Author: grant

Visiting the iPhone Dev SDK Forums

The iPhone Dev SDK Forums are just that; a collection of forums whose topics of discussion encompass just about every aspect of working in this market. Specific forum focuses range from low-level details of APIs and tooling to business topics like how best to market and support your product.
Having spent about an hour clicking around there; I got the impression that it was a pleasant community and look forward to spending more time there.

Mini-malistic Mac development environment

It looks like the “non-pro” hardware is clearly the best place for me to start; the Mac Mini and Macbook fall into this camp.
My original thought was that the Macbook would be a perfect fit since I could hook it up to an external monitor at home and take it along with me when I need to go mobile. Then it dawned on me, I don’t really go mobile. I sure like to imagine all of the cool places I would go with it, but in reality such occurrences are few and far between. For when I really do need a mobile, I’ve go the XO and the ThinkPad, and who knows, if this Mac stuff pans out I wouldn’t mind picking up a Macbook or a MacBook pro. That said: Mini pricing seems very reasonable.
It looks like a Mini with a 2GHz CPU, maxed out with 4GB of ram, the default 120 GB hard drive, and an Nvidia video card that can drive a 1900×1200 display can be had for only $750USD. This seems more than adequate for setting up a Mac development environment; heck even Java would do fine here. What a steal!
The hard drive size upgrade prices are insane. If I need more space, I have a beautiful external LaCie hard drive that has been looking for a home!

Essential Tools for Starting Up Your Side Business

Here is a decent article about “startup” business tools. I didn’t find that much new material, but the following were interesting:

  • MyCorp: A non-profit that sets up LLCs
  • ScanSnap: An efficient paper-to-pdf scanner
  • Adobe Acrobat: Make it easy for non-Windows people and fax less
  • Basecamp: A simple project management tool. I’ve used it before, it is simple as it could be but no simpler and the UI is pleasant. It is surprisingly nice to use.

Evaluating the ADC Select Membership

Apple offers 3 levels of memberships: online, select, and premier (0USD, 500USD, and 3500USD respectively). They differ of course on features. For the time being, the select looks the most reasonably priced so I wanted to learn more about how it might make sense.
From what I read, the biggest perks are the 2 support tickets and the hardware discount (10% on normal hardware and 20% on pro hardware). Access to outdated WWDC material is not very compelling. While the online “coding headstarts” might make sense, neither seem justified by the price.
The hardware discount is interesting, as the discount essentially cuts 500USD off of any pro hardware, and then you end up purchasing the select membership with what you have “saved”; so this alone can make the membership worth it. One might wonder why you wouldn’t simply purchase this membership when you want a discount and let it lapse when you don’t; but apparently if you do so, you will no longer be offered the discount. In other words, once you purchase it you have to keep it up.
For me it looks like the best approach would simply be to start with a Macbook and take some time to ramp up and get familiar with things. If it makes sense to take advantage of the support tickets and faster hardware (every year or so) then the Macbook could get passed down to someone else and I could find out how helpful the tickets really are to me.