I’m not a professional software programmer. I don’t have years of Apple or Macintosh programming experience. That said, I’d like to offer some predictions of things we’ll see at Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference. I base the predictions on hours of reading writeups of the Apple/NeXT merger and my recent foray into learning Objective-C:

1. Xcode 2.4/3.0 with the ability to compile for Windows.
2. Dashboard widget development environment.
3. MacPro desktop announcement.
4. Mail.app gains a tabbed interface.

The first one on the list is easy since NeXT had a library of code for Windows years ago. You can bet hard cash that if they’ve been running MacOS X on bastardized Intel motherboards for 5 years, they’ve got Cocoa libraries for Windows. Add the defacto endorsement of Parallels Workstation you have a developer’s wet dream: Mac and Windows apps using roughly the same code base all developed and tested on a single piece of hardware.

The second one on the list is easy to see: the WebKit open source project has been compiling a javascript debugger for about a month and distributing it in nightly builds. The only thing left is a unified app with that code and a good user interface.

Third is obvious too–Intel announced new processors recently and that’s similar to what happened when the iMac with Core Duo was announced.

Fourth is more of a stretch because you have to read the tea leaves of the descriptions of WebKit code commits. When the developers upload new code, they generally put a note of some kind in the code management system that will help them remember why they did it. I’m having trouble finding the right one or two that said this, but the gist was fixes concerned tabs opened in Mail.

Comments?

From the article in the Springfield Business Journal:

“Battlefield Mall’s lifestyle center now under construction will include a Banana Republic store, a spokesperson from the clothing retailer confirmed today.”

Tammy rats us out…

“Confession time here. Last night I had the most nutritionally void dinner on the planet. I had a pint of craft beer, 4 potato skins and a 3 Musketeers bar. Yes, that was my dinner. What am I, in college? I don’t think I ate that badly when I was in school. Guess sometimes, you just have to eat crap and enjoy it – which I did!”

I had two beers, the same potato skins and a Butterfinger Crisp bar. Tomorrow night–pizza!

I’ve been reading the code commits for the WebKit project and they hint at two things: tabs in Mail.app and Safari and Mail.app will merge.

You heard it here first, folks.

Update: I’m trying to find the notes for the code commits that put this together.

Since the last one was for Tammy, here’s one for [zarah](http://beautyschooldropout.net)…

MAKE Magazine Blog: “LEDs are illuminating everything these days including knitting needles and crochet hooks.”

For [Tammy’s](http://tammykirks.com) benefit…

MAKE Magazine Blog: “Although there’s no geek girl this season on Project Runway 3, Katherine Gerdes, a graduate of RISDI (just like Diana Eng), has put up a tutorial on her blog on how to draw a basic croquis and create a portfolio of poses you like.”

Aaron Hillegass wrote a Cocoa programming book for developers new to Objective C back in 2001. It’s amazingly relevant and accurate today even though the second edition is much more appropriate for Xcode.

I just finished the first tutorial and I can confirm that the book is as good as everyone says. It’s very readable even by someone like me with no formal C programming classes or degree.

Anyone want a [random number generator](http://houseofwarwick.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/RandomApp.zip)?