Sugar Maple Software

The Mac community is an amazing beast. More generally, the Apple community is an amazing beast. In the days before the advent of the Internet, when I first starting programming on Apple computers, the community was local and gathered at computer fairs held at area malls. Later, when I began developing for the Mac, the community had a fledging on-line presence (e.g., Guy Kawasaki’s Evanglist and various web sites), but I still eagerly awaited my Apple developer mailings and develop magazine. Today, the community is global and gathers on a variety of mailing lists and web sites. The general Apple community seems stronger today than ever before; this is especially the case of the Mac developer community. For someone starting down the independent software developer path, this is quite fortuitous since this community is an incredible resource.

I’ll share some of my favorite resources that have helped me as I have started Sugar Maple Software. The first I’ll mention is Apple’s developer web site. This isn’t really a community, but it is an incredible resource. I’ve developed for other platforms and tried to use their developer web site and Apple’s, by comparison, is in a whole different league. It has a wealth of documentation, sample code, and technical notes that are extremely well written. Another Apple resource, which better involves the community, is their collection of mailing lists. These lists are frequented by Apple employees as well as third-party experts. If you ask your question well, people are very helpful. This is a great place to get your less common questions answered. The cocoa-dev list is an especially active, almost to the point of being overwhelming, list.

There are other non-Apple lists which are great resources. The Macintosh Software Business group is the most useful list that I’ve found for the independent software developer. This is not a list that addresses technical issues, but, rather, one that dives into the details of running a Mac software business. So far, I’ve just been lurking, but now that I’ve taken the leap, I hope to start contributing.

There are a number of web sites that make great references. CocoaDev has a wealth of information that I’ve only just begun to explore. O’Reilly Mac DevCenter collects a large variety of articles.

There are also a number of blogs that frequently post information of interest to Mac software developers. I subscribe to the following:

• Red Sweater Blog. Daniel Jalkut, founder of Red Sweater Software, frequently shares all sorts of information, and even code, of interest to Mac developers.
• Toxic Software. Jonathan Wight also shares a lot of information and code.
• Gus Mueller’s blog. Gus founded Flying Meat and develops VoodooPad.
• rentzsch.com. Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch, the founder of Red Shed Software. He most recently organized the C4 conference here in Chicago (which, unfortunately, I won’t be attending).
• ridiculous fish. Peter Ammon’s blog that discuss Cocoa in amazing depth.
• inessential.com: Brent Simmons, of NetNewsWire fame, personal blog.
• Signum sine tinnitu: Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Perhaps more geared towards startups and larger companies, this is still a great business resource.
• Joel on Software: Joel Spolsky’s blog which covers a wide range of topics related to software development and business.

There are other Mac-related blogs and web sites out there that either provide news or are just fun to read. Any blatant omissions? Please share in the comments.

This entry was posted Thursday, 21st September, 2006 at 3:37 pm and is filed under apple, general, mac os x. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.