Richard Buckle and I moderate a mailing list for Mac, iPhone and iPad developers based in the UK and Europe.
The target audience is a technical one - Cocoa and Carbon programmers writing in Objective-C, C++, Python, Ruby, Java and so on. It isn’t intended as a help group for Mac or iPhone users - there are other resources for that.
Why Another List?
The list isn’t a replacement for Apple’s own lists - and as such it’s generally very low volume. If you have a specific question about Cocoa you’re probably best off posting to Apple’s Cocoa list. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to be able to ask a question of people who you actually know - and of course there are times when the question is specifically relevant to the UK or Europe. We encourage posts about recruitment and the sharing of work - as long as they are relevant and focussed.
How To Subscribe
For more information, to subscribe to the list via the web, or to read the messages without subscribing, go to http://yahoogroups.com/groups/uk-mac-dev/.
Membership to the list is moderated (in other words, we have to approve your membership). This is a mere formality to try to prevent spammers from joining - so please include a sensible comment when you apply for membership.
If you have any problems, please mail uk-mac-dev-owner@yahoogroups.com.
First Posts
The first post that any member makes to the list is subject to approval by the moderators.
Again, this is just to stop spammers from joining the list just to post spam. The down-side of this is that your first message may take a while to turn up, because we have to notice that it is awaiting approval! Once you’ve posted something that is clearly not spam, we’ll switch your address over to unmoderated and hopefully subsequent posts will be faster.
Job Postings
Job postings are fine as long as they are directly relevant and not repeated unreasonably often (in case of doubt, ask uk-mac-dev-owner@yahoogroups.com). If you don’t want to go to the hassle of joining the list just to post a job message, you are welcome to send it to uk-mac-dev-owner@yahoogroups.com and we will post it for you.
Monthly Meeting
We also have a regular monthly meeting in London, at a pub. This is an informal opportunity to gossip, talk shop about Macs and programming, and to drink beer - all without having our non-technical friends and partners sighing, tutting or leaving us in disgust! These days this meeting is officially a NSCoder night, and is organised via the @nscodernightlon twitter account. It’s also advertised on our mailing list and the Cocoa Heads mailing list, so effectively it’s also the London meeting for a number of groups.
History
We set up the list after meeting at an Apple Script kitchen given by Chris Espinosa in Stockley Park about ten years ago. We realised that we’re a relatively rare breed, we enjoyed meeting other like minded folks, and we really ought to try to keep in touch with each other.
Isn’t The UK In Europe By The Way?
Yes it is :)
I stupidly named the list “UK” at the beginning, despite half the people at the Apple Script kitchen being from mainland Europe. I realised my mistake quickly, but the mailing list name has stuck.