The iPhone app platform TapLynx from NetNewsWire was released yesterday, after months of anticipation. TapLynx provides you with a way to build media-rich iPhone applications without having to write any code. It's basically NetNewsWire's way of leveraging their RSS expertise along with their iPhone development skills, in the form of Brent Simmons.

Although TapLynx users don't need Cocoa knowledge, if you're a Cocoa developer you can use TapLynx to quickly add media management features to your app. In fact, NewsGator distributes TapLynx as a Software Development Kit, making its development roots fairly obvious. Beyond the ability to customize the user interface and choose the feeds you want your app to display, TapLynx offers the unique feature of being able to do remote updates to the app. This means that you can change a number of things in the app including the look-and-feel without requiring an update to be submitted to the frustratingly slow App Store.

Brent Simmons, the developer behind TapLynx, is the guy behind the perennial Mac favorite RSS reader, NetNewsWire. What many people don't know is that before he did NetNewsWire he worked at UserLand, creating tools for developers. So in some ways this is Brent returning to his roots.

[Update] As commenters have pointed out, the pricing for TapLynx is a little over the top: $3,499US for an Enterprise license, which is the only type of license they offer. That makes the news of TapLynx's release a little less interesting, in my opinion.

Users of NewsGator's NetNewsWire iPhone news reader have been waiting with bated breath for the next iteration of the application, with the promise of the ability to mark news items unread and send articles to InstaPaper Instapaper, amongst other enhancements. As time has gone on, it became clear that Brent Simmons was working on other projects that are related to (but most decidedly not) the next iteration of NetNewsWire for the iPhone.

So what has been keeping him busy? As it turns out, NewsGator is rolling out an entire iPhone framework called TapLynx, which will allow its users to create content-rich topic-focused newsreader applications. The first such application, the All Things Digital iPhone app, was created by Simmons himself.

The goal of TapLynx is to offer users a framework that allows them to simply choose some images, set URLs for content feeds, and generate a media application for the iPhone without requiring any programming.

TapLynx is currently not even yet in beta, but you can sign up to get an alpha invitation on the TapLynx site.

By the way, for the NetNewsWire iPhone fans out there, it turns out that the next iteration of the app will be based on TapLynx, so even though it doesn't seem like there has been much recent movement, things are still progressing. We may even see the ability for NetNewsWire (both the Mac and iPhone versions) to synchronize with Google Reader accounts.

Brent Simmons, creator of the beloved NetNewsWire RSS app, is a talkative guy. We've chatted with him quite a few times about various Mac issues, and late last week he gave another interview to Shawn Blanc over at his website.

The interview is mostly about NetNewsWire-- the inspiration for its various features, and the development process Simmons goes through (he writes way more code than he ever uses, and calls himself an "anti-packrat"). There's also a picture of Simmons' workspace (above)-- he works on a Cinema display hooked up to a 17" iMac, with a 17" PowerBook around for PPC testing. He also has a HappyLite Sunshine Simulator right there-- I would think shining a light in my face every morning would wear me out, but he says it helps his Seattle existence, and if it gave us NNW (3.1 is on the way, we're told), I won't argue.

Always a good guy, that Simmons, except that he's a little indecisive-- he told us his favorite feature was the Attention Report, and now he says it's the spacebar. Make up your mind!

Brent Simmons has earned a spot in our docks for years now with NetNewsWire, perhaps the premiere RSS reader on the Mac. But Brent loves developing Mac apps, and he's a big fan of the platform in general. Funny how that works. Mr. Simmons was kind enough to sit and chat with Scott about the WWDC keynote, his competition and some cool new features in NNW3.

MacTech has released their MacTech 25 for the second year in a row-- it's a list of the top 25 most influential people in the Mac community (as selected by the community itself), and it reads like a who's who of people doing great stuff : John Gruber, the suave-looking Aaron Hillegass and Brent Simmons all make return appearances. This year they chose everyone who's ever programmed for MarsEdit (as Daniel Jalkut is happy to say), not to mention both co-founders of Rogue Ameoba, Paul Kafasis and Alex Lagutin.

Who's missing? Anyone from Apple-- MacTech specifically left them off the list to make sure they didn't hog the Spotlight, so to speak. They say that Apple employees are allowed to be put in the Honorable Mentions section, but as far as I can tell, while Leo Laporte, David Pogue and Merlin Mann all made it, no one from Apple actually did. Better get cracking on those influencing techniques for next year, guys.

Making good on his word after purchasing MarsEdit from Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software has quickly taken up development of the blogging client. Today Daniel released MarsEdit 1.2, a minor update that brings some great features like Growl support (when publishing, refreshing or uploading images and files) and Picasa upload support for Blogger.com images, as well as support for blogging to Vox, the community-focused blogging system from Six Aparts, makers of Live Journal and TypePad.

For anyone who needs the power of Mac OS X while blogging, MarsEdit is a great great choice that offers a wealth of other features for a mere $24.95. A demo is of course also available from Red Sweater Software.

Hot on the heels of releasing NetNewsWire 3 Brent Simmons, developer and creator of said program, sat down with me in the virtual HQ of TUAW (a.k.a. the Internet) and answered my questions five. Read on to hear what Brent has to say about NNW's new UI, the feature he would have liked to have included, and what apps are most often in his Dock.

Apple's announcement that Leopard has been delayed until October was quite the shocker, especially since we apparently have the iPhone to thank. This of course elicited nearly every response you can think of from every walk of life, but we don't often hear from what I feel is one of the most important building blocks of the Mac OS X community: 3rd party developers. Sure, developers blog about stuff like this on their own, but not everyone is down for sifting through posts about the inner workings of Mac OS X for the insightful opinion pieces on what things like a Leopard delay mean to Apple and its users. And that isn't a bad thing, especially since it inspired me to bring the developers' thoughts to you in an interview series with some of Mac OS X's biggest hitters, including Wil Shipley (co-founder of Omni Group and Delicious Monster), Paul Kafasis (CEO of Rogue Amoeba), Gus Mueller (of Flying Meat software) and Allan Odgaard (of Macromates).

I wanted to get their thoughts on Leopard, the iPhone and where Apple is headed as a company in light of Mac OS X delays and Apple's gadgets which would (or should) make great venues for their products. Thankfully, all the developers responded positively and offered some great insight on these issues. These guys have a unique perspective on the state of Apple and its products, and I'm thankful that they all took the time to lay it down as only a Mac OS X developer can.

First up (only because he was the first to reply) is Brent Simmons of NewsGator fame. Read on for thoughts from the man who brought RSS and blogging to the Mac masses with NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (which was acquired recently by Red Sweater Software).

On Friday of last week at Macworld 07, Brent Simmons (of NewsGator/ NetNewsWire/ MarsEdit fame) and Paul Kafasis (of Rogue Amoeba/Audio Hijack/Airfoil fame) were kind enough to unite their powers and sit down with me for an interview. For just over 20 minutes we discussed Macworld, the iPhone, the state of Mac OS X, being a developer, whether competition or web services are slowing them down and a whole lot more. The interview turned out great, but the audio needed a little cleanup. My XtremeMac MicroMemo usually does a good recording job with my iPod, but we did the interview in the large press room hall at Macworld so it picked up some background noise. It sounds pretty good now (thanks Mike!), and it should be a good listen for anyone interested in a perspective on the state of Apple and their products from two influential 3rd party developers.

This TUAW Podcast #18 weighs in at just under 21MB, and can be had from this direct link, our iTunes Store Podcast directory or our own podcast RSS feed. Enjoy.

P.S. - On a related note, our TUAW podcast is now listed in the digg podcast directory. Why not head over and show some love by digging our podcast and your favorite individual episodes?