O'Reilly author James Duncan Davidson shows the aspects of Panther that he really digs. [MacDevCenter]

I was visiting Apple's site yesterday, and the Panther countdown read 15 days 30 minutes. I thought that was pretty cool.

bbum notes an application from Just van Rossum: DrawBot, and goes into some detail about it.

It sounds really cool - go Just!

Chris Hanson responds to Scoble responding to a claim (by Chris) that "the poor quality of Quark's code and developers is the reason why they took two years to ship [6.0]"

He also says:

It's only if your software is poorly written or the people doing the work aren't very good that this process takes a substantial amount of time.

All of the publicly-available evidence, in the forms of public posts by developers with "@quark.co.in" email addresses to public Macintosh development mailing lists, is that both cases are true: Their code is terrible, and the developers aren't very good.

I certainly know I grimace when a post from quark.co.in comes into my mailbox via Carbon-Dev. That is, I used to, until I found myself 11,000 messages behind.

Going over them quickly (read: using a query to find messages where From contains "@quark.co.in"), I think what bugs me is that the poster always seem like they've done 5 minutes of research, then called in for help on carbon-dev. That or their problem is vague enough to be absolutely useless in helping to determine the cause of the problem.

To turn this into constructive criticism, instead of a bash-fest of people@quark.co.in, here are some points about posting to a developers mailing list:

• Do your research. If you're posting a question about the AppleEvent manager, please know a little bit about the AE Manager before you ask your question. (and, in this case, knowing a bit about the related technologies - Applescript, for example) certainly doesn't hurt either
• Read what people say when they respond to you. I know I had a situation where I responded to someone (with, what I thought, was a definite and clear answer) and a few days later I see the same question on another list - by the same person! Grrrrrrr.
• Search the archives, if they're available. Half the time when I respond to questions on a mailing list I didn't know the answer myself until I did a search in the archives/my maibox.
• Show some respect for the Capitalization of the Terms. It's not Apple Events, it's AppleEvents. However, it's Carbon Events, not CarbonEvents. Or, my favorite, it's not a "MAC". It's a Mac.
• Can you replicate it in a sample? (I know, sometimes you can, and sometimes you just can't. But a sample is helpful.)

Do you have a point? Leave a comment!

Jon "Wolf" Rentzsch has some points about Apple pricing (in particular, the DotMac and Apple ADC Select memberships) . [rentzsch.com: Tales from the Red Shed]

Although I know I certainly got a utility I like out of the .Mac Free Stuff area (Stickybrain), and I know that, as a developer, you always (seem to) get free copies of the latest OS version ($130, usually).

Since I'm not in the ADC program any more (my student membership expired because, well, I'm not a student any more), I'll have to buy Panther when it comes out. I think I bought a copy of Jaguar last year so that I had two licenses (the powerbook got the developer license, and the iMac got the paid for license).

I may end up waiting for a while to get an ADC Select membership, especially if they're running some sort of Membership + WWDC Ticket deal like they did last year.

Matt Neuburg's latest book: "Applescript: The Definitive Guide" is coming soon (November 2003). w0000t.

I have one of Matt's earlier books here: "Frontier: The Definitive Guide". Don't use it very much, but it's really good. Needs to be updated though.

O'Reilly's page for Applescript: The Definitive Guide

Yes, I keep it on the left side. The right side annoys me, it's always getting in the way of the random "important" stuff I keep on my desktop.

Want more dock action? iheartmena points to a bunch of cool ones.

Yes, I know I'm late to the party. Very late. Deal.

All the really interesting stuff happens over there. Unless you're not a nerd or programmer. If you're not, keep watching this sapce, 'cause those droids aren't what you're looking for.