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Oliver Breidenbach

Biography

Born in 1969. First Apple in 1976 (Yes, it was an Apple I). First program developed in 1978 (on Apple II). First commercial development in 1986 (on Atari ST). First Mac in 1989. Started company in 1992. Got lured out of university with money halfway through a Master's degree in Informatics in 1993. Founded Boinx Software with my brother in 1996. Had to write off cool OpenDoc products in 1997. Got into Web development in 1998. Started my weblog (now all but abandoned) end of 2000. Managed to avoid getting rich in Internet Bubble of 2001. Managed to avoid going broke in Internet Bubble of 2001. Worked as Mac journalist and trainer in my spare time. First commercial Mac OS X app shipped in 2002. My team won the O'Reilly Mac OS X Innovators award in 2003 (for a stop motion animation app) and 2004 (for a way cool Mac slideshow app). Would have won in 2005, too (with an undisclosed app ;-). Did a couple of things I can't really talk about. Google claims to know 18,700 pages about me. Probably nearly all of them are irrelevant.

Blog

iPhone SDK - First Thoughts

March 06 2008

The iPhone SDK is here (sort of) and that's certainly no reason to whine. But it has a few ugly dents in its shiny new coat: Apple takes a 30 percent cut from developers selling apps. Imagine what would happen If they would do that to artists in the iTunes… read more

Give Good Food To Your Mac

November 25 2007

Top European developers have banded together to offer a Mac software feast under the headline “Give Good Food to Your Mac” to holiday shoppers over the next ten days. In contrast to other deals in the past, this one offers a steeper discount the more products you choose. A kind… read more

Thanks Apple!

October 17 2007

The big news of the day is of course Steve Jobs announcement of an iPhone SDK for February. I am very excited about this. It is an important signal to the Mac OS X developer community that Apple values our commitment to Mac OS X and rewards us with letting us… read more

A Giant Leap Backward.

October 16 2007

Am I the only one who wonders how they got this headline past Steve? read more

The real reasons Leopard is late

April 17 2007

In case you haven’t seen it: The Joy of Tech’s “The real reasons Mac OS X Leopard is late…” I like the “Someone keeps pressing the Time Machine button..:” reason best. read more

Travelling to WWDC

April 08 2007

It will be tough for the Boinx Software team to get to WWDC this year - at least if we follow the Google Maps directions: (Item 33: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean; Thanks to Michael for finding this gem.) read more

What's Cooking Revisited (and a bit on iTunes DRM)

April 03 2007

A couple of days ago, I wrote in “What’s Cooking?” about the lack of Apple news for the Mac. In the meantime, I’ve had time to ponder this with colleagues and friends and today I found a weblog post from early March by Thomas Fitzgerald with an interesting theory: Apple… read more

What's Cooking?

March 12 2007

I am getting a little jittery here. I’ve just checked the Apple PR archives and it’s true: The last significant Mac news dates August 7th, 2006 when Apple announced Leopard and the MacPros. (The Apple TV is not Mac news, it’s iTunes news.) That’s 7 months! Since then: iPod, iPhone, iTunes. Ah,… read more

CocoaDevHouse Munich Feb. 24th

February 07 2007

Boinx Software is proud to co-host the second CocoaDevHouse Munich with TheCodingMonkeys at our offices on Feb. 24th. If you happen to be in Munich, Germany on said Saturday, drop by to meet interesting people and have fun. read more

"You...

February 07 2007

…are coming to a sad realisation - Cancel or Allow?” Ok, seems I lost that bet (for now). But - this is the truly best ad dialog I’ve heard in a long time. read more

WWDC 2007 June 11th to 15th

February 06 2007

Save the date. read more

Rentzsch: "Programmers Don't Like to Code"

February 04 2007

Very good read. Wolf is right to point out that programmers write code out of necessity and that rewriting helps them to understand how it works. But why are developers keen to type their code? Why have visual programming languages not found a greater following? Why are text editors currently… read more

Late Night Cocoa Episode 1

January 19 2007

Episode 1 of Steve “Scotty” Scott’s Late Night Cocoa podcast is now available. He writes: The eventual goal of the podcast is to present fairly in depth discussion of cocoa topics such as Core Data, Bindings etc. However I also felt it would be good to kick off with something a… read more

Lee Falin: How I got started in Cocoa Programming

January 18 2007

A post from a while ago, but nevertheless a success story for O’Reilly and MacDevCenter: It all started last October. I was working in a typical Microsoft IT shop, and one of my asperations was to start my own software company. I had been reading Eric Sink’s Business of Software… read more

Mac OS X Downloads @ apple.com

January 13 2007

Largely unnoticed and without much fanfare, Apple finally made some changes that are going to be very beneficial to Mac software developers: The Mac OS X Downloads page got a makeover, complete with RSS feeds, a top downloads section, staff picks and recently added sections. And, after just 4 or 5… read more
Oliver Breidenbach