Issue 175

5^th December 2014

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

I didn’t see the Analytics icon in my iTunes Connect account like Paul Haddad did and I’m certainly not going to make any predictions about when it’s going to launch this time 😬. The fact that the icon is appearing, even briefly, is a good sign that it’s getting closer to launch though, I can’t wait to see the data when it does become available.

Dave Verwer

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News

I had a feeling we would see more stories like this before things settled down. Federico Viticci has a good piece on the sad story of Drafts having to remove all interactivity from their Today widget. After the about face with the Pcalc widget it looks like Apple are swinging back in the direction of no interactivity. If you have behaviour like this, I’d brace yourself for an email.

Michael Lopp on the mindset and skills needed for working in QA. Dedicated QA teams may be less common these days, but it’s more important than ever as bugs are much more likely to have serious consequences. Often our data is only a WHERE clause away from the next customer’s instead of locked up securely in our disconnected Windows 95 PC. Such a great post, you really shouldn’t skip this one.

Tools

Michele Titolo with a great article on understanding the pbxproj file. Even if we (mostly) never edit some of these files that Xcode creates directly, it’s always worth having a good understanding of them for when that merge needs to happen.

Code

David Heinemeier Hansson on where the balance lies between native and web content now that we have access to almost desktop class power in our pockets and performance should be less of an issue. It’s a good article but it’s worth bearing in mind that David isn’t saying this is the way to go for every app, this is what works for Basecamp and makes a good experience for that service.

David Smith is going to be blogging his progress with getting to grips with WatchKit. He’s started with two posts on Visualizing Watch Apps and Learning in the Dev Forums but I’d expect many more posts as he progresses so keep an eye on the index post linked above.

Even if, like me, you’re not lucky enough to have access to Pay yet because you’re outside the US and you’re selling physical goods in your app, then there’s no excuse for not getting started with the technology. Erik Kerber has all the details.

Design

This side by side comparison of the UI in Apple and Google maps by Jon Bell and William Van Hecke is fascinating. I’m really pleased to see so much in-depth analysis on the design of the apps we use every day. With these posts and Brian Lovin’s Design Details series, there’s certainly no shortage of quality content on this topic recently.

Business and Marketing

Allen Pike with a piece on why you should consider how much money can be made by the app you’re planning to build, before building it. It’s also worth reading this follow up by Rob Rhyne and this one by Dave Wiskus who draws a slightly different conclusion.

What does the future of delivery on mobile platforms look like? Obviously, what Chris Maddern explores in this article isn’t going to be possible in the short term but I thought this was an interesting look at the future.

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And finally...

So true.