Issue 118

1^st November 2013

Written by Dave Verwer

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News

I’ve heard this argument a few times before but the case Kyle Richter puts forward here has me doubting myself on whether we will ever see a native SDK for the Apple TV. For me, the use case that is especially compelling in this post is the multiplayer one. Get some friends together, have all the devices connect to each other with one using AirPlay to get the visuals up to the TV. My big issue with this kind of approach is still around marketing. In my opinion, Apple TV as an accessory for an iPhone/iPad is always going to be a weaker message to put out than to position the TV + App Store as a whole new category of device.

Seems like there has been a small update to searching on the App Store this week with Apple’s bundled apps now showing up for common search terms. It seems obvious to those of us who use iOS every day as developers that these apps exist but just last week I came across someone who was unaware that iOS shipped with a voice memo app so I can certainly see the value in this. Maybe in the future we might be able to remove some of these standard apps and reinstall them this way?

Tools

One thing that SpriteKit lacks over something like Cocos 2D is the rich set of supporting tools which have been created for it over the years. The good news is that the tools can be adapted to work just as well with SpriteKit and this is exactly what has happened to Glyph Designer with their latest update. Michael Daley runs through the SpriteKit support which has been included and code you will need to take advantage of it.

If you are looking for a tool for creating 3D models which will not require a remortgage on your house then Blender is almost certainly going to be top of the shopping list. This article sees Vicki Wenderlich taking a look at it from the point of view of a complete beginner building up a simple object.

Code

As the app store is now flooded with iOS 7 redesigns and I must admit that the blanket adoption of the slightly off white navigaton bar is getting a little tedious already. Simon Ng takes a quick look at the UIAppearance options for customisation which are still with us in iOS 7 and how to make your app look a little different.

This replacement for UIActivityViewController from Jared Sinclair and Justin Williams looks great. It’s clearly never going to have the deep integration with AirDrop that is possible with the standard share sheet but this looks to be a better solution for supporting more than it allows.

Working with a designer who specifies colours as Pantone values? Zack Brown has put together a full set of Pantone colours as a category on UIColor. You might also want to check out his GitHub profile for a Crayola colour name category and for OS X versions of both as well.

macOS Development

Like Nik Fletcher, I am extremely happy to see that Apple are finally starting to sandbox their own apps. However I find it a little disappointing that they could only get it done by using private entitlements. Definitely a step in the right direction though, I hope these exceptions only live on for them for a while until they make enhancements to the sandboxing APIs on OS X.

I linked to Nick Arnott’s iOS testing mind map back in issue 58 and now Cory Bohon has taken it and made an alternative version for testing OS X apps. Lots of edge cases mentioned here and this would make a great place to start when planning testing of a new app or update.

Design

Interesting approach to form fields by Matt Smith. I really like this.

And finally...

The tables have turned.