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Evernote iOS news: Meetups, WWDC, Devcup, and SDK updates
In the last few months, we have completely overhauled the Evernote SDK for iOS. We are committed to supporting the iOS community with platform tools that help build great apps. If you are building an app on the Evernote platform, make sure you submit to the Evernote Devcup and come to our upcoming meetups at WWDC & Evernote HQ.
evernote.com
News
2013 European LLVM Conference
Videos and slides from the recent LLVM conference in Paris. This is naturally all pretty low level stuff but I found a couple in here that were interesting to me. The session on clang-format for example, made my OCD go all tingly for a while. I would imagine there are a few preliminary Xcode vFuture (not so) secrets in here if you look carefully as well.
llvm.org
Software Indie Podcast
A new series of short (~5 minute) podcasts by Steve Scott on being an independent software developer, earning a living with your products rather than doing consulting and freelance work. I'll admit that I don't listen to a lot of podcasts as I only have a short commute and I find spoken word audio distracting when I am working so the short format of this really gets a big thumbs up from me.
softwareindie.com
Tools
Spark Inspector
This is cool. Visualise the view hierarchy of a running iOS app and monitor what NSNotifications are being posted at the same time. The visualisation of the view hierarchy shows you all views as a 3D model with each view being a "slice" extracted out. Even better, properties can be set on the view and the underlying layers with all changes being reflected right back into the running app.
sparkinspector.com
Code
PHFComposeBarView
So you need a control to take input for a messaging/chat application. Easy right? Just use UITextField. What about expanding for multiple lines, or inserting an image from the camera, or showing a character count? I love it when people go to town with getting all of the little details right with a control and it looks like Philipe Fatio has done a great job here.
github.com
ArgumentParser
I've recently written a couple of command line utilities in Objective-C to help with some repetitive tasks and while I did look at using ddcli I ended up just hacking together some very primitive option support myself (which only works as the tools are used internally). This library by Chris Miller will not only parse out short and long form flags but also generate descriptions from the flags, looks like a great way to add proper option support if you are writing a command line tool.
github.com
Proper Use of Asserts
I am a big fan of a well placed NSAssert but in case you aren't you should read this article by Mike Ash which takes you on a thorough trip through the whys and hows of using assertions well.
mikeash.com
Business and Marketing
How to Market Your Mobile App with Video
My number one feature request for the App Store is to allow developers to upload a video which can be played back in the on-device App Store. Even though we can't do that right now, we should still be producing videos to market our apps on the web. Sylvain Gauchet gives us the low down on how to do it right.
apptentive.com
Operation Starbucks
Josh Ledgard on discovering a new way to get some real life feedback from users during development. Obviously this wouldn't work for all apps but if you are working on app which targets your average "person on the street" then this sounds like a fun way to get some feedback on your afternoon for a very reasonable amount of money.
joshledgard.com
And finally...
Testing unusual hardware combinations
Oliver Cameron with an interesting rejection story. Hands up who tests their iPhone app with a Bluetooth keyboard connected?
storify.com