Issue 85

Comment

Happy Friday everyone!

News

Enabling Experimental Features with URL Schemes

I haven't seen this done before but Loren Brichter has added the ability to unlock experimental features in LetterPress with a "hidden" URL scheme. I haven't spoken to Loren about how he approached this with the review team but I would imagine that being up front about what you are doing and providing clear information to them using the reviewer notes would be a good move before trying this with an app.

Changes to the Public API Program

What a (disastrous) week for apps based around 3rd party APIs. With Twitter's recent antics, this announcement from Netflix as well as Google Reader announcing a full on shut down this week it feels like a good time for a reminder to not base too much of your revenue on an API you have no control over. This Netflix one was the most surprising one to me as it felt like their API was being used to drive revenue towards their paid service unlike the APIs from Twitter and Google Reader.

Tools

Deploymate

This app from Ivan Vasic made my week. Analyse your Xcode project for incompatibilities with your minimum supported iOS deployment version. I wouldn't recommend this as an alternative to testing on real devices running real versions of an OS but it has immediately become an essential part of my workflow rather than something I only ever tested occasionally, and usually just before release. Essential.

Code

iOS Push Notifications: Best Practices

This is a great set of best practice tips by Ryan Twomey for implementing push in your app. On the same subject, I came across an app the other day which seemed to do something interesting with the push notification prompt by only asking me for permission to push after I had launched it a few times. I would imagine this is a pretty good way to get more users to opt in as I had already had a chance to see if the app was useful to me before being prompted. Smart.

AGGeometryKit

Håvard Fossli has open sourced some fantastic code which adds a quadrilateral property to CALayer along with a whole host of utility functions and animation helpers to give your flat layers a little more pop. Hard to explain in words so make sure you watch the YouTube video to get an idea of the possibilities.

iOSVideoCameraMultiStitch

Carson McDonald with some code for recording a "Vine" style multi-section video clip including an asset stitching class which could come in useful for all sorts of stuff. Let the Vine clones flow.

Putting a UICollectionView in a UITableViewCell

Cells inside cells inside cells inside cells, where will it end? Useful advice here from Ash Furrow on how to do this properly.

Business and Marketing

Befriending Apple

Kevin Hoctor with a heartwarming story from the initial release of MoneyWell and the value of building relationships with Apple staff. He has a point, I have only ever had positive things happen as a result of speaking someone at Apple about what I am doing and you also get to meet some genuinely interested and helpful people as a result. This is why WWDC tickets are like gold dust.

9 surprising reasons mobile apps get rejected from the Apple app store

I'm not sure I would agree with the word "surprising" in the title of this article by Nat Friedman but this is a nice little checklist you could run through to make sure that new app you are submitting is going to get a nice smooth run through the review process.

And finally...

Early iPhone Prototype Photos

Fascinating, I would love to see the software it was running at this point.

Issue 85 March 15th 2013