It’s MacHack time again, and Adam reports from Dearborn about Mac OS X’s acceptance at the annual developer gathering. Read on to find out which hacks took home the top honors at the MacHax Group’s Hack Contest, and then tune in for the second part of Jonathan Rentzsch’s look at WebObjects, Apple’s industrial strength Web application development kit. In the news, Mac OS X 10.0.4 solves a number of problems, and Extensis releases Suitcase 10.
Mac OS X 10.0.4 Update Released -- Apple has updated Mac OS X to version 10.0.4, improving USB support, the Classic environment, and adding support for the new 17-inch Apple Studio Display monitor (see "The Flatter the Better" in TidBITS-581)
Suitcase 10 Delivered -- Extensis has released Suitcase 10, adding a number of features to the long-standing font management tool. The new version adds the capability to create application sets, which can automatically activate fonts when launching many popular programs; a QuarkXPress XTension also opens any font used in a QuarkXPress document (including fonts embedded in graphics)
This year's MacHack developers conference marked what I thought might be a pivotal point in the Macintosh industry. Mac OS X has been out for about 90 days, so developers have had some time to become familiar with it, and experienced users have started to identify Mac OS X's omissions and problems
Although much happens at the MacHack developers conference, the heart of the event is the MacHax Group's annual Hack Contest, which gives the programmers a chance to code without worrying about utility, stability, or even usability
Last week, we talked about the fundamentals of application servers and how they've evolved over the years, ending with the Information Age approach used by Apple's WebObjects