Category: iOS
The reason? Despite the new tablet’s processing power and capabilities, it’s still running on mobile software — and developers aren’t totally convinced the economic incentives exist in the App Store for iOS. In short, they feel they wouldn’t be able to charge users the amounts they normally would for a version of their software that runs on a desktop. I…
In the old days of iOS and OS X development, “namespacing” meant prepending Objective-C class names with a (hopefully) unique prefix to avoid conflicts. Swift mostly removes this need by providing automatic namespacing at the module level, though this can introduce an additional consideration. Recently I began adding a Today Widget to an iOS app and ran into an odd…
As the App Store has matured and its revenue streams diminished, I have needed to pursue consulting jobs to bolster my income. Unlike working fully for myself, clients want (quite reasonably) an estimate of what a job is going to cost before signing off to begin the work. Unfortunately, in software development, accurate estimates are notoriously the hardest things to…
Portfolio 4.1.3 is (hopefully) the final iOS 9 compatibility update. It’d definitely be nice to be able to get it all in one go, but there always seems to be some edge case hiding in a new iOS release. This update also includes performance enhancements for browsing thumbnails, rendering improvements for the iPad 2, video playback improvements, and a potential…
I’ve come to realize there’s a healthy balance to be had between the needs of my business and my users' experience. That might be me selling out to the dark side, but I’d like to think it’s really just me being less stubborn about some pure ideal of UX that many of us maintain to a fault, usually the detriment…
Portfolio for iPhone 2.0.2 is a fairly small update, but it brings some important fixes. In addition to fixing a couple bugs that came with the 2.0.0 release, it also brings over the recent performance enhancements that have been made to the iPad version. Release Notes Fixes Double-tapping to zoom no longer triggers the toolbars to show. Tapping in an…
Apple should expand the Gatekeeper program to iOS. Developers should be allowed to sell Gatekeeper-signed apps directly to customers outside of the App Store. … The only difference would be that Apple no longer mediates the developer/customer relationship. Developers would be able to use all of the business techniques that have been practiced by software businesses on the Mac: trial…
Castro was updated to version 1.5 today with some great new features like Spotlight search, in-app Safari, and support for 3D Touch. Another change that went live today? It’s now a free app, every feature is available without charge, and they added an optional non-renewing patronage model. Sound familiar? In my original Arment piece, ‘The Elephant in the Room’, I…
I have been developing Portfolio for iPad for over five years now. Like most apps, it has been steadily declining in revenue for a significant portion of its life. Unfortunately, the grim reality is that, at some unknown point in the future, it will become untenable to continue development on it because it is no longer bringing in enough revenue…
The 2.0.1 update of Portfolio for iPhone is its iOS 9 bug-fixing update. Most of what applied to Portfolio 4.1.1 also applies to the iPhone version. Release Notes Fixes Fixed a potential crash when tapping an empty area in the gallery content manager. Worked around an iOS 9 change that caused the first thumbnail in the viewer to not display…
Like Portfolio 4.1.1, Studio Pro’s 2.3.0 update was primarily a bug fix one. It included fixes for a variety of existing things and a few new ones introduced by iOS 9. Studio Pro shares many of the same loading options as Portfolio, so it also had to accommodate iOS 9’s App Transport Security, a new system-level policy that requires apps…
Coming soon in Studio Pro and Portfolio. It is clear that on iOS 9 Apple is pushing app developers more into deep linking for a better experience. All the news around indexation and search rely on deep linking technology. At the same time, Apple introduced Universal Links — a way to launch apps easily with traditional HTTP links, using the…