Last night I pulled the first application that I ever wrote from the App Store.

Craig Glaser and I (mostly Craig) came up with the idea of creating heat maps for players in MLB. We thought it would be a cool visualization, and were convinced we could sell thousands of copies and be App Store rich.

I took to writing it. I took to rewriting it. I took to rewriting what I rewrote, only to discover, hm, I’m not a very good programmer. Objective-C being so foreign didn’t help… But in the end, it got done. Continue Reading →

• Based on beta 1 of iOS 7 (so take it with a grain of salt): from skeumorphic to schizophrenic.

• Lack of visual distinction between a button and a label is confusing so far.

• So is how thin the fonts are, making it hard to read. I am surprised they didn’t go with Avenir as their system font. Continue Reading →

I’m only going to make one prediction for WWDC this year, and it’s one that probably won’t be verifiable for a bit of time. With that in mind, I’ll just leave this here. Continue Reading →

Apparently 4 years ago today I decided to try my hand at Objective-C.

Gonna work on an iPhone app, hopefully I can master the fine ways of Objective C. Continue Reading →

— Joe Fabisevich 🐶🐳™ (@mergesort) April 29, 2009

I spent a good amount of time over the weekend reading Aaron Swartz’s blog, shortly after his untimely passing. In short, I never new him, and so I don’t want to rehash everything that’s been said, but judging by what I’ve read, he was a brilliant person. So I leave you with a few blog entries that I found particularly insightful, interesting, and helpful. Some are longer, some are shorter, but I’d recommend giving them all a read. Continue Reading →

It’s not their fault.

tldr; It sucks that iOS apps can’t update in the background, but I get why Apple does this. No biggie, it would just make a lot of apps better, but at the cost of thinking about battery consumption.

P.S. You can’t read 200 words, really? Continue Reading →

I posed a question earlier today about Apple’s new iPad mini pricing. Is there anyone who would have bought the iPad at $299 that wouldn't purchase it at$329? My guess is no. There are reasons such as brand/price perception, the supposed $299 psychological barrier, and more that I don’t want to really cover, so I’ll pose it as a simple mathematical statement. Continue Reading →

Four years ago today, the Apple App Store launched, changing the face of software distribution. Anyone from a curious 13-year old to a grizzled developer who lived through learning Pascal can release an app and hope to strike gold. Even Apple’s own operating systems are distributed with this model now. I distinctly remember my first thoughts on the matter. I was standing in line for the iPhone 3G, not for myself, but for a coworker who I had convinced to upgrade (so I could get his original iPhone). Imagine, the internet in my pocket, anywhere I went. The future had arrived for me. Four years later, this has become commonplace. But I do remember being asked on that line, “so what do you think about this app store?” by a curious line stander. I didn’t have much background actually developing software yet, so I heartily told him “Eh, you can already download apps from Installer, who cares where you get it from?” (Sidenote: Remember Installer?)

Well, as it turns out, it was kinda a big deal.  Continue Reading →

iOS 6 ends up bringing a lot of interesting new features to the regular user, and looking over the API differences, not a lot on the developer side of things. iOS 5 was a gigantic leap for developers, starting with ARC, Storyboards, and a bajillion¹ APIs opened up. I’m willing to bet that this is becoming Apple’s calling card. One on, one off, is now to be prevalent in designing both hardware and software.

A pattern is emerging that makes it seem pretty likely: Continue Reading →

• iPhone 3G, 3GS.
• iPhone 4, iPhone 4S.
• Leopard, Snow Leopard.
• Lion, Mountain Lion.
• iOS 5, iOS 6.

When I was a kid, I used to try and make words and phrases out of my phone number, because before the internet we had nothing better to do. These days, if you want a custom phone number, there is a way to do it for only $3. So, here’s a quick little life hack for you.

When you sign up for Google Voice, they offer you the ability to pick your own phone number, from the pool of numbers that they own. I used Google Voice for a couple of years, before ultimately deciding to port my number to my carrier. The process to port your number only costs $3, a phone call to your carrier, and a few hours of waiting for it to go through (in which you can continue to use your phone). Continue Reading →