Issue 43

25^th May 2012

Written by Dave Verwer

News

Whatever the actual issue is with AirFoil, this is the second case (the first being Sketchshare, linked to in issue 41) of an app being removed from the store with only 2 days notice. This is a huge problem as 2 days is really not long enough to do much of anything, at least Sketchshare were told what was wrong.

Appsterdam on tour in San Francisco with another co-working venue for WWDC week which may be useful if you are planning to do an unofficial WWDC this year. Or just pop along for one of the famous Appsterdam lunchtime lectures as they are hosting a different one every day.

Information directly from the source on RubyMotion. Scotty, John Fox and Saul Mora interview Laurent Sansonetti on RubyMotion. An interesting conversation which is well worth a listen (as it is every week).

Tools

I have used ScreenFlow to produce several iOS screencasts and demo videos in the past and it is a fantastic tool for working with screen recorded video. Don McAllister released a set of apps this week for both Mac and iOS with a full tutorial on how to use ScreenFlow.

Code

Matt Gemmell has written an outstanding article on how to think about building an API in Objective-C. This is something close to my heart and in my opinion should be required reading for all Mac and iOS developers.

I first came across the concept of describing dates using words in Rails and it really does make dates easier to relate to for users. Matt McComb has generously provided an elegant implementation of date descriptions for Objective-C.

It takes a fair bit to get me to link to another pull to refresh implementation here but this one by Sam Soffes seemed like it might be worth a link as the most customisable implementation yet.

Design

Useful reference from iDev 101 with all of the standard sizes for iOS UI elements, one to bookmark.

Business and Marketing

Has it really only been 4 years? I loved reading this comprehensive recap from MacStories on the App Store so far. The article also digs into one of the biggest unsolved problems with the App Store, discovery.

Interesting interview with Jony Ive in the Telegraph this week after he received his knighthood. You have to love the last paragraph of this (that’s a way to make you read it to the end eh?)

Dave Addey tweeted a super useful tip for iTunes Connect promo codes this week. This has been working for a good while now (maybe forever?) but I am not sure it is a well known fact so thought it was worth a link.