As a part of the MacStories Apps Tree event ,I had the chance to interview Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Software, the man behind apps such as MarsEdit and Fastscripts.

This is 13th of many interviews and guest posts I’ll publish on MacStories during this week.

Enjoy!

Hi there! Can you please introduce yourself to MacStories readers and tell us something about your work?

I am the founder of Red Sweater Software, which is best known for its Mac desktop blogging application, MarsEdit. Right now Red Sweater is mostly a “one-man operation”, but I’m hoping to build it into a small company with several employees teaming up to expand our current lineup of applicatons.

When did you first think of MarsEdit? How did it come to life? And what about the other apps?

MarsEdit is not my original creation, it was developed by Brent Simmons, the same guy who created NetNewsWire. Actually it started out as a feature inside NetNewsWire, then Brent spun it off into a separate application. It’s a long story, but in the end I acquired MarsEdit from the Newsgator, the company that had previously acquired all of Brent’s independently-developed products.

When did you interest in Mac software development exactly get started?

I grew up surrounded by computers, because my Dad is a software engineer. But I didn’t really start trying to program until I was a teenager, and then I wasn’t very good. Until I was 16 or so I had never actually used a Mac much. All the computers in our house were Amigas, UNIX-type machines, and even a KayPro. But when I saw a friend’s PowerBook Duo 210, I was instantly sold. I convinced my Dad to buy me one and soon thereafter, I got serious about starting to learn programming for real, using Symantec Think C on the Mac.

Which are the favorite apps of a Mac developer? Can you please tell us something about your workflow?

We are lucky that lots of our favorite apps come straight from Apple. For instance, performance tools like Shark and Instruments are given to us for free. These help us to zero in on the problems in our app so that they behave better for customers. It’s a really great move for Apple because they benefit if all the apps on the platform are better and less buggy.

There are also some third party apps that I find very useful for development purposes. For instance rooSwitch from Rocket makes it really easy to switch preferences settings around, so you can test under different user scenarios.

My workflow pretty much follows the classic “Fix, Build, Test” cycle. I use a bug-tracking system (FogBugz) to manage the list of every bug and every planned feature for my applications. If I sit down to start working, I find a bug or feature in the list that needs to be done, and start working on the changes necessary to make that happen. After I’m done fixing it, I use Apple’s developer tools to “package up” the code into the application which can now be launched. Then I launch it and confirm that the changes are behaving the way I hoped.

Have you ever thought of a mobile version of MarsEdit? I think it would be awesome. Or are you “scared” by the AppStore?

I am definitely excited by the idea of a MarsEdit touch. I’ve started working on iPhone versions of just about all of my apps. I am just not convinced yet that I should be prioritizing the iPhone with my development time. I’m guessing that eventually most of my apps will have shipping iPhone counterparts.

FastScripts is one of my favorite apps since I discovered it. Are you an “Applescript guru” yourself?

Not really! I have learned quite a bit of the ins and outs since I started using FastScripts for my own scripting purposes, but for the most part I use it on a pretty surface level. “Just enough to get the job done.” There are some people who use AppleScript for incredibly advanced workflows. I just use it to mostly do one-off tasks in various applications.

Speaking of Mac OS X..Is there something you’d change in the UI? Many people wanted a total graphical refresh for Snow Leopard, but it didn’t happen. I believe it’s going to come with 10.7 though. What do you think?

You know, I am pretty happy with the UI in 10.6 for the most part. I was just so happy when 10.5 came out that they went to the trouble of trying to unify most of the UI style. Remember, before 10.5 it was all different kinds of gradients and even “metal” style textures. And I don’t miss the pinstripes from earlier OS X releases!

I bet you have something big in store for the future..Can you give us a hint? ;)

Aside from the good possibility that Red Sweater will make a big splash on the iPhone one of these days, all I’ve got up my sleeve is a huge list of improvements for all of my apps. We’ll see how much I can get to, and how quickly!

Thanks for chatting with us!

Thanks so much for inviting me!