Details matter, but they are getting lost. At Apple I worked on the main User Interface (UI) framework called AppKit for about 13 years. I would help enforce UI consistency in applications by logging bugs... [read more]

Quick Summary If you add a Swift property to an NSTextFieldCell subclass and you may suddenly start getting random crashes! Implement an override of [NSCell copyWithZone:] that retains any properties to fix this: Gory Details... [read more]

When I worked at Apple I was spoiled and got 200 GB of free iCloud storage. I never worried about dropping stuff in there because I had so much space. Now that I’m an outsider... [read more]

You find a bug in macOS or iOS. Something in the software isn’t working the way it should work. You decide to let Apple know, and head over to http://bugreport.apple.com and login with your Apple ID.... [read more]

After many years, I finally updated my theme for WordPress.

Whenever I want to refresh my Wordpress website design I like to host the entire site locally on my Mac so I can freely develop things without affecting my live website.

For the past 10 years I’ve given a talk at every Apple World Wild Developer Conference (WWDC). Well, except for one. That was 2007 when I was busy working on UIKit for the iPhone 1.0.... [read more]

I got a new video game for the Mac – spore! I really wanted to give it a try last night, but my DVD drive stopped working on my MacBook Pro. Luckily, there are known... [read more]

I think I’ll do a few articles on why certain API was introduced in Leopard. I’ll start with one of the new methods in NSTableView: /* Returns the fully prepared cell that the view will... [read more]

Posted from: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.3355,-122.0307

I’m quite happy that my work promotes green living.

How can you become a faster Cocoa programmer? One way is to adequately name your variables, enums and classes. Let’s start with enums and take an example from something new to NSTableView in Leopard. This... [read more]

WWDC 2008! Howdy to my fellow Cocoa Developers. Take a look at the conference schedule: http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/schedules/ and be sure to come to my talk! Tuesday at 10:30 AM, iPhone for Mac Developers. If you have... [read more]

I was lucky enough to not only attend this years Maker Faire, but I also got to participate as a volunteer! I was a model in the Fashion Show put on by the Swap-O-Rama. Our... [read more]

Mac OS 10.5 added a “source list” highlighting style to NSTableView, with the API below for your reference: enum { NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleRegular = 0, NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList = 1, }; typedef NSInteger NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle; – (NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle)selectionHighlightStyle; – (void)setSelectionHighlightStyle:(NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyle)selectionHighlightStyle; Source... [read more]

It recently came up where someone needed to override some of the default shortcut keys in the NSOpenPanel or NSSavePanel. This is quite trivial to do. First off, the “easy way” would be to add... [read more]

PhotoSearch, a demo app I wrote for WWDC a few years ago, is now live: http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/PhotoSearch/ It demonstrates some cool custom cell stuff that is only available on Leopard.

Update: Sept 9, 2009: Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard now has this feature built into Instruments! In Xcode, choose “Run -> Run with Performance Tool -> Zombies”, and repeat your steps that cause the crash.... [read more]

Leopard, the new Mac OS 10.5, is out! There are a lot of new features, but not everything is mentioned on the features page. Here are some of the cool “power user” features which you... [read more]

Today is a very exciting day. The iPhone is going to be available at 6pm. Let me tell you, it is wonderful! Go get one. You will not be disappointed.

Hi Cocoa Programmers, There is a small bug in NSBrowser if you use bindings and want a custom cell class. Typically, you would do something like this in your awakeFromNib: - (void)awakeFromNib { [iBrowser setCellClass:[ImageTextBrowserCell... [read more]

If you haven’t seen me at Apple WWDC 20007, I’m easy to “spot”: In fact, I’m on the attendee page!

I’m an advocate for greener companies, and I’m happy to announce that the company I work for is striving for greener technology: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/ Spread the word.

Here is a very cool tip that I discovered from one of hour HI guys. You can put apps in your toolbar! For instance, I frequently drag files to TextEdit to open them. Having them... [read more]

It might be nice to note a few Xcode debugging things that I tend to do. Frequently, I’ll want to break on a specific symbol, like -[NSException raise] Well, there are several ways to do... [read more]

Mac OS X has some GREAT keyboard access. One spectacular thing is the ability to access all items (unlike windows, where you have to have a defined shortcut for each item, and you easily run... [read more]

Inside of Xcode, I’ll want to quickly go to a method implementation. If you hit Cmd-F and do a find for the method name (or the start of it), you will frequently get hits for... [read more]

In Mail, I frequently want to go to the first or last message in my list. On windows, the home and end keys work well for this. On MacOS, they don’t work in NSTableView/NSOutlineView by... [read more]

A note to NSOutlineView Cocoa programmers: It has never been safe to call reloadData while an outlineView is doing a reloadData. What the heck does that mean? Well, if you call reloadData, a whole bunch... [read more]

Hi all, I’ve seen some people request how to do a modal color panel. Well, carbon has GetColor(..) which ultimately uses the same NSColorPanel. So, you can set it to begin a modal session before... [read more]

A quick comment about these two properties: [NSColorPanel isContinuous] and [NSColorWell isContinuous]. Generally, you want these two things to be in sync. Whenever the color changes in the NSColorPanel, the color in the NSColorWell will... [read more]