Looks like I’m about a week behind in my Late Night Cocoa listening. I finally caught up with the episode on NSResponder, featuring Aaron Hillegass of Big Nerd Ranch.

Scotty is doing such a fantastic job with all the podcasts, I shouldn’t be surprised that this one was also excellent. I really like the way he pulls information out of his guests in a way that makes the shows engaging for both experienced and (I assume!) newbie Cocoa developers alike.

This episode in particular is a must-listen for Cocoa developers who aren’t completely comfortable with the responder chain. In particular, I like the way Aaron comes right out and declares the "First Responder" proxy icon in Interface Builder to be "a lie." In my travels I’ve found that "First Responder" is a woefully misunderstand concept.

Mostly the material in the show was a recap for me, but one concept I had never considered was that of a "view controller" that is inserted directly into the responder chain. Whoah, nifty! Aaron referred specifically to the MOViewController from the MOKit open source framework, by Mike Ferris. The idea is instead of subclassing a view to be able to get at all of its NSResponder-oriented behaviors, why not just insert an object immediately before it in the chain? Now you can respond to whatever want to (Aaron uses the example of a delete key for NSTableView), and pass the rest of the events through to the view.

Great stuff. Thanks Scotty & Aaron for an entertaining and educational show.

Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba got a chance to play with Apple’s newest toy, and discovered that it’s not quite as off-limits to us old-timers as Apple might have suggested! This is the unusual situation where a new product claims a certain limitation but is actually quite more forgiving. Paul discovered that Apple TV actually comes with a “480i” option that makes it suitable (or at least plausible) for some modern-ish TVs that are not quite ready for HDTV, but at least still have “component” input.

I have to admit there’s a big time rift in my technology adoption. Computers? Yes please. Televisions? Umm… when it really matters, maybe. I don’t upgrade my television, as a rule. In fact I have always, over the course of my life, been happy with “whatever television” was around. Right now it’s a 19″ TV that takes coaxial input or “RCA” style AV. It won’t even accept the component video that Paul is excited about. Oh well, I’m an old-timer.

But it’s good news for semi-old-timers who were hoping to use the Apple TV but thought they would be excluded. If you’ve sort of kept up with TV trends, then the Apple TV might be within your reach, even before you upgrade to the latest and greatest. If your TV has “component” inputs, then you could be in luck. If you haven’t, well… welcome to my world.

The folks at Macinstruct have put together a really nice tutorial:

How To Blog Using MarsEdit

Really nice work! I’m looking forward to seeing what other content they come out with in the coming weeks.

Today I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Black Ink 1.0. Read more in the Press Release.

Hopefully the icon makes it pretty obvious that this is an application for solving crossword puzzles. In fact, Black Ink is the successor to the most popular crossword solving application on Mac OS X: MacXword, formerly available from Advenio, LLC.

MacXword was the first AcrossLite-compatible client on Mac OS X, and has evolved over the years into the most feature-filled and elegant product in the category. When I acquired the product from original author Stephan Cleaves two months ago, I did so with two goals in mind:

1. Stay the best.
2. Get even better.

Black Ink is everything that MacXword was, and more:

• Fully compatible with Intel-based Macs.
• Ported from Java to Objective-C and fine-tuned for performance.
• Streamlined UI emphasises finding and solving puzzles.

The best part about this acquisition is that I love, and always have loved crossword puzzles. I’ve even gone so far as to try my hand at composing them. I’ve let my passion for puzzles diminish a little bit over the years, but Black Ink makes it so easy to download and solve puzzles, I’m finding it the perfect antidote to my stress-filled days.

If you love crosswords, and you have a Mac, you need to check out Black Ink.

If you love crosswords and you don’t have a Mac, maybe it’s finally time to change that.

PS: Yes, this is the “java app!“

Update: Stephan Cleaves offers a good historical perspective on MacXword, and how it ended up becoming Black Ink.