Issue 2

12^th August 2011

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

So here it is, Issue 2! Thanks so much for the fantastic response to last week’s round up. The list already has over 850 subscribers which is unbelievable! Let’s see if we can break 1,000 by next week?

If you have any links you would like to suggest for future issues then please tweet me with them or reply to this mail.

Dave Verwer

Tools

Just in case you missed it this week here are the release notes for iOS 5.0b5. NDA helpfully broken by BGR as I can’t find a way to get a deep link to the official version of these without it breaking when logging into the developer portal.

It may be too early to link to this but if it does what it promises then this could be a neat way of getting a server back end up and running quickly for your iOS apps. The site itself is in private beta at the moment but you can see an interview with the founders here which gives a little more information.

Code

Brent Simmons with a great little collection of tips for writing smart code and coding smartly!

Need a version of OpenSSL or cURL for your iOS app? This google code project provides pre built versions of several libraries along with instructions on how to easily integrate them. Great idea.

A super simple to use class for writing to the keychain as if it were a (string only) version of NSUserDefaults. It won’t be useful for every time you need the keychain but I thought it was cute enough to include.

Saul Mora on dealing with temporary core data objects when a plain old Objective-C object just won’t do.

For those of us that are going to really miss retain and release when ARC comes along. Hilarious. (Hat tip for the date picked for the code sample as well!)

Design

Simplicity vs Depth, Lukas Mathis on thinking about your audience before adding features to your app. He talks mainly about Mac apps in the article but I think this is possibly even more relevant to small screen devices.

I will occasionally link design related articles like the one above but Nathan Barry let me know about a similar list to this which he has set up for iOS design related links.

Business and Marketing

I can’t imagine a weekly round up these days that doesn’t include a story about software patents. Apple seems to be insisting on getting involved with the Lodsys patent cases. Good news. You might also want to check out Marco’s post on software patents from yesterday too.

Are you still supporting iOS 3? 2? I wish Apple provided definitive stats for iOS version usage but until they do this is a nice round up of the most recent stats from various sources.

A comprehensive list of sites which cover iOS apps, listed by Alexa ranking. More importantly it includes submission forms/email addresses for a good number of sites (Apologies for the slightly spammy site, however the content is good).