Issue 25

20^th January 2012

Written by Dave Verwer

News

A very solid upgrade to what is probably my favourite developer tool. xScope is invaluable.

I think we can all see this happening, hopefully it won’t all be Smurfberries and virtual poker dollars though.

Tools

I have heard ideas for a tool like this to find duplicates and unused files in projects bounced around many times but Dragon Forged Software actually went ahead and did it, and very useful it is too.

Kyle Newsome with a detailed look at AppCode. It would be great to see some of the features from AppCode make it into Xcode but I don’t think I will ever use AppCode full time, maybe I would feel different if I was coming from Java dev using JetBrains tools.

Need a quick web site for your iOS app? Ben Scheirman has created AppKickstand which gives a cleaner mini site for your app than the default iTunes store page. This would be a great little tool if it supported video for the preview area rather than just a screenshot.

Code

Jiva DeVoe on the problem of ARC/Non ARC code in open source Objective-C projects. In a follow up conversation on Twitter, Drew McCormack suggested removing the issue altogether by building static libraries which is an even better solution.

Colin Wheeler recently ported his Zangetsu library to iOS and wrote some interesting notes on the process. Might be interesting if you are faced with tackling the same issues.

The aforementioned Zangetsu library from Colin Wheeler.

Design

Nice round up and opinion by Dan Benjamin on the iPhone mute button design issue that was highlighted in the worst way possible this week. That little switch on the side has been the source of much controversy with this issue and also with the rotation lock/mute issue when the iPad came out.

Business and Marketing

This look at app pricing from David Barnard is worth reading especially for the list of possible solutions for to the problem towards the end of the article. I know I still really want some kind of mechanism for trial periods (or even just permission to do it myself!).

Matthijs Hollemans with some great advice on being a successful iOS freelancer. I couldn’t disagree with a single word.