I just received the updated version of Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X written by Aaron Hillegass. I already owned the 2nd edition so I’m quite familiar with the book. I strongly recommend this book for anyone wanting to start developing for the Mac.

In my last article I mentioned how Mac applications tend to be more straight to the point. Tonight when I was reading through the updated HIG from Apple I stumbled upon this.

“During the design process, if you discover problems with your product design, you might consider applying the 80 percent solution—that is, designing your software to meet the needs of at least 80 percent of your users. This type of design typically favors simpler, more elegant approaches to problems.

If you try to design for the 20 percent of your target audience who are power users, your design may not be usable by the other 80 percent of users. Even though that smaller group of power users is likely to have good ideas for features, the majority of your user base may not think in the same way.”

Pretty much says it all.

CocoaDev just created a forum for all of us mac loving programmers. I’ve been wondering why there isn’t (or wasn’t) a forum for Cocoa developers ever since I started developing for the Mac. I even thought about creating my own but this is even better.

Go take a look.

Just updated Peel. Somehow a little bug that made the “Add to iTunes” function useless slipped into last build. More strangely nobody complained until just a few days ago.

I’ve also implemented a better registration method that only requires one click from the user. Since launching Peel I’ve been getting about one email a week from people who can’t register. Most of the time it’s because the they didn’t realize that the key needs a correct name and email to work. I’ve tried to guide them through the process as thorough as I can but sometimes that doesn’t cut it so I end up doing it manually and sending them the necessary files. I’m hoping my new registration method will solve this once and for all.

Fixed

• Adding songs manually to iTunes doesn’t work
• Sometimes HTML-tags slipped into the name (if no ID3 tag was found)

Added

• Better tag support. Now supports ID3v1 tags
• “One click” registration method

Head over to getpeel.com and grab the new version.