More Great iOS Developer Podcasts

Posted on February 18, 2013 Written by Leave a Comment

Podcast RSS

I subscribe and listen to a lot of podcasts.  I wrote about some of my favorites before, 7 Great iOS and Mac Developer Podcasts to Learn from Today, and I wanted to share some more today.

CMD+Space

Hosted by Myke Hurley, CMD+Space is a show with interviews various independent Mac and iOS developers from the perspective of running their businesses and how they got to where they are today.

So many developers go independent all the time and could use some solid guidance.

CMD+Space is on then 70decibels network which hosts many other shows that you might find interesting.

Debug

Hosts Guy English and Rene Ritchie have been running this podcast for the past few weeks but it quickly became one to get sync’d to my iPhone for listening while driving or daily walks.

Debug is also an interview show with well-known Mac and iOS developers.  As often happens while I listen to interviews various questions come to mind that go unanswered, not the case here.  These guys seem to ask the questions I want answered.  Coincidence?  Most likely but the great questions result in solid advice.

Identical Cousins

Hosted by Michael and Brent Simmons, they discuss various topics important to Mac and iOS developers who are mainly independent but also those gainfully employed at companies large and small.

I stumbled across Identical Cousins while listening to another podcast, which is often the case.

Iterate

This podcast is a bit different with a focus on the design side of mobile development for Mac, iOS and Android applications.

Iterate is hosted by Rene Ritchie and others.  Rene seems to be a repeat name here and other podcasts including MacBreak Weekly.

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged: ,

31 Great Days of iOS

Posted on February 4, 2013 Written by 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I had the time to post anything but I wanted to share this great summary post by Chris Risner of the Microsoft Azure team where he is focused on mobile.

Chris blogs each day in January about a specific topic iOS developers may face in their applications.  The post is titled 31 Days of iOS and each post is a detailed tutorial on a specific topic that day.  

Day 1: Getting set up for developing for iOS
Day 2: An inro to Objective-C
Day 3: Creating your first iOS App
Day 4: Working with Multiple View Controllers and Storyboards
Day 5: Programmatically showing View Controllers
Day 6: The Delegate Pattern
Day 7: Making Network Requests
Day 8: Performing Posts and Setting Request Type
Day 9: Handling Text Input
Day 10: Singletons and the AppDelegate
Day 11: Saving Data using NSUserDefaults
Day 12: CoreData
Day 13: The TableView
Day 14: The UIWebView
Day 15: Connecting to Built-In Apps
Day 16: Handling Device Orientation
Day 17: Using the Debug Console
Day 18: Opening your App from a Link
Day 19: Showing the User’s Location with Maps
Day 20: Displaying Info with Maps
Day 21: Using the Camera
Day 22: Using the Gallery
Day 23: Using Background Threads
Day 24: The View Life Cycle
Day 25: The Application Life Cycle
Day 26: Setting up Push Notifications
Day 27: Sending and Receiving Push Notifications
Day 28: Activity Indicators
Day 29: Advertising with iAd
Day 30: Adding Analytics to your Apps
Day 31: Submitting your App to Apple

Chris is speaking at CocoaConf DC in March, in case readers are planning on attending.  I will be there.

Filed Under: Apple Tagged: , , ,

Work Hard, Work Smart and Don’t Play the Lottery

Posted on November 20, 2012 Written by 1 Comment

Helpful apps

The New York Times had a great article this past weekend titled As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living.  As the title indicates, the life of a mobile developer is not often the glamor we hear about.  The million-dollar jackpots are few and far between and are more difficult now than in the early days of the Apple App Store.

The article chronicles the two very different levels of success; one, Ethan Nicholas who created the iShoot game and made over $1 million in 2009.  The other part of the story is a couple who worked full-time on a handful of applications focused on children.

It saddens me when I see smart people treating the app store akin to The California Gold Rush; same state and the same dreams of getting rich and too often a very similar outcome:

The Grimeses’ quest cost them more than $200,000 in lost income and savings. So far this year, their eight apps have earned $4,964. When the newest iPhone came out at the end of September, the couple immediately bought two. 

I can attest to the same experience as the couple who lost it all.  I didn’t let it go that far but having an idea, creating an application over a couple months and receiving very little return for my efforts…followed a similar path.  In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised. 

The app store is stocked with so many applications it’s almost impossible to stand out in the crowd.  Unless you are well-funded and can afford a lengthy and costly marketing campaign you will likely be cast to the abyss that is the app store.  Those lucky few will be selected by Apple to be promoted on the store, to be glorified in iTunes and will go on to nice rewards.

This is not the path a smart business person should travel.  Developers are smart, we work hard and just want to be rewarded for our efforts.  It is because we are smart that we should step back and think about the path of one-time customers greedily parting withe their $2.99, $1.99 or, I shudder to say, their $0.99.  We can’t support our families with these measly morsels.

Creating applications for iOS and Android are fun and very rewarding but these platforms should not be the island for your application.  The people building businesses in this space today should be cleverly thinking of ways to monetize their idea without the goal of hitting gold but rather building on a customer base willing to keep giving you money.  How many applications can someone create, sell for $0.99 and get a lifetime return of $5,000…if you’re lucky?  This is not even breaking even, it’s a really weak business model.

The better approach is solving real problems for someone who is willing to give you money to ease their pain and continue this on a regular basis.

Refer back to Ethan Nicholas and the direction he has taken since his million-dollar application idea:

Mr. Nicholas and a friend, Brent Miller, were inspired to form a company. “We were going to make another million or two,” said Mr. Miller, 38. But when none of their new games sold like iShoot, the pair moved in an entirely new direction. They founded echoBase, a start-up with 14 employees that is developing apps to allow doctors and nurses to view and update medical records across different computer systems. They brought in Mr. Miller’s father, Rod, a former I.B.M. sales manager, as chief executive.

This is an example of a solution to a real problem, making the life of doctors better and at the same time providing accurate and reliable care to the patient.  The application is free on the App Store but it’s very clear in the description that a server piece is also needed.  I am sure THIS part is not free.  This is someone who has made it in the App Store but realizes it’s not easily reproducible.  This should be the type of applications we are creating, ones that create a revenue stream for developers but also add real value to users. 

An organization like echoBase has iOS client software and some generic server piece which opens the doors to using other clients as well.  Anything from Android and Windows RT to web and rich Windows Desktop apps.  

The Apple App Store is very different today than it was in 2009 but it still holds great value to the people who are smart and don’t try to play the app lottery. 

Filed Under: Apple Tagged: , , ,

Great Companion eBook for Stanford iPhone Course

Posted on November 1, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment

CS193P 225x225 75

The Stanford University course for iPhone Application Development (CS 193P) is a really great course and one all new iOS developers should check out.  

Daniel Steinberg has recently released a companion text for the Stanford course under his Editor’s Cut series:

This is the official companion text for the popular iTunes U series from Stanford University taught by Paul Hegarty in Fall 2011. The book is full of code examples and animated walkthroughs designed to teach experienced programmers how to write iPad and iPhone applications.

The book is available from the Apple iBookstore.  The only downside of this book is that it’s only available in the iBookstore from what I can tell.  Which means, I have to read it on my iOS device not on my Mac where I might be coding.  Come on Apple, get with the program here.

Filed Under: iPhone Tagged: , , , ,

If You Attend Only One Conference, Make It CocoaConf

Posted on July 16, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment

Cc logo

I recently had the chance to attend CocoaConf DC in Herndon, VA, June 28-30 at the Crowne Plaza Dulles.  Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard of CocoaConf but for those that haven’t, CocoaConf is a small, focused iOS and Mac developer conference.  The idea of CocoaConf is to be small, intimate and come to you.  Conferences such as Apple’s WWDC are huge (5000+ attendees) and it costs people a small fortune between conference ticket, travel, lodging and food.

CocoaConf is different in that it happens multiple times a year in a different city, closer to people who want to attend but don’t want to spend the big dollars for travel.  The regular price of $600 (after early-bird of $450)

Conference Organizers

The people behind conferences are usually the ones that make or break the experience.  Sure one can say it’s the sponsors or even the attendees but without good organizers, it just doesn’t work.

The conference organizers for CocoaConf really did make the conference a real pleasure.  The unusual things about the organizers, they are a family.  A single family headed by Dave Klein and his outstanding children of varying ages.  From Dave’s Twitter profile he says he is:

Christian homeschooling father of 13. Author of Grails: A Quick-Start Guide. http://tinyurl.com/GQuick

And they homeschool; impressive indeed.  I’ve ever seen this before.  I have seen friends and associates but never a family.

The Klein family did a fantastic job of running this conference, well organized and very attentive.

The Venue

Although the conference is touted as being in Washington DC it is really in Hearndon, VA.  It seems all the VA towns near DC consider themselves part of the city.  

The conference was held at the Crowne Plaza Dulles. I have attended a few conferences at a Crowne Plaza and they always please.  They really are a conference center and do a fantastic job of taking care of both guests and attendees during the conference.  

I have to say the food during the 3 days was the best food I have seen so far at a conference.  Each day included breakfast and a huge hot lunch in buffet format with food for each palette and eating disorder, er I mean eating selection.

The discounted room rate really made a big difference as well.

Pre-Conference Tutorial

Chris Judd taught an awesome iOS Tutorial on the day before the official conference started.  I was fortunate enough to be able to attend and learned a bunch along the way.  I wanted to pick up some tips, especially for Storyboarding, and it was well worth it.  I was exhausted after this intense day.

session 1:

  • Basic Xcode/Interface Builder
  • Creating iOS Projects
  • Running in Simulator

session 2:

  • Objective-C Primer
  • View Controllers

session 3:

  • Storyboarding
  • Creating Universal Applications

session 4:

  • Table Views
  • Data Storage with focus on Core Data

session 5:

  • Camera

session 6:

  • Core Location/MapKit

Even if you are an experienced developer, take this day of training because you will have an audience to ask questions of and learn some things along the way.

It was great that we were kept busy and having an NSCoderNight was awesome. I  have always wanted to attend one of these hacker nights but none exists in our area and hadn’t had a chance while traveling.  It was a great time with people just sitting around discussing iOS and Mac development along with other aspects of their business or job such as supporting Android with a big application across many handsets.  Good content.

Conference Sessions

The session list for CocoaConf was long and consisted of a who’s who of the Apple developer community, including Daniel Steinberg, Chris Adamson, Mike Ash, Mike Dalyrmple, Chris Judd, Saul Mora, David Smith  and other great local speakers..  The topics covered a large array of topics with an audience ranging from beginner to experienced developer.  

When attending conferences I try to pick the sessions that I can’t normally find the information easily online.  These are usually topics that are experience-based or deep topics that are make digestible by the speaker.  Sessions that exemplified this:

  • Enter the Matrix by Mark Pospesel – this was my favorite talk and really let me see the power of the iOS framework.  It was all about 2D and 3D graphics with transformations, scaling and rotations.  Mark really knew his material here and showed it with the demo application he created for the talk, it showed off all that the framework could handle as well as how good of a developer Mark is.  Great talk.
  • iOS Computer Vision by Jonathan Blocksom – this talk also exemplified how the iOS 5 SDK and OpenCV libraries can extend what we can do with applications today and use augmented reality to create some really crazy applications.  The augmented reality demo was mind blowing.
  • The Wonderful World of Text by Chad Sellers – handling text in iOS or Mac application is not something that gets a lot of coverage but lot of apps do it.  Chad is the owner of Useful Fruit Software and creator of Pear Note for the Mac and iPad.  Both apps make heavy use of text and we got to see some experience with text while making his products.  Great guy to speak with as well.
  • Getting to Know Core Data by Whitney Young - this sounds like it might be a beginner’s talk but it wasn’t.  Whitney uses Core Data daily and knows it really well.  He gave attendees the real insight into using Core Data with iCloud and what is possible and what Apple tells us.  Very insightful and valuable content.

There were 3 tracks and a total of 30 sessions and a keynote on Friday evening giving us knowledge until 8:00pm.  After the first two days, my brain was truly mush and I was very exhausted. 

Attendees

One of the reasons I like to attend conferences is because of the other attendees I meet.  I always find the story of others interesting and inspiring.  

I met a lot of people and made many new friends all from different skill sets and walks of life.  I heard many stories of application success and some failure.  There were people who had been writing Objective-C since the early days while others just starting out.

It’s also inspiring to see young people finding enjoyment in coding.  Conferences don’t seem to attract young people but at CocoaConf there was one exception.  A young developer who came all the way from Texas to join the fun and learn.  He was 14 years old and already had 5 application in the Apple App Store. Quite an accomplishment with the demands of school today.   He was very well-spoken and a pleasure to talk with.

This conference is small, 80 attendees or so. You can almost meet every person if you try over the 3 days.

Finally

I really had a great time at this conference.  I have attended many conferences over the years and the combination of the great group of organizers, venue, content and the attendees, made this the best conference I’ve attended.  I would certainly recommend this to others and I will return to another CocoaConf.

Did I mention the swag?  T-shirt, logo’d notebook and pen, bag and an awesome coffee mug.

IMG 0452

CocoaConf is not an annual conference but is run many times over the course of a year in a various cities, making it easier for you to attend.  The next city is Columbus, OH, August 9-11 and future cities with unannounced dates are Raleigh, NC and Portland, OR.

The only thing I would change or add to this conference is recording of sessions.  I know it’s expensive and some speakers don’t want it but it would help overcome the tough choice of which session to see in a multi-track event.  It’s minor, but would be nice.

Filed Under: Objective-C Tagged: , ,

7 Great iOS and Mac Developer Podcasts to Learn from Today

Posted on July 12, 2012 Written by 9 Comments

I have quite an extensive list of podcast subscriptions in iTunes these days with much of my interest on iOS and Mac development.   Considering how iTunes is Apple, there are a lot of podcasts that have just stop producing content and gone away.  There are a comparable few podcasts dedicated to iOS.

I spend time looking for new podcasts and revisiting old ones trying to find ones with good content and who produce on a fairly regular basis.  I wanted to share my favorites with you, hopefully to help them keep producing.

These podcasts are developer podcasts but there really are two audiences; some are focused on the technical details of development while others are of interest to developers running a business around iOS and/or Mac software.  I’m sure there’s overlap here.

I think each and every one of these are great and I know you will find value in them as well.

Core Intuition

Core Intuition is hosted by Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit and Manton Reece.  This podcast had been on a bit of a hiatus with sparse updates over the past year but recently they have been producing regular episodes.  Mainly a podcast produced by Mac developers with little iOS discussion, the topics are applicable to most developers in the Apple community.

Episodes run about 45 minutes and usually focused on a handful of topics like the Mac App Store, sandboxing and dealing with customers.  Top notch for sure and well thought out dialog.

Edge Cases

This podcast is relatively new and hosted by Andrew Pontious and Wolf Rentzsch.  They discuss topics appealing to both Mac and iOS developers ranging from Core Data to Sandboxing and the future of developing for Apple products.

Episodes are about 45 minutes in length and pretty rich in technical content.  The podcast started in May and they already have 8 great episodes out as of the time I write this.

Wolf is the creator of Mogenerator and other tools.

Developing Perspective

Developing Perspective is produced by solo developer David Smith who is an iOS and Mac developer.  Episodes run about 15 minutes and talk about very specific topics that all Apple developers think about one time or another.  These include the path to independence, developer’s machine and going to WWDC.

I discovered this podcast a short time ago and it is one that I anxiously await new episodes.  It seems every episodes resonates with me.   David has a great radio voice too, calm and soothing.

iDeveloper Live

This podcast is run by Steve “Scotty” Scott and company have been doing this podcast for what seems like an eternity.  Most of these shows run about an hour and cover various topics like open source, Apple (of course) and interviews with various developers known in the Mac community.  Many of these interviews cover specific topics the developer is very familiar with.

Listeners can tune into the live show and participate in the chat room as well as find updates on Twitter.  The episodes are always entertaining and full of great information.

NSBrief

Saul Mora is the creator and producer of these great interviews with Mac and iOS developers as well as people funning Apple-focused software companies.  The podcasts run almost an hour and Saul knows just the right questions to ask and knows enough about the technology to make really useful insights.

Recent episodes include chats with Jamiee Newbery from Black Pixel while on a plane.  Every episode is different and every episode contains valuable insight.

I met Saul at CocoaConf in DC a short time ago and he is a great guy doing these great interviews.

Build and Analyze

Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin host Build and Analyze, which is a bit of a different podcast.  Marco runs Instapaper and much of hour plus episodes discuss trials and tribulations of running Instapaper.  The insider view is really helpful and I pick up a lot of great tips.

I have to warn that sometimes, just sometimes, they get off on long tangents about coffee, cars and kids.  Although not directly applicable to running a application business, it can be entertaining.

NSScreencast

Ben Scheirman is .NET developer turned Ruby on Rails and iOS developer who created NSScreencast, which is not technically a podcast, but I thought it would add some good value to this list.  Although not free, at $9 a month, it is bargain.  Each screencast goes into detail about how to use a particular feature of Xcode or of iOS development in general.

Topics such as how to implement Pull to Refresh, using Storyboards, Provisioning to HTTP caching and setting up a CI server.  Each episode ranging from 10-30 minutes, perfect for those suffering from short attention span.

Finally

I listen and watch each of these and love them all.  I’ve learned a ton about he iOS and Mac developer community by just listening.

Filed Under: Objective-C Tagged: , , , , ,

PalettePro AppDiction Review

Posted on June 13, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment

Since the launch of our first company-owned iOS application, PalettePro,  at the end of May, it has been a bit of a learning experience about marketing my first application and every bit of publicity helps and is appreciated.

I was pleased to see the write-up about PalettePro on the AppDictions web site.  

The concept of this tool is simple—the best ones usually are. Sometimes people spot a color that they would have for a project or practical purposes. What you can do with PalettePro is take a picture with your gadget from within the application, select the color from the image and allow the app to isolate the exact hue you wanted. It couldn’t be any simpler or more straight-forward; this is a tool that even the most technologically-impaired person could get the hang of it after a few tries.

The idea of PalettePro is simplicity and it pleases me it’s one thing that stood out.

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged: , , , , , , ,

PalettePro – iOS Application for the Apple App Store

Posted on June 11, 2012 Written by Leave a Comment

PalettePro

I recently finished up and submitted my first personal iOS application to Apple for sale in the App Store and have it approved.  It is the first application developed for Still River Software and not specifically for one of our clients.

The application is named PalettePro and is available now.

Background

The idea for PalettePro came about when I was out at dinner one evening with a friend of mine and we got to discussing a client project and app ideas.  This idea came to the top of the list and as a way to help us match colors for client web sites to their logo, office colors or whatever colors were important to them.  

I decided I would work on the application as time permitted and come up with something I wanted to use and if others could find value, then great.

The purpose of the tool is simple; use the camera on the iPhone or iPad to look at an object and sample the color in order to be used in web applications.  

Design

I have to first say that I am not a designer but I appreciate simple tools that do a single job and do it well.  This was my goal for the first iteration of this application; keep it simple.

The user experience is to be straightforward, just point the device at an object, tap the screen or button and see color values.  I also wanted to be able to save the results for later viewing.

Mza 4954749902168186578 320x480 75

You should notice when looking at the application that it’s simple and does one thing well.

Usage

Using PalettePro is easy and just like taking a picture.  When the application loads you are immediately presented with a screen similar to above, obviously with your view in the camera.  As you pan around your target the color values automatically change until the desired color is sampled.  Hit the Scan button or tapping the screen freezes the color scanning and you can with save or scan again.  Simple and straightforward.

Later copy the hex values into your web application or take the device to your local paint store to match.

Check It Out

PalettePro is available now in the Apple App Store and I would really appreciate any feedback people may have.  The cost is $0.99 and I think well worth the cost of a cheap cup of coffee.

I have already gotten feedback and suggestions for additional features which I am working on for the next point release.

Badge appstore lrg

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged: , , , , , ,

Palliative Symptoms Survey Hits the Apple App Store

Posted on March 28, 2012 Written by 1 Comment

I have been working diligently on a project for some time now and it’s finally available.  My company, Still River Software, received approval from Apple last week for Palliateive Symptoms Survey to help doctors and caregivers provide better and faster care to their patients.

Palliative Symptoms Survey is an application based on the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Survey (ESAS-r) which was developed to assist in the assessment of nine symptoms that are common in palliative care patients: pain, tiredness, drowsiness, nausea, lack of appetite, depression, anxiety, shortness of breath, and wellbeing There is also a blank scale for patient-specific symptoms.

The application is a native iPad application written in Objective-C with a back-end using Ruby on Rails.   Please read a little bit about the project on my company web site.

Filed Under: Ruby on Rails Tagged: , , , ,

Marco’s Love of Android

Posted on December 8, 2011 Written by 2 Comments

I have been following an interesting discussion between the Shifty Jelly folks and Marco Arment of Instapaper regarding the merits of developing for iOS versus Android and whether it’s worth the developer’s time (read money) creating for the platform.

Eric Schmidt spoke recently at Le Web where he said developers, like it or not, will target Android.  As someone who writes iOS applications, it seemed like an arrogant statement and Marco had his thoughts, which seem reasonable to me:

Android devices have been selling in large quantities for a long time. That’s not new. Yet today, compared to iOS, Android is much less profitable for developers (especially for paid apps), its users are less influential for expanding new services, and its app development is much more painful and expensive. And in the rapidly growing and increasingly influential tablet market, Android has an extremely low marketshare.

Shify Jelly creators of applications for both iOS and Android took offense to Marco statements and wrote some elegant dialog as to the contrary:

First some background. We’ve been in the iOS app store since August of 2008, which for those that are counting is only a month or so after it first launched. We’ve been on Android now for about a year. We make serious apps like Pocket Casts and Pocket Weather AU, things that take a lot of development effort and involve serious server back-ends. We’ve made enough money since then to support 2 full time staff, and 2 part time designers. Yes we’re the guys who had the run in with Amazon, the email from Steve Jobs, and we’re not millionaires.

Finally, since neither of these developers allow comments on their blog, Marco’s rebuttal to the challenge by Shifty Jelly:

If you make the first great Android Instapaper client that:

  • uses the official API
  • contains a significant portion of the iOS app’s features, the details of which we’d work out privately
  • runs on a wide variety of Android devices and OS versions including modern smartphones, the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, and whichever 10” tablet matters at the time of completion
  • is priced at $2.99 or higher in the U.S. with approximately equivalent pricing elsewhere, and satisfies requirements to be sold in the Google Marketplace, Amazon Appstore, and whatever B&N uses for the Nook Tablet

I’ll call it the official Instapaper app for Android, I’ll promote it on the Instapaper site, I’ll drop the subscription requirement for its API access, you’ll answer all support email that comes from it, and we’ll split the net revenue 50/50.

As you may know, I write iOS applications but have not given Android much thought primarily for Marco’s reasons.  I like to keep an open mind and would target Android if there was money to be made in any of the apps stores.  I just don’t see it.  Certainly there are tons of Android phones flying out of the stores but are those people spending the money like the users in Apple’s App Store?  I fear not, at least not today.  If users aren’t spending their hard earned dollars on applications how can we be expected to spend our hours on developing for a platform with almost no return.

Who is making money selling their Android applications today?  Please leave a comment.

The dialog is worth the read and is food for thought.  It’s interesting how, since neither allows comments on their blogs, they are forced to trade shots in this way.

 

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged: , , ,
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