A Guide to the Apple Developer Connection

A first glance at the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) website might make you think it’s just a library of Apple programming related documentation, but if you are interested in Mac OS X development or are inspired to attend WWDC I recommend you investigate the ADC a bit more. Personally I have found the experience helpful and fulfilling in my short career as a Mac Software Developer. Outside of the vast library of documentation and sample code shared by the ADC, they also have a number of other services. I have found several of these to be very helpful, so here are a few that might interest you too:

The Student Membership and Scholarship program each year sponsors several hundred post-secondary students from across the world to attend the World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. The ADC Student membership is not free, it costs $99, but consider this a small price to pay for the included Mac OS X and Developer mail-outs and a one-time special hardware discount.

A free online membership which includes such things as access to up-to-date development tool downloads and an ADC news subscription.

Technical Support Incidents, a (paid) way for developers to speak to Apple Developer Support Engineers familiar with Apple code to help resolve difficult to pinpoint or troubleshoot bugs.

ADC Business Resources offers marketing strategies and programs exclusively to ADC members. Business resources include distribution, advertising and product development related information as well as Apple’s Hot Deals and Dashboard Widget Browser websites. Of particular interest to independent developers is the ADC Developer Pavilion at Macworld which offers devs a booth at Macworld next to Apple and an attractive advertising package for a fairly low price.

Mailing Lists where developers can tap the deep well of knowledge of many other developers and Apple engineers.

Bug Reporting, a web app based system for reporting and tracking bugs in Apple hardware and software. This isn’t tech support but it’s an excellent way of passing your concerns directly to Apple.

WWDC tickets, if you are a developer and are interested in attending Apple’s main developer event in San Francisco the ADC is the only place to purchase tickets. Besides being a fantastic place to learn cutting edge information about Mac OS X, it’s a great place to speak to Apple engineers about solutions for your development project’s needs and network with other developers (if you’re there, you might meet me!).

If you are new to software development and want to start wading through the ADC libraries there are just a few other words and acronyms you should know to get by:

API – Application Programming Interface
MVC – Model View Controller
Radar – An Apple Bug Report. “Have you filed a Radar about that bug?”
SDK – Software Development Kit
WWDC – World-wide Developer Conference
WWDR – World-wide Developer Relations, essentially this is the team that organizes and runs WWDC and the ADC website.

For those brave souls who want to dive into the exciting and fun world of OS X development I wish you good luck and hope the Apple Developer Connection and the many services they provide can help you on your way.

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