I’ve taken recent interest in working on the Raspberry Pi now that Swift is open source. Given the amount of products built specifically for the Pi, there’s a huge potential for new, fun projects. DIY electronics have been gaining momentum over the last few years and there’s a lot of information to help you get …
Category Archives: Discussions
Apps As Art
We seem to be on a roll again about this whole “indie is not viable” discussion. Next up, Allen Pike on Supply-Side Blues. If you haven’t read them yet, I posted a couple other articles on this topic [see indie]. Allen’s post is spot-on with my assessment – the AppStore is becoming much like the music …
The AppStore Ice Cream Truck
Charles Perry (no relation), wrote this follow-up to Brent Simmons’ Love post (app store, indies, etc). Here’s the question I posted to Charles – Does it change if the ice cream truck is the only one you’re allowed to sell on, yet the entire menu is only the top-sellers? @mistercameron The App Store only features …
Indie Love
Is going indie on iOS viable? Nope. Don’t bother. First, by Brent Simmons: http://inessential.com/2015/06/30/love Then, Gruber follows: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/06/30/the-love-era Hit the nail on the head. I have an app currently in development that might have a reasonable chance of doing OK, but I can’t see making my entire living off of it. Sounds great, huh? Here’s the thing – …
iBeacons In Real Life
The State of iBeacons (June 2015) This is pretty consistent with my experiences. On observation I’d add about squirrely RSSI values – readings walk around a bit. You’ll do better to calculate a moving average and toss out the occasional 0 reading. Also be mindful of your iBeacon’s power settings – you may need to …
Jay Fields on Unit Testing
Working Effectively with Unit Tests – Interview with Jay Fields I rather enjoyed this interview with Jay. It was nice hearing a reasonable voice in the discussion – namely, there’s no need to be over-zealous about any one approach. Even in my own work I’ve seen a tremendous benefit to testing as I write code. It …
Measuring Perceived Performance
Measuring user perceived latency | Foursquare Engineering Blog. I’ve found one of the most important components of performance is the perception. Within reason, the actual performance doesn’t matter as much as how people perceive actions to be progressing and completing. This is about the user’s experience. Consider the two possible experiences of loading a web page. …
The Case for Slow Programming
A thought-provoking post by Jeffrey Ventrella. I’ve seen both sides. Surely there’s little to be gained by maintaining breakneck development speeds – when the goal is more features as fast as you can. It might look good to business, but there’s a chance it comes back to bite you. I can appreciate taking the time to …
Rest and Vacation for Your Mind
I don’t know about you, but I often forget just how much I can enjoy and actually need time off to rest from work. I recently took ten days (mostly) off to be with family and explore the great outdoors. After returning to work, I feel recharged, and fresh with ideas; even colleagues have made note. I …
iPhone 6 Screen Resolution, Points, and Pixels Explained
iPhone 6 Screens Demystified on PaintCode There were a lot of questions surrounding the rumored iPhone 6 display resolution. A few had well-reasoned extrapolations based on conjecture, but ultimately we had no idea. Now that the hardware is public and our iOS 8 SDKs are gold master, we finally have the numbers. And…. they’re not what …
Continue reading “iPhone 6 Screen Resolution, Points, and Pixels Explained”