Red Hat Diaries/006b

Rixstep

I got a ton of books this week. First it was a huge shipment from Vervante. They're the official publishers of Apple materials today. They sent me Apple's small book on Objective-C and another ton of books on the AppKit and Foundation - which together comprise 'Cocoa' - and I sent them $320. Then a book published by SAMS, and written by a trio of developers headed by Scott Anguish, weighing in at 1,280 pages. That was another $60.

So far this year alone I've invested $550 in Apple books. Now all I need is some nimrod asking why the Apple apps I write can't be freeware.

These books will consume the next two years of my life, as I calculate. Two years of pure hibernation, just absorbing it all. Not much programming, not much of anything, just kicking back and reading, reading, reading.

I got to see a movie the other night. The Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's short on historical accuracy, but it's long on spot-on character portrayals. It's never hit me before what a lying cheating mongrel Bill Gates is. 'Apple is onto something, and I want it.' Going to Steve Jobs, who as always plays hard to get, making him understand he needs a spreadsheet program like Multiplan, giving him the program, true, but setting up a secret team to copy everything off the prototype Mac at the same time.

There are visionaries in the computer business, but Bill Gates is not one of them, and his company has been set up to devour anything at any time, no matter the lack of ethics involved. That's what the movie imports, and it all fits too. I've been saying for years, 'Where's the innovation at Microsoft?' and now I understand more fully why it's always missing. Microsoft are not visionaries. They're just criminals.

Rixstep opened this week. It's been on the boards for over half a year, and the startup is mild and unpretentious. Only a few articles online, only a few vital links. At the end of the day the site was rewritten with no graphics at all, save a 54 byte background image and a 42 byte spacer image. There's a css file weighing in at 80 bytes, but that's it. 176 bytes of embedded URLs. That site should load fast!

You're welcome to stop by, and there's a newsletter you can sign up for. I know there are a ton of Mac sites on the net, well-established already; it's my hope that this one will become one of them, and have something important to add that the others don't touch on. Education is always a high priority. Understanding an issue and learning something at the same time can never be bad.

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