[Ham-Mac] Announcing Mac Ham Radio web site

[Dick Rucker]

on 11/1/03 12:44 AM, Steve Muncy at smuncy@mac.com wrote:

> Effective November 1st, a new web site will be available to support
> amateur radio operators who choose to use Macintosh as their preferred
> computing platform.

> You can access the Mac Ham Radio site at:
> 
> http://www.machamradio.com/

> ____________________________________________________
> Steve Muncy, NI5V    < mailto:ni5v@arrl.net >
> Dallas, TX USA         < http://homepage.mac.com/smuncy/hamradio/ >
> QRP-ARCI #10330  FISTS #7412  QCWA #30705  AMSAT #33939
> ARRL Life Member

Steve,

I just made a quick tour through your new site, and it looks great!  Thanks
very much for doing that.  The web ring for developers of ham software for
Macs is off to a good start, and I enjoyed your first editorial.  Having the
software available gathered together and linkable from one catalog listing
is also very useful.  I'll be back!

I have a very good feeling about the future of Macs in the world of amateur
radio, Apple again is showing just how exciting it can be to incorporate a
high level of innovation with thoughtful and eye-pleasing industrial design
into products that are fun to use.

Another change:  I find that I have a hard time walking out of MicroCenter's
Apple department these days without buying something.  Yesterday, I went in
to drop off some flyers for Washington Apple Pi's "Pantherpalooza" meeting
in November. I walked out with one of Apple's latest all-white, slim-line
keyboards.  What a pleasure after using the crippled keyboard that came with
my G4 AGP machine 3 years ago.  Funny thing is, all the keys are full-size
yet the keyboard is no wider than the crippled one.  Thanks, Apple!
  
When I use my aging Dell laptop to run Digipan, MixW, and a few other ham
programs, I dearly wish that I could get my hands on even better software to
do similar and better things on both my G3 laptop (Pismo) and my G4 desktop
(AGP), both of which have been happily running Panther for over a week now.
And, yes, I am counting the months until their replacements are realized as
irresistible G5 machines.

I think I can resist the push to throw good money at another Windoz if
developers, such Don Agro, can make a good living producing superior
products for the Mac, such as MacDopplerPro and MacLoggerDX.

I have a couple of projects in mind already that I would someday like to
build using Cocoa.

As a non-programmer, that may be a bit ambitious, but I can't imagine a
better mountain to try to climb than that represented by Objective C, the
Cocoa frameworks, and the Xcode development environment.  I'm starting
humbly, working through Seth Roby's on-line course on Objective C, found the
O'Reilly Network, entitled "C is for Cocoa."

   http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/07/22/cocoa_series.html

My planned next step is to work through either

   Bill Cheeseman's "Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X" or
   Aaron Hillegrass'  "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X"

Anyone have comments on either of these books?  I own a copy of Cheeseman's
book, but haven't bought Aaron's yet.  So if it is a toss-up...

Also, any good tutorials on learning to use Xcode yet?


Dick, KM4ML

-- 
Richard A. "Dick" Rucker
City of Fairfax, VA

Mac Computer Show and Sale December 13th
Info at www.wap.org