multitouch user interface in the iPhone and iPodTouch, and then in the MacBook Air Apple has now introduced it across the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines.Interestingly, this means that the desktop machines don’t have multitouch, which given it will no doubt be more widely adopted by developers as SDK’s for it become available, which may leave desktop users in the lurch. The obvious move would be for Apple to incorporate multitouch in the screens it manufacturers. However this answer would probably be a bad solution given the problem of gorilla arm. Perhaps a multitouch pad built into keyboards? A third party Kensington multitouch USB trackpad? Then again the MacBooks already use a different input method to mice, however it’s not clear how easily the rotational gestures would map to a mouse (scrolling and zooming is already usually mapped to the scroll wheel/ball). Mouse with a knob?Or perhaps Apple has an even more revolutionary input device up its sleeve…

Edition.net are offering dedicated Xserve server solutions for US$250 (presumably per month, plus US$400 setup). For that you get “MacOSX Server featuring Xserve - 1.33Ghz PowerPC G4, 60gig storage, 512MB ram, WebObjects 5″. Although the RAM (and storage) seems a bit small. There are other options available which include WebStar V, FileMaker Unlimited (version 5?), and Lasso Pro 6 (not 8!). They do offer “flat-rate pricing with no traffic surcharges”.

digital.forest offers an Enhanced plan for US$30 setup and US$19/month (+US$10/month for MySQL) with perl, PHP5, Python, Mac OS X and more, 100MB of storage, and 3Gb of data transfer. Not sure what their colocating price is like though as you need to contact a salesdroid. Digital.forest have been around since 1994 and have a long time association with Mac newsletter TidBITs.