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mindsea.com
News
Unique Identifiers, iPhone 5 Support and Retina Artwork
Two big review process changes from Apple this week. The first is that finally the UDID change which has been hanging around for a while now will come into effect on May 1st and no new apps or app updates will be accepted if they still access the unique identifier of an iOS device. The second change which I have linked to specifically here is a little more surprising, no apps or updates will be approved without support for retina artwork and the 4" phone screen. I am all in favour of this rule, everyone should already be doing this but I still feel that this one may take some people by surprise when the rejections start coming through in June.
apple.com
Audiobus
So this is an interesting one, Audiobus is a library which uses the audio multitasking features of iOS to allow apps to pipe audio between themselves acting as either audio source, audio processor or audio input. Audiobus has been around for a while now but the reason it's making the news this week is that (shockingly?) it was integrated into GarageBand for iOS this week. Is this Apple dipping its toe into inter-app communication or is it just adding a cool feature to GarageBand? Either way, an interesting story.
audiob.us
WWDC
WWDC 2013 Ticket Sales Notification
It's that time of the year again. With WWDC Alerts not running this year Oisin Prendiville has started up a paid service performing the same job, get a phone call or SMS when tickets go on sale. The interesting bit with this service is that you can pay to jump the queue so the question has to be, just how badly do you want that WWDC ticket?
gumroad.com
WWDC Alert App
Or, if you want the notification checked right there in your own pocket then Rahul Matta has put together a small app which uses location services to schedule a repeating background check of the WWDC site and checks for changes. Me? I'm using both of these.
rmatta.com
Tools
Attaching NSLogger Logs to HockeyApp Crash Reports
While crash logs can be extremely helpful, sometimes you need just a little more information to find that bug. Tim Brückmann writes about how to get NSLogger log data encoded and attached to your HockeyApp crash reports. Viewing the data after it has been submitted is a bit of a pain but this could certainly be useful if you are trying to track down an awkward bug.
rheinfabrik.de
Code
The Amazing Audio Engine
Talking of Audiobus, Michael Tyson who developed Audiobus has this week released "The Amazing Audio Engine". This looks to have been in development for a year or so now but has been open sourced this week. Built on top of Core Audio it exposes an easier to use interface to Audio Units, filtering, mixing and all sorts of other stuff. I am no audio developer so I won't pretend to know what I am talking about here but if you are then you should certainly check this out.
theamazingaudioengine.com
ADNKit
Joel Levin with an implementation of the App.net API in Objective-C. It looks to already be a fairly hefty project which may be expected as it supports 100% of the features of the App.net API. If you were looking for an MGTwitterEngine for App.net then this may be your answer.
github.com
JSErrorStackTrace
Javier Soto with a category on NSError to include a stack trace of the creation of every NSError along with the error itself. One for the debugging toolbox.
github.com
BlockTypeDescription
More debugging goodness from Conrad Kramer with a small category which adds return and parameter type information when logging out a block, useful. Looking through the source was also an good introduction to some of the metadata available on a block as well.
github.com
Design
Typography for Developers on Vimeo
If you don't know your leading from your kerning or your ligatures from your point sizes, this short video from Jeff Heaton will set you down the right track. We are lucky to have a platform with fantastic support for beautiful typography, the least we can do is learn more about it.
vimeo.com
Checkboxes that kill your product
Alex Limi of Mozilla with a humble article on the perils of design by committee and how there are several application breaking check boxes in Firefox. Generally I think iOS and Mac developers are pretty well behaved when it comes to not adding preference after preference to our apps but I thought this was a nicely written article which might serve as a nice reminder to keep us on the straight and narrow when it comes to check boxes.
limi.net
Business and Marketing
Child Friendly In-App Purchase UI
I think it's fairly obvious that In-App purchases are here to stay but including them in apps which are either designed for or attractive to children has been a huge point of contention so far. This review of "The Word Monsters" from Mind Connex highlights an interesting technique which I hadn't come across before. Hiding the In-App purchases behind a small puzzle designed to prevent accidental purchases. I really like this idea.
appsplayground.com
And finally...
Regarding fake projects and loyalty tests
I'm not surprised that this wasn't true but it's reassuring to hear the rumours of fake projects inside Apple were not real.
donmelton.com