inessential by Brent Simmons

MDJ Power 25

I was totally flattered to have been on John Gruber’s ballot for the MDJ Power 25.

Below is my ballot. (I didn’t vote for Steve Jobs, by the way. Of course he’s most powerful in the Mac community, but I felt like voting for people who I actually see when I look around.)

So here’s how I voted:

1. Ric Ford

MacInTouch is the center of the Macintosh web; it’s the “paper of record” for Mac news.

2. Derrick Story

As O’Reilly Network managing editor, Derrick works on MacDevCenter, which has consistently published great articles for Mac developers. The Mac OS X Innovators contest rewards creativity in OS X development.

3. Dave Hyatt

Dave works on WebCore, the rendering code underneath Safari and Web Kit. His weblog is a great example of a developer developing in public.

4. Aaron Hillegass

Aaron’s Cocoa book, one of the first, taught lots of developers how to program in Cocoa. Big Nerd Ranch continues to teach developers.

5. Dan Wood

Watson was one of the first OS X apps to show you can have a product that works with the web but isn’t a web browser—a powerful demonstration that richer interfaces are possible, and that people would like them.