Issue 145

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News

Apple Should be the Netflix of Cloud Computing

Drew McCormack on iCloud and the general state of sync services. It's a good look at the landscape and the issues surrounding it. The only thing I can't ever see happening here is Apple opening iCloud up to anything other than iOS and OS X. Whether or not it would be a good idea is almost irrelevant, it's not going to happen.

The Open Source development of Unreal Tournament 4

This is fascinating and a very shrewd move from Unreal. Epic are going to fully open source the development of Unreal Tournament 4 to promote Unreal Engine, their new game engine. If you ever wanted to watch the development of a large game title take place, this is your chance. It's not clear whether UT4 is going to be on iOS or not at this stage but the engine certainly is so if you are considering using it, this is going to be a goldmine of technique.

Tools

I Stopped Using NIBs Thanks to Auto Layout

Kirby Turner on abandoning XIBs and Storyboards for assembling everything with code. There are a few advantages of doing things this way; easier merges, more transparency around what is being set and where and never ever having to commit a XIB/Storyboard change when the Xcode version updates. It's a good post but I remain unconvinced, I'll trade those few points for the convenience, ease of use and visual nature of IB every time.

Dringend

Xcode on iPad? OK so you need to have a Mac powered on and available somewhere as the build and code signing process still requires OS X but this is quite an impressive feat nonetheless. My first thought was to put this into "And Finally..." but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it deserving of a non-sarcastic link. A glimpse of the future maybe?

Code

When an Autorelease Isn't

The Friday Q&A has been on hiatus for a little while but Mike Ash brings it back this week with a story about autorelease which turns into a bit of a quest to dig deep into the internals of ARC.

Replicating UIScrollView’s deceleration with Facebook Pop

Rounak Jain follows up Ole Begemann's post from last week on rebuilding UIScrollView by adding inertia scrolling using Pop. Grant Paul then added bouncing and rubber banding as well. It's great to see Ole's little experiment expanded and improved like this.

iBeacons Lessons Learned

Sean McMains with a solid run down of what you can and can't achieve with iBeacons. The capabilities of beacons are quite often misunderstood by developers and I'm guilty of this too, for quite a while I believed it was possible to get a heading and distance of a beacon which simply isn't possible. This post will help you brush up on your knowledge.

Design

Error Messages

Brent Simmons on how to write great error messages. I'm guilty of occasionally apologising in error messages but the key point here is how to structure the message to get the most important information across and to give the user something they can do about it. Very wise words.

Questions I ask when reviewing a design

Jason Fried with a great set of questions to ask when reviewing designs. Notice how few of these have anything to do with how it actually looks.

Business and Marketing

How to make $250,000 with ASCII graphics

Barrett Sheridan interviewing Michael Townsend and Amir Rajan about A Dark Room which is a game written with very little attention paid to visuals or UI design. Instead, the narrative makes it compelling and even though I find the UI uncomfortable, I find this fascinating.

And finally...

The Story Behind After Dark

Flying toaster anyone?

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Issue 145 May 9th 2014