Leopard just went on sale in my time zone. I’d like to say thank you to all the Apple employees who had a hand in putting out this amazing release. I think it’s going to be a real hit in the marketplace and everybody who worked on it deserves a big pat on the back (and hopefully a healthy bonus out of those huge revenues).

I’ve spent a good part of the day whining here and there about how Apple failed to provide developers with the final release of Leopard 10.5. As members of the ADC program expected to receive a copy of it prior to its public release, so we could confirm without a doubt that our users would have a 100% glorious experience with our apps. Apple, your behavior offended me, but I got so caught up in the heat of feeling sorry for myself that I forgot to pay tribute to your employees’ awesome hard work. Sorry about that. [Update: Apple has now made the seed available to us. After public sale, but thankfully not too long after.]

I’ve been there. I know how sleepless the nights, and leisure-less the weekends can become. The last thing I would want to do is let my whiney mood overshadow your awesome victory day. After all, it’s not your fault that Apple left us out of the loop on this one. Well, unless you happen to the employee in charge of deciding whether to seed us a copy of the final release. No thanks for you!

In general, Apple employees rule. I can’t wait to see what kind of magic you have in store for us in 10.6. Keep up the amazing work.

But About That Dead Horse…

So I admit I can be a real sour apple (har, har) when it comes to issues like these. I went on for months when I felt like Apple was misbehaving with regard to its defective laptop computers. What is this chip on my shoulder, anyway? Is it because I no longer work there, that I seem to take such an interest in decrying their behavior?

On the contrary, as I said earlier this week, much of my life has been and continues to be invested in Apple. The last thing I want to do is to tear that great company down. The reason I’m such a snarky little turd when it comes to Apple’s mistakes is because I expect so much more from them. Apple shines so brightly by default, that it’s extremely disappointing when they stumble, and even worse when they fall.

As a matter of fact, I was as critical of Apple as I am today, back when I was an employee. Probably some of my coworkers could attest to my snarky mood back then, as well. The difference being of course, that my whining and moaning inside the company stayed inside the company. As an outsider I’m less privy to what’s really going on, but I have a new perspective on how it feels to be mistreated on the outside. To be fair, it doesn’t happen too often. But when it does, it stings.

Ending On A High Note

Leopard is the best OS release I’ve ever seen from Apple. If I worked at Apple, I would be extremely proud to have been a part of it. As an independent developer, I’ll be proud to continue serving up software that shines on Mac OS X, and takes advantage of all the amazing features Apple has given us in Leopard.

Thanks again, and Happy Leopard Day to everybody.

Yesterday, after the close of trading in the big US stock markets, Apple announced amazing quarterly results. The stock price, which had already climbed a few dollars earlier in the day, responded by climbing an astounding $11 dollars further in after-hours trading. Best of all (for Apple investors and fans), the value held through today’s trading, closing at an all-time high of $187/share. Yowza!

And then after hours today, the stock seems to be back down $11. Ouch! The roller-coaster ride of Wall Street can be harsh, but $174 is still a healthy price by most accounts. Anybody who bought a few short months ago at $130 is probably feeling pretty good about now. [Update: Don’t know if it was stale data I was getting, or if it really did dump to $174 after hours, but as several people have pointed out, it now seems to be back up in the $180’s.]

Apple’s good fortunes outside of the stock market appear to be a lot less volatile. They keep building amazing products, and more and more people keep buying them. John Gruber’s analysis today focuses on the huge increase in Mac sales this past quarter, which he chalks up to the conventional halo-effect argument, and elaborates on other market factors that may be boosting sales.

As I said, I own stock in Apple, Inc. So it’s super great news when Apple’s fortunes increase. But I’m also an independent developer for the Mac, which means I own stock in Apple’s customers, too. If Apple’s stock was just going up, up, up with no particular explanation, that would be one thing. But it is going up at least in part (I speculate) because they’re attracting so many new users to the Mac, and there is no clear sign that this trend is slowing down.

When Apple doubles the market share of the Mac, it stands to reason that the size of the group of people looking to buy third-party Mac software also doubles. Hooray for indie Mac developers — the size of the crowd walking past our storefronts is getting bigger and bigger every day. Perhaps my analysis is simplistic, but it seems obvious to me that more people are therefore going to stop in and check out the merchandise. We all win. Thanks, Apple!

It would be enough to cheer about, this booming population of Mac aficionados. But that’s just the Mac. The stock price is also rising on news of iPod and iPhone successes. And what do you know, with Jobs’s recent announcement of an iPhone and iPod developer SDK, it looks like indie Mac developers are invested in those customer bases as well.

Whether you are invested in Apple’s stock, its customers, its products, or all of the above, this is an incredibly fun time to be passionate about and involved in Apple’s future. A great time to be invested in all things Apple.

Anthony Cole over at Macteens interviewed me for the online magazine. In it we discuss my time at Apple, my decision to strike out on my own as an indie developer, and MarsEdit’s so-called competition.

Thanks for the interesting chat, Anthony!

The buzz in the Mac community is all about Leopard. It’s coming next week, and many users are rightfully concerned about whether their favorite apps will “just work” with the update.

I think some users are surprised to learn that many indie software developers take it for granted that “working with the next OS release” is a given, barring some extremely costly circumstance. Extremely costly circumstances include situations where, as with the debut of OS X, applications needly to be significantly redesigned or retested. For the version bumps in major OS X upgrades, developers should be happy to give free upgrades, because the updates bring so many new features to the developer’s tool kit.

OS upgrades are Apple’s greatest gift to developers. We want users to upgrade. So we should support the upgrades in our software, for free, whenever possible.

I get emails from users who have clearly been given the raw end of the deal by other companies, and I can’t decide whether I have more pity on the user or on the company that thinks it’s winning anybody’s heart by nickel-diming its customers. Just give them an update, already!

Enough Preaching – What About Red Sweater?

I’ve been running pre-release versions of Leopard as my main development OS for over 4 months, and I’ve been using and testing each of of my apps in that environment. Fortunately, the vast majority of things “just worked.” I had to make some minor tweaks to FastScripts, which I released with the last update.

Red Sweater applications are Leopard-Ready (as far as we can tell), and if any compatibility issues do come up, I expect to be able to address them quickly after Leopard is publicly released. If you’re thinking “I hope my favorite Red Sweater apps will keep working when I upgrade to Leopard,” chances are overwhelmingly good that they will.

Thanks for being my customer! Leopard is going to be awesome!

Update: It’s easy to forget, but it should go without saying that the ease with which my applications were migrated to Leopard was made possible by the hard work of hundreds of Apple employees who worked their asses off these past two years.