Oh boy, WWDC is tomorrow. Yes, normally by now I would be bouncing out of my seat with glee about what Steve Jobs would be saying about his pride and joy…THE MACINTOSH COMPUTER LINE! But since this cash cow iPhone’s birth *the beginning of the end of Apple Computer honestly*, Steve Jobs seems to have forgotten what made him rich and famous besides iTunes, which is a totally different rant. Now, all I see is my favorite computer line is slowly dying into the wind, because people just don’t give a damn about it anymore. Macs don’t have a touch screen after all *god forbid it doesn’t have a greasy touch screen that shows every fingerprint!* But this isn’t even the best part. The focus of the WWDC, THE WORLD WIDE DEVELOPER’S CONFERENCE, is no longer the Operating System of Macs. No, it’s now the operating system of the iPhone, which used to be OS X, but now Apple has decided to separate the two and call it OS X iPhone. Wonderful, so what exactly is Apple now? I promise you it’s no longer a computer company.

Now for my worst beef with Apple. Why is this corporation so willing and ready to drop their PPC users completely off the face of the map? Especially their broke developers still dedicated to their cause but cannot afford a new laptop. After all, I was excited to start learning to program for my iTouch, but gasp, I can’t install the fucking SDK. Why? INTEL ONLY! So am I obliged to jump on the bandwagon and spend thousands of dollars so I can help benefit the Mac community with my software? Do I have to do this to make Apple happy? I won’t do it, sorry. I’ll switch back to Kubuntu Linux and Windows before I will be bullied by a corporation I’ve given so much money to already. That is exactly what it is, bullying. Apple is taking away all my privileges as a developer because I will not spend money to upgrade. It’s as easy as flipping a switch on the GCC compiler to compile for both PPC and X86, Apple just won’t do it. This however, has really only affected OS X developers still on PPC. Not to mention if you drop PPC, you drop all 32 bit architecture processors, including many of the early Intel Macs. But the day is coming when the consumers will suffer, and that is the day that the Macintosh line will ultimately be forced to switch or leave the platform entirely.

As many people have already figured out, the 1.1.4 firmware and every version number underneath can be jail-broken for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Many lower-end users who do not understand filesystem’s or UNIX generally choose to just let Installer handle their installations and uninstallations. This works for those users, but their is the elite group. Those who want to tinker with the mobile OS X’s UNIX shell and base and want to utilize and control its power. These users want full access to the filesystem, and until recently used OpenSSH, which is a secure connectivity tool so people can read and write to a filesystem remotely via a router or the internet. However efficient this is, it has it’s downfalls. Many times the daemon has to continually broadcast the SSH connection, even when it is not in use, and there are no GUI controls to manipulate it’s features. This just doesn’t seem like the ideal way to connect to an OS X based product and is definitely not the prettiest *Mac Style*

Now, Apple has this wonderful, easier to use, LAN file transfer protocol called AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), also called AppleTalk. This is the ideal way to share and distribute files over a Mac-dominant LAN, because it is totally integrated within OS X itself and it’s tools like Finder. Now this is file control in style. Now, how can we use these built-in tools with the iTouch?

Welcome to AFPd. It’s a simple AFP server for the iPhone or iPod Touch that provides full access to the filesystem on your iPod or iPhone, plus a GUI for controlling options, no questions asked. It however can arguably be more secure than SSH because you can control whether it’s broadcasted over the LAN and whether you can actually transfer data over it. Not to mention it’s gorgeous in Mac OS X Leopard, automatically being identified if it’s enabled in the sidebar of Finder and full read and write access in all Cocoa glory. Delicious. Now isn’t that better than controlling your pride and joy in Transmit or PuTTy?

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Proteus, the alternative instant messenger to Adium for Mac OS X has released a new version. 4.2. This version is complete with a new automatic update system made possible by Sparkle, new interface icons, and an extensive amount of bug fixes. This is all fine and dandy, and Proteus is my ideal instant messenger, but I’m excited about something else…their new site.

It has been close to two years since the Proteus project had a working website, since the collapse of Defaultware. When a project is on the verge of dying it’s very hard to help revive it if there’s no form of decent communication about the program or what it can do. This is where websites come in, as well as I. I had the privilege of writing their new website, around 4 months ago in my spare time. It’s a very simple design, with the familiar gradient stripe for navigation and a header pattern, much like what’s found on my site currently, as well as an image for emphasis; a logo or a badge. Hopefully my work and some skilled programming will help prove that Proteus is back in business.

Below was a test post by the wordpresslib library, a series of classes and methods written in python to manipulate posts on a Wordpress blog. To drop a hint, this is my next project I plan to work on =) I hope to get a simple blogging tool written in PyObjC over the summer.

Python is the best programming language in the earth !