It’s that time of year again. That time, late in the year, where I start wishing I blogged more often. It actually started earlier this year when I rewrote this whole blog1 back in March. So what got me back here in a text editor writing a blog post? Really it came down to that weekly feeling at the end of the weekend that I’ve finished very little. I guess if I can finish at least one small blog post, I can start feeling like I’ve finished something.
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Even when you’ve been working in an environment for years, you still find things you never knew. I liken it to learning about a famous actor you had never heard of, but has starred in all your favorite movies.
I found two things that I wish I had known or seen, but for whatever reason, I missed.
First up, convenience functions for converting a CGRect to a NSString or a NSString to a CGRect.
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As an enterprise iOS developer, I’ve had the wonders of over-the-air installation for my apps since iOS 4 dropped. I’ve enjoyed it so much so that I’ve pushed to make sure all our users have moved to iOS 4 (not the only reason, of course). So instead of sending a user an IPA file, they simply browse to your site from the device itself.
A few months ago, Hockey was announced that brought a similar workflow to beta testers of non-enterprise apps.
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My talk on Bad Movies from September’s PechaKucha. I think it went over pretty well. The event was well run and many of the other talks were also great. I especially enjoyed a talk about Physicist Richard Feynman and his decade-long attempt to visit Tannu Tuva.
I am working on a small app at the office for all our mac users to help locate files on the network (more on this later), I decided to go with a spotlight style NSStatusItem based app. I’ve been really inspired by these apps lately (when done right). Mostly thanks to Notify.
To make this more handy I decided to include a global hotkey. For Leopard and earlier, one problem is you have to use the old Carbon-based events.
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A great lunch-time conversation occurred yesterday about what the iPad means and the future of the desktop. There have been a lot of questions floating around; moreso before and during WWDC and it’s lack of Mac-based content. So, what is the future of the Mac? Is the iPhone and iOS the future of the Desktop?
“I think PCs are going to be like trucks, …” Steve Jobs said at D8
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Want to get your kids excited about coding? Think about looking into arduino. My fashion design and meteorology loving daughter was having a great time and even said “coding is fun!”.
I’m generally not a case type person. I try to find the smallest case possible for my iPhone. Still, I wanted something that protected my iPad when tossed in my bag. Generally a fan of the Moleskine, the Dodocase was the top of my list. So how is it? I like it, and it actually makes me want to carry the iPad around more.
The Good The overall feel is wonderful.
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Here it is, yet another video showing the process of creating an iPhone app, just a bit inspired by the video posted by tap tap tap. As you’ll see, this whole post is full of inspiration.
My latest project has been for a client that was looking for a focused percentage calculator. A quick search through the App Store shows a lot of tip calculators and even some percentage calculators. It would be very easy to pop a few controls and some simple math together to make an app, but aren’t Mac / iPhone interfaces supposed to be a bit more thought out?
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With over 100,000 apps available on the iTunes App Store, developers are striving to be seen. If your iPhone App is on the front page of the App Store, sales tend to rise. What if your App is in the actual Apple Store? Will it help sales? I guess it could, but most users won’t make the leap from an image in the store to the app in iTunes. That said, at least you can say “My app was featured in the Apple Store”.
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