Oct 28, 2020
New Static Site Generator. Who Dis? —
Felt inspired to start blogging again. Had to learn a new static site generation engine first. It’s (probably) the law.…
Dec 21, 2014
Swift Translation Guide —
I was lucky enough to not only get selected to buy a ticket for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this year, but my employer graciously sponsored my trip to San Francisco. I felt extremely privileged to be present for the announcement of Swift; a new programming language created by Apple for the development of applications for OS X and iOS.
While in San Francisco, I took the opportunity to meet in person, for the first time, with Cliff Colby.…
Sep 16, 2014
In Defence of Mental Illness —
So… Apple paid U2 a lot of money to give away a copy of their latest album. The reasoning behind this has been discussed at length across the Internet and I could only speculate as to why either party did it. So I won’t.
The bigger controversy is the fact that Apple put a copy of the album into the purchase history of every iTunes customer, which resulted in an automatic download of the album for many people.…
Aug 18, 2013
Deluxe Upgrades in iTunes —
This week, The Presets – one of my favourite bands – announced the imminent UK availability of the “Deluxe/Expanded” edition of their Pacifica album.
As a fan, one of the most infuriating aspects of the music industry is the Deluxe Version. Some deluxe editions are re-releases many years later and contain “features” such as remastered tracks, expanded liner notes, and extra material. Other special editions are re-releases that come mere months after the original, usually offering a bunch of extra tracks and little else.…
Aug 13, 2013
Don't Try to Diagnose Yourself —
I’ve seen a lot of positive discussion in the developer community recently about depression and mental illness. People are standing up to say they have suffered from depression and that it is nothing to be ashamed of. This is good.
My only concern is that developers (being developers) have a tendency to try to fix things themselves. A developer spots a bug, spends a bit of time trying to root cause it, and then applies a fix.…
Aug 2, 2013
Mastering Xcode —
After many months in the making, I’m pleased to be able to announce that the 2nd edition of Mastering Xcode is now available to purchase, and even more pleased to announce my involvement in the book as co-author.
Joshua Nozzi’s 1st edition was an invaluable reference for me as I started the process of transitioning to developing iOS and Mac software. The prospect of a 2nd edition was made even more exciting when Josh asked me to get involved in the production process.…
Jun 8, 2013
Vesper —
Vesper is a new note-taking app from Q Branch, a company comprised of the engineering talents of Brent Simmons, the design talents of Dave Wiskus, and the directorial talents of John Gruber.
So far opinion seems to be divided – many Apple bloggers are hailing it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, whereas many of the regular developers that I know or follow on some form of social media are of the opinion that it is over-priced and under-featured in an already saturated market segment.…
Dec 24, 2012
iTunes (not for) U —
I can’t figure out how to play local iTunes U content on my iPhone - it just doesn’t appear on my device.
I like to download tutorial and training material (from sites like Railscasts, iDeveloper TV, PeepCode and Mijingo) and I’m one of these people who likes to hold onto the material just in case I ever need to watch it again. For convenience I dump it into iTunes on my Mac Mini that serves up content to a number of Apple TV and iOS devices.…
Dec 2, 2012
Mail.app and Power Nap —
Mountain Lion has been with us for several months now and has been a pretty solid release with some nice new features. One of those features is Power Nap - the ability for a certain Macs to sleep with one eye open. It allows for the updating of data (fetching mail, contact updates, etc) and the performing of housekeeping tasks (carrying out backups and downloading software updates) while your Mac give sthe impression of being asleep.…
Oct 23, 2012
Netbot - The App.net Saviour? —
On the latest episode of The Talk Show, host John Gruber commented with regard to App.net and the release of Netbot:
“It’s been a great little science experiment since Netbot came out about the importance of apps versus web clients”
Gruber, and his guest Brent Simmons, said a lot of sensible things in this discussion, but the implication here is that App.net was treading water prior to the release of Netbot because there were no native clients.…