Learning to Develop for the Mac – Historically
Going back to the beginning, and learning Project Builder, Interface Builder and ObjectiveC on NextStep. Can you believe this is the technology that NeXT had the same year Windows 3.1 came out? And its the same stuff that's used to build Mac and iPhone apps today...
Click for a bigger picture.
In fact, the technology is so close that I used a tutorial for developing a sample Mac app, to develop a sample NextStep app. The notion of "FAT Binaries" that work on multiple hardware architectures came from NeXT as well, since it ran on any number of platforms by the end.
Installing NextStep 3.3 on VMWare 6
I've been hankering to learn more about the origins of OS X, so I figured the best place to start would be the OS at its core -- NextStep (later named OpenStep.)
When Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, he set out to create a new company that would deliver elite hardware, and a revolutionary operating system. NeXT was started to build powerful hardware and software that would leapfrog the Mac (and everyone else on the market.) They eventually had to kill off the hardware line (after making some very nice, uber-high-end machines) but the software they made changed the industry. It was on a NextStation computer, using the NextStep OS that Tim Berners Lee would invent the World Wide Web, and its the true Object Oriented approach of the OS that many companies have imitated or borrowed.
By the mid-90s Apple was in truly rough shape. Their archaic OS, once the greatest thing on the market, was showing its age, and Apple had tried, and failed (mostly due to mismanagement) to replace it. It was determined that they should buy an existing next-gen OS, and re-build on top of it. After flirting with IBM and BeOS, they settled on a deal with NeXT. A deal that grew until Apple acquired the company, re-acquiring Steve Jobs in the process. He became the iCEO (interim CEO) and the de-facto leader of the company. Existing ideas were rapidly brought over from the Mac onto NextStep/OpenStep, layered on top of its rock-solid BSD Mach microkernel, Object Oriented underpinnings, and a re-vamped version of its graphics layer, was a new Interface, and a Classic emulator to allow old Mac apps to run.
The end product, after many variations, pre-releases, betas, and one or two fairly ugly general releases, was what we know today as Mac OS X. Much of NextStep is still intact, including low-level OS APIs, visual and development concepts, and culture.
If you're interested in getting NextStep up and running in VMWare (I'm using a Windows Vista 64-Bit Host OS, but these steps should work with most versions of VMWare -- including Fusion) you'll need to find an ISO of the NextStep OS somewhere, and maybe these steps will help you...
XBox360 + Connect360 + Linksys WRT54g (firmware hacked)
Nullriver's Connect360 is a fantastic little app that you can run on your Mac that will fool your XBox 360 into thinking its talking to a PC, allowing you to share your iTunes, iPhoto and video libraries with the 360 dashboard. The video transcoding is a little lossy, but for SD applications it works exactly as advertised. Well worth the $20 they're asking.
According to the Connect360 Support website, you can't use Connect360 on your Mac to connect to your XBox 360 if your network uses a Linksys WRT54g with homebrew firmware on it. They're right -- it doesn't work.
The solution is pretty simple, however. Abstract the Mac and the XBox from the router using a good* network switch. The switch will allow the two devices to communicate (via broadcast) with each other without having to go through the router, and all will work as expected.
*Note: The Connect360 site also warns that some switches may cause a similar problem. I'm using a NetGear Gigabit Switch to accomplish this, and it works perfectly. YMMV.
Generating RSA Keypairs on Mac OS X for a *nix web-server
I'm sure there are many of you who have long been comfortable with RSA keypairs, so I post this as much for my own reference, as for those like me who stumble around the Internet trying to find coherent instructions on how to do this. These instructions work for OS X 10.4 -- not sure about other versions or *nixes. I plan to apply them to securing SSH on my iPhone for easier file transfers though.
Step 1: Open Terminal
Usually found in the Utilities folder of Applications (but if you didn't know that already, this might not be the right topic for you!)
Step 2: Create your public/private key pair on your local computer
- At the command prompt type:
ssh-keygen -t rsa - Hit enter to accept the default file name and location
Step 3: Copy your public key contents into the "authorized_keys2" file on the remote server
- Type:
ssh username@remoteserver.com 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2' < /Users/Youruser/.ssh/id_rsa.pub - Enter your FTP password for the remote server when prompted
- If the file didn't already exist on the remote server, it will be created, don't worry.
Step 4: SSH at will!
You will never need a password from your account on your local computer again! Note that you'll need a public key provided for each client computer/computer account you want to use to connect to the server.
Automagic
Well my previous post on Symlinks was only partially right. It turns out iTunes doesn’t work very well when it has to share its library. If either computer decides it needs to write anything to the library database, it locks the other out. I had other problems with symlinking iCal’s database — it seems to keep a cache somewhere that I can’t find. So I had to resort to some AppleScripting — maybe the most elite AppleScript I’ve ever written. Here’s everything, some scripted, some not, that our computers do automatically for us…
Media Synchronization
My uber-script runs at 1:00am on the iMac. It starts by cleaning out the downloads folder, deleting any downloaded TV shows over 21 days old, then moves any downloaded music into the appropriate folder and adds it to the local iTunes library. Then it gets really clever, and logs into the remote Home Theater Mac over SSH and begins sending it instructions. It shuts down the remote iTunes, deletes its Library (which is a data island, because we do all our media maintenance on the iMac) and copies over the iMac’s iTunes Library. Note that it copies the Library only — the music remains on a network share that both computers have access to.
Then, once both iTunes are in sync, it starts up the remote iTunes which triggers a sync with my iPhone, getting me a playlist of my most recent music, plus my favorites (I only have a 4GB so I have to manage well) and does something similar locally to sync Nic’s iPod.
Both computers use the network shared Videos folder to populate FrontRow with our movies and TV content.
Calendar Synchronization
I failed to get WebDAV up and running on my new host, and Symlinks didn’t work out. But a wonderful and free service called iCalX came to the rescue. Microsoft finally added WebDAV publishing to Outlook 2007, so I publish my work calendar from there, my personal calendar syncs from my iPhone with the Home Theater Mac and from there to iCalX, and Nic publishes her calendar from the iMac. Any WebDAV client can subscribe to them and iCalX provides a nice little PHP iCalendar view online.
Address Book Synchronization
The OS X Address Book doesn’t complain too much about sharing its library between two computers, and provides little other utility for syncing or sharing (unless you want to pay $99 a year for .Mac — an otherwise useless service). I explored lots of options, but the only unattended one is Exchange syncing (or Kerio), and I don’t want to run a mail server any more. So I finally just decided to let Address Book share. The only caveat is that to make sure Address Book’s on multiple machines match up you have to quit Address Book to dump its in-memory cache and force it to re-read the database. It was easy enough to add some quit, open and hide commands to my uber-script, and that seems to solve the problem. Putting those commands in before each iTunes syncs with its connected portable device makes sure that both the iPhone and iPod have the latest contacts.
Nic’s cell phone is still a non-Apple device, but it syncs nicely over Bluetooth. A little app called Proximity detects when she comes into range of the Home Theater Mac, and fires a tiny AppleScript that does an automatic sync for her. A little blue light on her phone is the only indicator that its even happening.
Document Backup
This is actually another potentially useful service of .Mac, but I’m too cheap to be sold that easily. A really nice online service called Mozy provides free back-ups up to 2GB, and unlimited back-up for $5 a month (sign-up with that link and get me more free space!) We just eeked in under the 2GB mark backing up all our documents. This happens automatically every Sunday night at 1:00am, in place of the usual media sync.
I’ll be taking a semi-annual physical back-up of our document, music and pictures — pictures are copied between both Macs anyway. I have yet to figure out a way to back up 280GB of videos, save for having a second hard drive stored elsewhere, but I think, in case of a fire, we can live with only losing our movie collection.
Cleaning up
After either scheduled task (media sync or back-up, depending on the night of the week) the iMac goes to sleep until 9:00am, or until called for, while the Home Theater Mac studiously downloads things it thinks we might want to watch.
My script is likely pretty unique to our set-up, but I had to search long and hard to find the various parts that make it work — sending script instructions to a remote Mac over SSH was particularly tricky — so I’m posting it here for anyone who’s interested in picking it apart.
One other thing to be aware of, much of the script works against a shared drive, so it needs to be mounted for this to work. I use a little app called Automount Maker to get my media share to mount on boot, but its possible for the volume to get dismounted during the day (our microwave interferes with our wireless, for example, because there are so many wireless networks around, and that can kill the connection). I’d love to hear any ideas on how to make sure a volume stays mounted!