Sponsored Link
The new game controller that you keep hearing about
DICE+ is a new controller that empowers digital tabletop games. We believe that games are meant to be played together. If you’re a developer and you love board games, jump on board. Create new titles or add support for DICE+ in your productions.
dicepl.us
News
Apple Tech Talks
Good news if you didn't get a WWDC ticket. Apple are taking the Tech Talks events that last ran in 2011 back out on the road later this year. No announcement of specific dates or the cities that will be covered so keep an eye out for tickets going on sale as I am sure they will go extremely fast.
apple.com
All-Time Top Apps and the Countdown to 50 Billion Downloads
What a big number 50 billion is... Along with the countdown Apple have listed the overall top selling apps so far. This article by Federico Viticci has some more interesting conclusions drawn from the list at the end of this article. Also, don't forget to check the lists out for yourself on the store as they are unique per country and are quite different. For example, far more TV on demand services doing well on the iPad in the UK. Do we watch more TV or is US TV on demand lagging behind in availability?
macstories.net
Tools
Briefs
It lives again! I am really happy to see this app finally live as I remember watching the original attempted release of this app a few years ago followed by repeated, frustrating rejections and then the sad day when it was laid to rest. It's great to see this new version rise from the ashes, and with such style too. Create iOS app prototypes with interactivity, animated transitions and then easily deploy them to a device. If you need to put working prototypes of iOS apps together to preview on a real device then this app is for you.
giveabrief.com
xctool
How do you like the sound of a better, customisable xcodebuild command line tool? Maybe one that runs the same tests as Xcode does? Or outputs results in JSON as well as pretty printed to the console? Well, look no further. This looks great.
github.com
iOS Crash Logs On iCloud Synced Devices
Matt Long with a quick tip on grabbing crash logs off devices that have never synced with a Mac/PC. It's interesting that you can get at these to get you out of a pickle but in my opinion, the best solution to a problem like this is a crash reporting tool such as HockeyApp or Crashlytics if you want to get track down those bugs out in the wild.
cimgf.com
Code
Searching For Speedy Searching
This is a wonderful, detailed post by Simon Wolf on speeding up Core Data search using SQLite Full Text Search in a separate database along with a sample app and fairly large demo database so you can see it all in action. Is this the definitive post on this subject? Seems like it is to me.
swwritings.com
UIView-EasingFunctions
Probably the most obvious weakness of standard UIView animations is the limitation on types of easing functions. This category on UIView by Zoreslav Khimich integrates the AHEasing library to bring keyframe based easing functions into standard UIView animations. I hadn't come across AHEasing before this either which is definitely worth a look if you want to do the same with CALayer animations.
github.com
We Need A Standard Layered Image Format
Hot on the heels of the release of Acorn 4 this week, Gus Mueller published this article advocating the need for better layered image file format than PSD. I couldn't agree more and I wonder how much traction the Acorn file format would gain if it were open sourced, maybe even with code for reading writing from the SQLite database?
shapeof.com
Design
Transitional Interfaces
Interesting conversation about the need to integrating animations into mockups in order for them to become truly useful when most iOS apps (and increasingly web apps) use them for so much more than simple transitions. Tools like Briefs mentioned above obviously help with this but I think there is plenty of space here for more work in this area.
branch.com
Business and Marketing
In-App Purchase Education
I really like the fact that Apple are adding more documentation around the App Store, in the App Store. This kind of information might be noticed by developers and industry people but to get it in front of consumers it needs to go front and centre in the Store, on device which is exactly what Apple have done here. Great work.
pocketgamer.biz
And finally...
How BNR smote the NDA
I hadn't heard this story before, I wonder if any of the lines of code were used...
tuaw.com