Ignore the title, this is a very good article regarding several cross-platform issues of Messaging (SMS & Rich Text).
Omar Zahran explains the issues, various solutions, and compatibility problems to provide what customers want.
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Friday, January 29, 2021
Interesting article by Game Industry regarding the FTC preparing to go after Apple & Game app stores.
Interesting article by Game Industry regarding the FTC preparing to go after Apple & Game app stores.
FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra recent comments specifically mention these tech giants are “…gatekeepers can harm developers and squelch innovation”.
Former Apple VIP Jean-Louis Gassée weighs in on the talk about an Apple Car.
Former Apple VIP Jean-Louis Gassée weighs in on the talk about an Apple Car.
As he points out, Apple’s vast $18.75B R&D budget means a lot of research, a lot fewer shipping products.
https://mondaynote.com/apple-car-for-real-this-time-cce10d7e9d93
Thursday, January 28, 2021
The Museum of Obsolete Media created this timeline of disks & cartridges I had forgotten.
The Museum of Obsolete Media created this timeline of disks & cartridges I had forgotten.
Some of these are just fascinating, some died within a year, while others from the 1800s are still around.
https://obsoletemedia.org/obsolescence-decade/
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
According to ETNews, the next Apple Watch will have blood glucose monitoring via an optical sensor.
According to ETNews, the next Apple Watch will have blood glucose monitoring via an optical sensor.
A blood sugar monitor is the holy grail of mobile medical devices. It would be a big game-changer.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/25/apple-watch-series-7-blood-glucose-monitoring/
Ps. I would buy one the first day it came out.
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Net Neutrality, Digital Divide and Section 230 may soon all be affected by the new political landscape.
Net Neutrality, Digital Divide and Section 230 may soon all be affected by the new political landscape.
This Popular Science article explores what the recent elections will bring us.
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/biden-fcc-net-neutrality-digital-divide/
Monday, January 25, 2021
Yet another view about the VR/AR glasses that Apple may/may not be producing for low-end/high-end cost.
Yet another view about the VR/AR glasses that Apple may/may not be producing for low-end/high-end cost.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg Report helps us muddy the waters.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/21/apple-ar-vr-headset-2022-launch/
Start the week with 7 iOS code snippets that you will use over and over.
Start the week with 7 iOS code snippets that you will use over and over.
Thanks to Kelvin Tan for showing how extensions to iOS classes is a good thing.
https://medium.com/better-programming/7-swift-extensions-every-ios-developer-should-use-834a1254074c
Sunday, January 24, 2021
No tech blog today, just a thought on the Evolution of Language curtesy of Illiad of UserFriendly.
No tech blog today, just a thought on the Evolution of Language curtesy of Illiad of UserFriendly.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20210124
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Google’s high flying project is grounded for good. “Loon” was the idea of using Balloons instead of cell towers or satellites.
Google’s high flying project is grounded for good. “Loon” was the idea of using Balloons instead of cell towers or satellites.
The intent was to transmit LTE signals to people in disaster zones or rural areas with no cell infrastructure.
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/google-project-loon-balloons-shuts-down/
Friday, January 22, 2021
Another CES surprise, a Cadillac branded Flying Taxi (using drone technology).
Another CES surprise, a Cadillac branded Flying Taxi (using drone technology).
I would have been more impressed if they had shown a real device, not a virtual video, but this may be more than a concept in the near future.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/gm-surprises-with-cadillac-evtol-air-taxi-at-ces-2021/
One of the more playful introductions at CES was the Infinity electronic game table by Arcade1Up.
One of the more playful introductions at CES was the Infinity electronic game table by Arcade1Up.
There have been similar attempts at this type of product, but they need more than tech, they need infrastructure to support game development.
Cnet video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyUD07Me6mc
Launch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8LuO4llt-E
Original Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/infinitygametable/infinity-game-table-by-arcade1up
Swift Package manager has become more and more robust, now that it can include resources and storyboards.
Swift Package manager has become more and more robust, now that it can include resources and storyboards.
Thanks to Wendy Liga for providing this timely article!
https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-add-resources-in-swift-package-manager-c437d44ec593
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
A detailed and thoughtful prediction of VR in 2021 by Tony “Skarred Ghost”.
A detailed and thoughtful prediction of VR in 2021 by Tony “Skarred Ghost”.
Hint: 2021 won’t be the year of VR, since we still only have limited products.
https://skarredghost.com/2021/01/20/predictions-virtual-reality-2021/
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Obsolete Technology has been around since paper replaced parchment. Let's celebrate it!
Obsolete Technology has been around since paper replaced parchment. Let's celebrate it!
MOOT (museum of obsolete technology) is a virtual showplace for old tech, heavily leaning towards Apple products.
http://museumofobsoletetechnology.org
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZyLPNNfjlrtp_g9i5CQDPQ
According to various sources, the 3rd Q 2021 MacBook Pro redesign will bring back the MagSafe connector.
According to various sources, the 3rd Q 2021 MacBook Pro redesign will bring back the MagSafe connector.
As well as changes including losing the Touch Bar and more peripheral ports.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22232393/macbook-pro-2021-arm-intel-touch-bar-magsafe-kuo
Monday, January 18, 2021
Justin Lestal gives us a great timeline on the creation of Programming Languages.
Justin Lestal gives us a great timeline on the creation of Programming Languages.
The descriptions are a bit brief, but you can see the sequence from one language to another.
https://devskiller.com/history-of-programming-languages/
Sunday, January 17, 2021
At CES, French company Pollen Robotics demos using their open-source robot Reachy using VR controllers.
At CES, French company Pollen Robotics demos using their open-source robot Reachy using VR controllers.
We will start seeing more telepresence, but not always in the form of a robot.
https://www.engadget.com/reachy-the-robot-can-now-be-controlled-via-vr-200508703.html
Video: https://youtu.be/lRWna6mEMv0
Saturday, January 16, 2021
As a historical swordsman, I been waiting patiently for a good fencing VR app. This may be it.
As a historical swordsman, I been waiting patiently for a good fencing VR app. This may be it.
This is designed for modern fencing, but I like how they attach the controller to a physical blade.
https://www.roadtovr.com/vr-fencing-training-fencer-boxglass/
VR Fencing Video: https://youtu.be/4DZVP613WoQ
Friday, January 15, 2021
This may be a milestone product introduction, Lenovo’s Smart Glasses.
This may be a milestone product introduction, Lenovo’s Smart Glasses.
On the other hand, I have yet to see the “Killer App” for this tech (i.e. an indispensable or superior use to something you could never do before).
Grids don’t always have to be square, as this example of SwiftUI by javier of SwiftUI Lab shows a Hex based one.
Grids don’t always have to be square, as this example of SwiftUI by javier of SwiftUI Lab shows a Hex based one.
SwiftUI Lab has some great examples and articles. Check them out!
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Just for fun, let’s take a look at a very old Programming Language: the Cambridge Programming Language or CPL.
Just for fun, let’s take a look at a very old Programming Language: the Cambridge Programming Language or CPL.
Here is the 1966 programming manual for CPL, by then renamed Combined Programming Language. CPL begat BCPL (or B), which begat our beloved C.
http://www.ancientgeek.org.uk/CPL/CPL_Elementary_Programming_Manual.pdf
Someone did their market research. Everyone would love a home ice cream machine.
Someone did their market research. Everyone would love a home ice cream machine.
I find it interesting that they used the term “Keurig” to describe this all-in-one design, even when from another company.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/13/tech/coldsnap-ice-cream-keurig-ces/index.html
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Mark your calendars for Friday, Feb 19th for a SwiftUI Jam.
Mark your calendars for Friday, Feb 19th for a SwiftUI Jam.
This is a great way to force yourself to explore Apple's new user interface tech.
Maybe last year was the breakthrough year for VR, SteamVR has an explosive growth.
Maybe last year was the breakthrough year for VR, SteamVR has an explosive growth.
According to Valve, revenues were up 71% with 1.7 million users and over 104 million VR sessions.
https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-steam-vr-2020-new-users-revenue/
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Monday, January 11, 2021
Bloomberg reports that the Facebook Smart Glasses will be here sooner but without Augmented Reality.
Bloomberg reports that the Facebook Smart Glasses will be here sooner but without Augmented Reality.
It sounds like features similar to the Google Glass or straight VR.
Instruments is possibly the hardest thing to learn in Xcode development.
Instruments is possibly the hardest thing to learn in Xcode development.
Lea Marolt Sonnenschein of RayWenderlich team helps with this needed tutorial on using this Apple tool to debug memory issues.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/16126261-instruments-tutorial-with-swift-getting-started
Sunday, January 10, 2021
Some of these features are ancient, others are fairly modern, all may be going away for good.
Some of these features are ancient, others are fairly modern, all may be going away for good.
Technology has made most of them obsolete, while government regulations have killed some of them.
https://www.rd.com/list/car-features-youll-probably-never-see-again/
Saturday, January 9, 2021
The switch from Intel to M1 means that the Hackintosh movement will soon be over.
The switch from Intel to M1 means that the Hackintosh movement will soon be over.
Hackintosh means running the MacOS on non-Apple PCs. Not supported, but possible. Not anymore...
https://medium.com/big-tech/apple-m1-the-slow-death-of-hackintosh-6fd5d6108b7e
Friday, January 8, 2021
SwiftUI is becoming more and more polished, with the ability to create professional document-based apps.
SwiftUI is becoming more and more polished, with the ability to create professional document-based apps.
Thanks to David Piper of RayWenderlich & company for this new tutorial on SwiftUI.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/14971928-document-based-apps-using-swiftui
China required all Apps with in-app purchase have government-issued license. Apple just pruned those who did not comply.
China required all Apps with in-app purchase have government-issued license. Apple just pruned those who did not comply.
It was reported only 74 of the top 1500 title survived. Why didn’t those tiles get a license?
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/375809/Apple_removes_39000_games_from_the_App_Store_in_China.php
This should not have been a surprise, the companies original deadline was back in mid 2020.
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Roy Kronenfeld shares how to use DispatchSemaphores to manage your execution.
Roy Kronenfeld shares how to use DispatchSemaphores to manage your execution.
How to manage async calls in a synchronous manner.
https://medium.com/@roykronenfeld/semaphores-in-swift-e296ea80f860
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Avi Tsadok talks about an upcoming Swift feature to help Async functions.
Avi Tsadok talks about an upcoming Swift feature to help Async functions.
The new keywords “async” and “awake” are in our future.
https://medium.com/better-programming/async-functions-are-coming-to-swift-75993d0cb4e3
A friend recently reviewed Paul (Hacking with Swift) Hudson’s YouTube video on SpriteKit, and I was amazed at the results.
A friend recently reviewed Paul (Hacking with Swift) Hudson’s YouTube video on SpriteKit, and I was amazed at the results.
Even knowing Paul is a great presenter, the results of this 90 min video was a professional level casual game app. All in about 300+ lines of code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfh8wXbfEw
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Awhile back, Bruno Rocha of SwiftRocks explained the undocumented @Inline attribute for swift.
Awhile back, Bruno Rocha of SwiftRocks explained the undocumented Inline attribute for swift.
It is highly recommended not to use this keyword, but it is good to know what it does, and how Swift handles inlining normally.
https://swiftrocks.com/the-forbidden-inline-attribute-in-swift
Monday, January 4, 2021
It has been reported that Apple is working on a Foldable iPhone.
It has been reported that Apple is working on a Foldable iPhone.
The two designs include the more traditional clamshell (fold top to bottom) vs a newer book fold style (left over the right side).
https://www.webpronews.com/apple-testing-two-different-foldable-iphone-designs
Start the new Work Year with a little humor.
Start the new Work Year with a little humor.
Only a little, since most of these cartoons are so true.
Sunday, January 3, 2021
Saturday, January 2, 2021
Here is an aviation job that was affected by COVID in a positive way.
Here is an aviation job that was affected by COVID in a positive way.
With the decline in flights, jets are being stranded all over the globe. Someone has to fly them home.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ferry-flights-jet-test-transport/index.html
A little jewel by Sean McNeil on how to modify audio & video AVAssets.
A little jewel by Sean McNeil on how to modify audio & video AVAssets.
I would not be able to accomplish as much if it wasn’t for others generous work.
https://github.com/seanmcneil/Mixalicious
Friday, January 1, 2021
Robowars/Battlebots Fighting Robots has now been around for over 20 years, with different weight levels, styles and tournaments.
Robowars/Battlebots Fighting Robots has now been around for over 20 years, with different weight levels, styles and tournaments.
What is curious is how different countries have their own flavor of robot fighting.
Mage Steve 2020 Blog Log Compendium
Mage Steve 2020 Blog Log Compendium
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Wednesday Jan 1, 2020
Start the new year with great update on Oculus Link, VR Gloves and more…
The Youtube channel “Eric for President” is a good way to stay current on VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZsOSGBd2Ew
Wednesday Jan 1, 2020
Special Announcement: MagFest 2020 is this weekend, and again we have a VR Track!
Come join me, and 20,000 other Gaming & Music lovers for MagFest 2020 at the Gaylord National Convention Center, National Harbor. It runs this Thursday thru Sunday. On Friday, I will start the VR Track by presenting “State of the Union in VR at 11:30 pm. Other presentations and panels will continue through Sunday. Come by and say hi. Besides the talks, the convention has gaming (including massive collection of old school coin-op games) and concerts. Come enjoy!
https://super.magfest.org
Thursday Jan 2, 2020
Arguably the most important Computer Algorithm of all time: Huffman Coding
Tom Scott’s Computer Basic playlist on Youtube demonstrates how to explain difficult computer concepts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsTptu56GM8
Friday Jan 3, 2020
DCVR in VA has invited GMU’s Prof. Craig Yu to talk about Artificial Intelligence working with VR
This should be a well-attended event on Feb 18, at NovaLabs in Reston, VA.
https://www.meetup.com/DCimmersive/events/267589624/
Saturday Jan 4th, 2020
Apple has updated Xcode once again, what should you know about the changes?
Peter Witham of Compile Swift recent podcast is an excellent way to move forward.
https://anchor.fm/compileswift/episodes/5-Tips-for-moving-from-Xcode-10-to-11-e9i6vd
Sunday Jan 5th, 2020
The Ghost Howls blogs present a detailed explanation of using Unity with Oculus's new Hand Based interface.
Oculus Quest recently released the hand tracking SDK for the Oculus Quest, and both users and developers are interested.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/01/03/how-to-oculus-quest-hands-sdk-unity/
Monday Jan 6th, 2020
Gabriel Theodoropoulus is correct, handling Dates/Time is one to the common, and misunderstood, operations on the iPhone.
This Appcoda posting expands on using NSDate with Swift, something all Swift developers should know.
https://www.appcoda.com/nsdate/
Monday Jan 6th, 2020 Additional
Reminder:
Join us for our DCVR Lunch on Tuesday, January 7th, 2019, at Red’s Table in Reston. Red’s Table address is 11150 S Lakes Dr, Reston, VA 20191. I will reserve a table for all for noon. This is not a structured meeting with dedicated topics and speakers. Instead, it is just a chance for VR/AR lovers to socialize. Friends and first-timers are encouraged!
Thank you, Steve
Tuesday Jan 7th, 2020
Start the New Years by balancing your Work-Life equation
Rachal Duggan of Astropad talks about prioritizing what is needed.
https://blog.astropad.com/remote-worker-self-care/
ps. Sorry for the delay in posting.
Wednesday Jan 8th, 2020
Josh Gare step by step guide on using Facebook SDK in Swift. Well done!
In the past, Facebook API have been frustrating, and often orphaned, here is hoping they have been fixed.
https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-integrate-the-ios-facebook-sdk-in-swift-4-9c0192ce7dbf
Thursday Jan 9th, 2020
New app for reporting of auto violations (illegally parked cars & bad driving behavior).
Being beta-tested in DC, the new App “OurStreets” allows users to report simple, but annoying, violations.
https://ourstreets.com
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxLLdM83A-0SDnxhV004TBg
Friday Jan 10th, 2020
I love the images of early Apple Designs.
In the 80’s, the white smooth look that Apple //c used was called “Snow White”. Only a few products used it.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5757414/apple-prototype-tablets-phones-laptops-from-the-80s-photos
Saturday Jan 11th, 2020
Apple returns to CES in partnership with Samsung TV that rotates on its own.
The Samsung Sero is designed for both portrait and landscape viewing, and can be controlled by your iPhone.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-makes-surprise-appearance-at-ces-2020-in-a-unique-samsung-product/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIuNKtlnGUM
Sunday Jan 12th, 2020
Segway has moved from standing to sitting with their Segway S-Pod.
The self-balancing chair, with top speed of 24 mph, was demoed at CES.
https://www.cnet.com/videos/rolling-around-on-the-segway-s-pod-a-self-balancing-chair/
Monday Jan 13th, 2020
Interview of longtime computer game developer Eric Zimmerman by OneZero
As a professor with NY Univ Game Center, Zimmerman studies relationship between gaming and society.
https://onezero.medium.com/a-veteran-video-game-designer-on-why-we-play-54b25f7a5fc0
Tuesday Jan 14th, 2020
From the game vaults of GamaSutra is this gem on designing VR user interface for Skyworld
Paul van der Meer, VR game designer at Vertigo Games, talks about creating a comfortable and flexible UI.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/312469/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_Creating_comfortable_UI_for_VR_strategy_in_Skyworld.php
Tuesday Jan 14th, 2020 addition
Developer Question for a friend: Does Apple allow iOS app in the store that is really nothing but a wrapper for a webview to their website? The app would have no other functions but displaying the online content. I thought Apple actively discouraged this type of App, but I could be wrong. Anyone have more recent knowledge?
Wednesday Jan 15th, 2020
A Review of Virtual Reality announcement from CES
Prototype Panasonic VR Spectalces, 5K Super Pimax, Haptics Suites, and more…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVUE-zprcg
Thursday Jan 16th, 2020
VR will change remote collaboration, making existing teleconferences a thing of the past.
A well thought out explanation showing why spatial meetings are much more useful.
https://www.immersivelearning.news/2020/01/08/a-new-era-of-remote-collaboration-is-here-the-era-of-spatial-meetings/
Friday Jan 17th, 2020
GameStop announced a sharp decline in games purchased over the 2019 holiday season.
27.5% decrease from last year is significant, though GameStop blames everyone hold their breaths for the new consoles.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/356604/GameStop_says_its_unexpectedly_low_holiday_sales_follow_an_industrywide_trend.php
Saturday Jan 18th, 2020
A lot of people have talked about Apple's HQ but now you can see it.
This article from WebProNews not only goes over the building highlights, but it has a great collection of videos about “The Mothership”.
https://www.webpronews.com/apple-headquarters/
Sunday Jan 19th, 2020
The Game Developer Conference 2020 is coming up in March, but you can watch past talks now on YouTube.
The GDC Channel on YouTube has 100 of videos from past years, all work reviewing!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0JB7TSe49lg56u6qH8y_MQ/videos
Monday Jan 20th, 2020
Diving into the deep end of Swift with Bruno Rocha article on Type Erasure
“Type Erasure is the process of abstracting constrained, generic types inside an unconstrained non-generic type.” It is more useful than it sounds.
https://swiftrocks.com/using-type-erasure-to-build-a-dependency-injector-in-swift.html
Tuesday Jan 21st, 2020
Longtime friend Duncan Champney has added new section to Wiki entry on Mandelbrot Set, with some beautiful artwork.
His additions to wiki document how to render Mandelbrot & Julia_sets in 3D. It is nice to know smart creative people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set#3D_images_of_Mandelbrot_and_Julia_sets
Wednesday Jan 22nd, 2020
O’Reilly Open Source Software Conference (Portland, OR, July 13-16) is looking for Speakers.
This would be a great time to present your views/ideas on Open Source, Cloud, Data-Driven, AI-Enhanced & Customer-Centered software.
https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-or/public/cfp/781
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
From the GDC video vaults, a talk on how to make consistent, engaging UI art for AAA games.
Omer Younas, lead graphic designer of DICE LA, using relevant theory and best practice for Art Direction on a big game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjbxxbmJCh0&feature=youtu.be
Friday Jan 24, 2020
Where has the time gone? It has been an interesting thirty-six years.
As MacRumors reminds us, on Jan 24th, 1984, a young Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/24/macintosh-36th-anniversary/
Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY
Saturday Jan 25, 2020
Is it even possible to use 50-year-old software? Guess what, some tools are starting to reach that limit.
Ying Wang of “Bytes by Ying” points out some programs are still being used after all this time and talks about why.
https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2020/01/13/50years/
Sunday Jan 26, 2020
Right or wrong, Netflix website was designed to encourage binge viewing, and it does it job well.
AIGA Eye on Design gives us the details on Netflix design to keep people up later.
https://medium.com/aiga-eye-on-design/netflixs-ux-design-is-keeping-us-up-at-night-dbe190608fab
Monday Jan 27, 2020
Adobe has bundled together 14 historical maps from the US Geological Survey to give away for free.
These beauties can be used for commercial or personal use, and make great background artwork.
https://create.adobe.com/2019/12/25/historical-topographic-maps.html
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
From the Mothership (Premier Apple, Lisa and Early Mac Archive), a Gallery of Apple Ads from the 1970s.
Starting with the original 1976 Apple 1 ad, these are bits of Computer History.
http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/gallery1.html
Index of photos & ads from 1970-1990s: http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/gallerytextindex.html
Wednesday Jan 29, 2020
Are Loot Boxes gambling? UK Gambling commission makes a good case for the classification.
If they are gambling or not is a legal issue different in every jurisdiction, but this question will have to be addressed.
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/News/loot-boxes-within-video-games
Thursday Jan 30, 2020
Are Loot Boxes gambling? UK Gambling Commission makes a good case for the classification.
If they are gambling or not is a legal issue different in every jurisdiction, but this question will have to be addressed.
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/News/loot-boxes-within-video-games
Friday Jan 31, 2020
Read/writing JSON files is made easy using Swift Codable protocol
Reinder de Vries of LearnAppMaking article explains it all.
https://learnappmaking.com/codable-json-swift-how-to/
Friday Jan 31st, 2020 Addition
Simple Question
A friend asked a simple question, now that Swift 5 has been released, what is the best Swift Programming book for an experienced programmer? Any suggestions?
Saturday Feb 1st 2020
Jason Snell of Six Colors (referring Apple original colors logo) give his report card on Apple.
His various grades are not important, his reason of what improved and what didn’t is insightful.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/01/apple-in-2019-the-six-colors-report-card/
Sunday Feb 2nd, 2020
36 training videos from Mobiconf 2019, one of the larger mobile development conferences.
Located in Poland, the presentations were aimed for OS and Android developers, UI/UX designers, software testers, Project Managers, Product Owners and CTOs.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr5cF6ekyIDhnZ2ESdPshESfyAyxZ01TO
Conference site: https://2019.mobiconf.org
Monday Feb 3rd, 2020
Former colleague Jimmy Sambuo talk on Machine Learning & Android MLKit
Video from the recent Tyson’s Corner Android+ Meetup group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMpw-E0mGlY&feature=youtu.be
Tuesday Feb 4th, 2020
John Sundell of Swift by Sundell comes through again with this great article on Swift Slicing
Slicing is a method to work with a portion of a collection (usually an array) without making a copy of that section. A very efficient way to do this!
https://www.swiftbysundell.com/articles/slicing-swift-collections/
Wednesday Feb 5th, 2020
SwiftUI is great at static symbol shapes, but needs better support for animation. Luckily Pavel Zak has come to the rescue.
Pavel explains the animatableData of SwiftUI, and provides the solution to easily work with it.
https://nerdyak.tech/development/2020/01/12/animating-complex-shapes-in-swiftui.html
Thursday Feb 6th, 2020
Another blast from my personal Apple past, and one of my prouder works: the original Apple Term //.
Along with an Apple /// version, this was a free Apple labeled terminal product for the Apple Modem.
One trivia fact: there was actually an unreleased Mac version. I wrote it, and it was in the process of being duplicated for distribution, when Steve Jobs killed the product. His logic was that MacTerminal was not yet out, and this smaller simpler terminal program would hurt MacTerminal says. My boss’s and my own opinion was that it would have increased sales for the Apple Modem for the Mac. We lost the argument.
https://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=2042
Friday Feb 7th, 2020
Sponsored by Fritz AI, Heartbeat website explores the intersection of mobile app development and machine learning.
With a wide range of articles for iOS &Android, Heartbeat is worth exploring.
https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/
Saturday Feb 8th, 2020
From Two Minute Papers, a paper showing a novel approach for more realistic Physics-Based movement of Characters
Using Motion Capture as the data, use Machine Learning techniques to teach the figure to move, in any situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_DhNqHazKY
Sunday Feb 9th, 2020
Stackshare’s top 50, err, 100 Developer Tools for 2019
There has been such an explosion of good, useful, available tools, that Stackshare’s usual list of the Best items had to be doubled in size.
https://stackshare.io/posts/top-developer-tools-2019
Monday Feb 10th, 2020
Google solution to cookie security, kill it within two years, without a replacement.
The issue is also mangled by Regulatory reviews of Google practices.
https://digiday.com/media/google-plans-kill-off-third-party-cookies-chrome-within-2-years/
Tuesday Feb 11th, 2020
How would you create a utility to review data in VR?
Ultraleap, the resulting merger of Leap Motion & UltaHaptics, maintains an interesting blog, where I found these design ideas.
https://www.ultraleap.com/company/news/blog/vr-ar-content-browser/
Wednesday Feb 12th, 2020
The Swift Organization has announced Swift Crypto, an open-source project implementation of Apple CryptoKit.
Providing public-key cryptography, secure digests & symmetric keys, these tools are now available to Swift developers regardless of the hardware platform.
https://swift.org/blog/crypto/
Thursday Feb 13, 2020
ReCombine is a Combine powered state management for Apple applications,
ReCombine is a Swift Redux Library utilizing Apple’s Combine Framework.
https://recombine.io
Friday Feb 14, 2020
Swift 5.2 is here, time to learn some new tricks.
Hacking With Swift explains 5.2’s Key Path Expressions as Functions, Callable values, Subscripts default arguments, and more!
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/212/whats-new-in-swift-5-2
Saturday Feb 15, 2020
Joseph Heck is writing a book on Combine, and is posting it for free
He has chosen crowdfunding as was to support his writing on Apple’s declarative Swift API.
https://heckj.github.io/swiftui-notes/
The PDF version can be purchased: https://gumroad.com/l/usingcombine
Sunday Feb 16, 2020
Apple’s PencilKit was introduced with iOS 13, and provides fine control of Pencil for iPad Pros.
Anupam Chugh explains the surprisingly simple API, and provides source examples.
https://medium.com/better-programming/an-introduction-to-pencilkit-in-ios-4d40aa62ba5b
Demo Repository: https://github.com/anupamchugh/iowncode/tree/master/iOSPencilKit
Monday Feb 17, 2020
Ivano Di Gese provides some solid points on how to improve your Swift Coding.
Beyond the language, here are habits that will make your Swift Code better.
https://medium.com/better-programming/10-tips-to-be-a-good-swift-developer-7860c1e67337
Tuesday Feb 18, 2020
Join us for DCVR in VA at NovaLabs in Reston VA!
Prof. Craig Yu of GMU’s DCXR Group will talk about using AI/ML with VR.
https://www.meetup.com/DCimmersive/events/267589624/
Wednesday Feb 19, 2020
Ivano Di Gese article shows three of the top-level frameworks for animation with Swift.
Vector based animation with Lottie, view controller transitions with Hero, or View animation with Spring. Give them a try.
https://medium.com/better-programming/top-3-swift-animations-libraries-for-your-ios-app-4fab9503d056
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
This is an example of “unintended consequences”, Anti-vaping regulation will also effect Feelreal scent mask for VR.
The Ban on Nicotine E-Cigarette is shutting down VR company working on smell-o-vision add-on for VR headsets.
https://www.roadtovr.com/feelreal-vr-scent-mask-vaping-fda-ban/
Friday Feb 21, 2020
Yes, Apple’s new Functional Reactive Programming APIs, SwiftUI & Combine, can work together.
Peter Friese explains how to make these two different frameworks compatible with each other.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/swiftui-plus-combine-equals-love-791ad444a082
Friday Feb 21, 2020 Addition
Sadly, a computer pioneer has passed away. Thank you, Larry Tesler for all your great work and ideas.
https://people.com/human-interest/larry-tesler-computer-scientist-dies/
Saturday Feb 22, 2020
Kate Shokurova gives us 13 patterns for Mobile App Design.
I would not call these patterns as much as checklist items for requirement, but either way, it is a useful list.
https://uxdesign.cc/mobile-ui-13-basic-patterns-of-app-ui-design-to-know-about-d3f7c6176f13
Sunday Feb 23, 2020
Even if you are not using Java, the language ability to Annotate the source and compiled code is worth knowing.
Ben Weidig article is a good introduction for those of us who are unfamiliar with the Java feature.
https://medium.com/better-programming/java-annotations-explained-f1c26580b839
Monday Feb 24, 2020
Christina Koehn leads us through the evolution of various Microsoft’s Icons.
I especially like the montage of Mail icons, over the years.
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/iconic-icons-designing-the-world-of-windows-5e70e25e5416
Tuesday Feb 25, 2020
UXDetails examines Tempo, and the innovative ideas that this Mail Client uses.
Using animation and interactions, Tempo takes the novel approach that mail comes in batches, not individual emails.
https://www.uxdetails.com/tempo/
Wednesday Feb 26, 2020
A dozen talks from dotSwift 2020, a recent Swift conference in Paris.
It is always great when a conference puts up their videos to share. Thank you!
https://www.dotconferences.com/conference/dotswift-2020
The YouTube channel with all the videos, including past dotSwift conferences: https://www.youtube.com/user/dotconferences/featured
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
This has been argued since the CompuServe days (late 80s), now a Peanut maker is getting into the argument on how you pronounce GIF (gif or jif).
How do you pronounce the abbreviation for Graphics Interchange Format? Hard G or soft g?
https://www.businessinsider.com/jif-campaign-settle-debate-pronunciation-of-gif-2020-2
ps. If anyone finds the link to buy it on Amazon, please send it to me.
Friday Feb 28, 2020
Tania Vieira provides an explanation of Hick’s Law in regards to UI/UX.
Named after psychologist William Hick, the rule state that the more choices you provide a user, the longer it takes, by a factor of Log2().
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-create-simple-and-clear-user-experiences-with-hicks-law-b1ccc8627536
Sat Feb 29, 2020
I don’t plan on being Evil, but I found this list of Design Patterns from Hell to be useful.
Yes, there is such a thing as Unethical UX Design. Here are things to avoid.
https://uxdesign.cc/10-evil-types-of-dark-ux-patterns-f5a408c43c62
Sun March 1, 2020
CNN takes on how VR is effecting Music Concerts.
Besides allowing access to sold-out performances, unintrusive 360 cameras could put the viewer upfront, backstage and even possibly on stage.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/27/tech/vr-live-music-intl/index.html
Mon March 2, 2020
DevFest DC is a great one day conference, not just for Google Technology, but for all areas of development.
This year's conference will be June 5, in Tysons Corner, VA. Early Bird Tickets will be on sale on March 15.
https://www.devfestdc.org
Link to purchase the tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/devfest-dc-2020-tickets-96337607377
Tue March 3, 2020
Most mobile use is done while holding the phone in one hand. The UX design needs to reflect that.
Maitrik Kataria of Simform has some thought on how to design with one handed use in mind.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/02/design-mobile-apps-one-hand-usage/
Wed March 4, 2020
Among other things, this video shows how seemingly simple math equations can create suprisingly complex computer graphics.
Anyone who says math can not be interesting, or beautiful, didn’t have a good teacher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK32jo7i5LQ
Thu March 5, 2020
A great introduction to Bartle’s player type, classification of video game players, and how to design for them.
Amir Dori goes into depth on the four types, and what game designers should do to appeal to each one.
https://uxdesign.cc/designing-your-game-mechanics-based-on-player-types-b16a95fb7f60
WIki article on Bartle Player Type: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types
Original Paper by Richard Bartle: https://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Fri March 6, 2020
Continuing yesterdays posting on Bartle Player Types, this Gamasutra posting proposes a Unified Model of play styles.
Bart Stewart articles builds on original Richard Bartle paper, incorporates other game design models, and gives solution for game design.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6474/personality_and_play_styles_a_.php
Sat March 7, 2020
Join us on Wed March 25 for DCVR in VA at NovaLabs in Reston VA!
Paras Kaul will demo a prototype for a mobile Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI), soon to be used in an interactive VR game.
https://www.meetup.com/DCimmersive/events/269227360/
Sunday March 8, 2020
Previously, Danny Sapio give us 10 Evil Design Patterns, now he provided 10 Ethical ones.
As he states, “Using honest UX design to create reputable and trustworthy experiences”. I like the trustworthy part.
https://uxdesign.cc/10-principles-for-ethical-ux-designs-21faf5ab243d
His original 10 Evil UX Designs article: https://uxdesign.cc/10-evil-types-of-dark-ux-patterns-f5a408c43c62
Monday March 9, 2020
For some reason, Microsoft radically changes the UI of their Dashboard for every update of Xbox. Here is that history.
It is interesting the see the changes, the good and bad ones, and where they went back and forth.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/26/21152674/xbox-design-history-360-one-series-x-console-dashboard
Comment: most platforms choose to gradually change their UI, so as not to confuse their users. Not MS!
Tuesday March 10, 2020
Swift compiled fast, but there are ways to make your builds even faster and more optimized.
I found Leandro Pérez gives a very real-world experience of using tools like Sitrep & XCLogParser to develop faster.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/analyzing-and-improving-build-times-in-ios-5e2b77ef408e
ps. Anyone else remember the old CodeWarrier ads, that said “Writer Bugs Faster” as a way to emphasize their performance?
Wednesday March 11, 2020
Anupam Chugh does a great job of compiling list of useful, modern, shortcuts to Xcode.
Someone should make a cheat sheet with all the latest features <hint, hint>.
https://medium.com/better-programming/13-xcode-shortcuts-to-boost-your-productivity-329c90512309
Thursday March 12, 2020
Here are the best AI/ML game opponents.
I found it fascinating that one company switched from the task of making opponent bot to making better teammate bots. A much harder task.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ybrxz03MvQ
Friday March 13, 2020
The creators of Pokemon Go are modifying the game to encourage staying at home.
A real-world event is effecting a virtual world environment, to change behavior in the real world. VR/AR/RR (Real reality?) is merging more than ever.
https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/12/21177754/pokemon-go-coronavirus-habitat-increases-incubators-pokestop-gifts
Saturday March 14, 2020
Apple’s WWDC 2020 will be an online-only conference.
There is no doubt the coronavirus helped make this decision, but due to other factors, it has been a long time coming.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-wwdc-2020-kicks-off-in-june-with-an-all-new-online-format/
Comment: The conference has expensive, both for the developer to attend (hotel, travel, tickets) as well as for Apple to product (100s of employees working weeks to prepare). 10x as many developers wanted to show up, as opposed to the limited tickets available. The lottery was always a pain, with it's uncertainty. And finally, with the videos available within hours of the talks, some of us had questioned if to was worth going. This quick release of the talks online has proven that format work. I will miss the gathering, and the energy one generated by being there, but when I was asked last year by my boss if my attending was needed, and I said "No". The only exceptional benefit in going in person happened if you had a project with a problem (UI, Tech, Design), you could talk to some experts at the workshops. But even that has become hit and miss. So, WWDC will continue, but not as it was.
Trivia: Apple's first developer conference was not WWDC. Just before the release of the Mac, Apple had a small (I think about 40 people) conference for PRODOS development (Apple // and Apple ///)! Yes, I attended.
Saturday March 14, 2020 Extra
Some of you know that I was planning to go on Vacation today, and go on hiatus with my Tech postings. I was scheduled to attend Gulf Wars, the SCA Medieval reenactment event in MS. I drove down on Wednesday to my friends in Orlando, to pick home up, and then head across country to the event. Thursday Night, the event was officially canceled. I will be spending some time with my friend here in FL, and returning on Wednesday. I am glad to see my friends, but I really miss the plans we had for swordplay, teaching classes, and generally enjoying ourselves around the campfires and taverns. See you all soon!
Sunday March 15, 2020
Videos from BA: Swiftable 2019, a brand new iOS conference from Latin America.
Held in Buenos Aires in November, nearly 2 dozen videos on a range of Swift & iOS topics.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLleLsCcywRxKT3VgBPtzxtRjq-NXK0FZw
Monday March 16, 2020
Chuck Joiner of MacVoices interviews Joe Kissell, author & expert mac command line usage.
Joe explains why changes due to Catalina had him update his book “Takes Control of The Mac Command Line With Terminal”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBdo8RG93kM&feature=youtu.be
Joe’s website and info about his book: https://www.takecontrolbooks.com
Tuesday March 17, 2020
France fines Apple $1.2 Billion for monopolistic price-fixing.
I find it suspicious that the French choose to do it now (after 10 years) and only fine the other companies less $100 million.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-just-hit-with-record-breaking-dollar12-billion-antitrust-fine
Tuesday March 17, 2020 addendum
Special: Schools are closing, and setting up to remote teaching using computers. But what about the households who do not have a computer? The digital divide in our society has always been there, but now more than ever, the split has become apparent. The closing of locations like libraries that give free Internet access makes it worst.
https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2020-03-10/coronavirus-school-closings-expose-digital-divide
Wednesday March 18, 2020
UIAlertController has always been to verbose for the most command cases, can this be fixed?
Pierre Felgines article explains how he slimmed down Alerts to a much more useful Factory method in Swift.
https://felginep.github.io/2020-03-10/uialertcontroller-function-builders
I especially like how Pierre leads the reader thru his though process, improving the API along the way.
Thursday March 19, 2020
CGI has advanced to the point where images can be converted as if they were drawn by famous artists.
General Adversarial Network (GAN) involves 2 Neural Network, one to create the image and another to judge if it is good, running against each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IbNmc2mTz4
Friday March 20, 2020
Bloomberg report says Magic Leap looking for a buyer. (Most people saw this in the works.)
Magic Leap raised $2.1 Billion in Venture Capital, while claiming their value at $10 Billion.
https://www.roadtovr.com/report-magic-leap-buyer-sale/
Saturday March 21, 2020
The VRAR association podcast interview of Stefan Alexander of North, makers of AR Glasses.
Focals will be “Custom-made glasses with a display only you can see.” Shipping this year.
https://www.thevrara.com/podcast-posts/focalsbynorth
North website: https://www.bynorth.com/
Sunday March 22, 2020
Robots do not have to have human body or even rigid limbs, at this one shows.
Standard researchers created this mobile robot, that can even pick up items, out of inflated balloon sections.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/03/19/stanford-robot-changing-shapes-eg-orig.cnn
Monday March 23, 2020
Jeremiah Lam explain Breadcrumbs, UI Controls that assist users within directories structure.
Within a file system or website, this interface helps a user know where he is and where he can move to.
https://uxdesign.cc/guidelines-for-breadcrumbs-design-a90eb1b21348
Note: I never heard the term breadcrumbs before. In the Mac world, they are called “Path Controls”. But as soon as Jeremiah said Breadcrumbs, I understand the design.
Tuesday March 24, 2020
OpenXR, the royalty-free open-source standard for cross-platform VR, will soon be coming to Quest & Rift.
RoadToVR explains this unifying API for VR & AR hardware.
https://www.roadtovr.com/openxr-support-oculus-quest/
Wednesday March 25, 2020
A nice presentation by Leandro Pérez diving into Modular Architecture, specifically iOS asset Dependencies
He gives real code examples of sharing asset between code like fonts and images.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/modular-architecture-in-ios-dependencies-1cf9b563aa1d
Thursday March 26, 2020
As Paul Hudson of Hacking With Swift explains, neumorphic design, a hot topic in design.
Paul’s article, and video, show how to create this 3D effect in Swift.
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/213/how-to-build-neumorphic-designs-with-swiftui
Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/z3tJdxwlo_Y
Friday March 27, 2020
Continuing on the UX topic of Neumorphic, Michal Malewicz article explores different UIs using this new trend.
I liked the “mid-way to realism” description to visualize what Neumorphic is striving for.
https://uxdesign.cc/neumorphism-in-user-interfaces-b47cef3bf3a6
Note: The article, and coding, is for webpages, but the same ideas can easily be used in Desktop & Mobile programming
Saturday March 28, 2020
Unix Toolbox is a website containing collects of common Unix/Linux/BSD Commands.
Both a tutorial and a cheatsheet, this is a great resource for any developer.
http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml
I have a love/hate relationship with Unix. Ever since early days at UC Berkeley, I love the power of Unix, as well as the ease of command, but I also hate that I use it for a project, then go to some IDE that does not require the use of the Command line, and when I return, I have to learn it all over again. This website helps me!
Sunday March 29, 2020
Azat Zulkarnyaev of Magic Laps shares their solutions to the problem of Universal Navigation in iOS.
Having a global router allows for navigation of any screen from any location.
https://badootech.badoo.com/routing-for-ios-universal-navigation-without-rewriting-the-app-215b52a37cf2
I had a similar issue when writing on a custom app for all Lexus car dealerships. Having a way to bookmark any screen (or content of a screen), not only allowed for more free-range navigation within the app, but also allowed for Favorite marking, Table of Contents, and Indexes. The more we had it, the more uses we found for it.
Monday March 30, 2020
Despite a rocky upgrade fo Python 2, Python is now the 2nd more popular language, pushing Java aside.
Wired magazine explains that the increase in popularity was a bit unexpected.
https://www.wired.com/story/python-language-more-popular-than-ever/
ps. Javascript is still number one
Article about minefield of upgrading Python 2 to Python 3: https://www.wired.com/story/think-app-updates-suck-try-upgrading-programming-language/
Monday March 30, 2020 addition
Personal Request: Due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, I have a couple of young ladies who are currently looking for Remote Online Work. If you have any position or work, please contact me. Since their employment may not be there when things return to normal, they are looking for permanent or temporary positions. Thank you!
Tuesday March 31, 2020
An in-depth article by Amirzhan Idryshev exploring all the different design architecture for iOS
A very good explanation of the pro & cons of MVC, MVVM, MVP, VIPER, with an interesting conclusion.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/the-only-viable-ios-architecture-c42f7b4c845d
Wednesday April 1, 2020
For newer iOS developer, an explanation of the different storage mechanisms.
Donny Wals does a nice job laying out the options.
https://medium.com/better-programming/deciding-where-to-store-data-on-ios-3f71e5d850c8
Note: I often write protocols to standardize the storage of data, regardless of the underlining technology be it User Defaults, Core Data, even network storage. One of the more exciting parts of Apple’s new Combine framework is a similar idea for handling local & network storage.
Thursday April 2, 2020
A pretty amazing video history lesson on Apple’s first unsuccessful attempt at Unix, the lesser-known A/AU.
Yes, years before Steve Jobs brought NextStep Unix to the Mac with OS X, we had another Unix OS on the Mac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrTTXOg-KI
I remember being trained on using A/UX while at Apple. Not trained on programming it, since almost no one I knew understood why Apple wanted to do this.
Friday April 3, 2020
So many new iOS APIs & Swift Protocols, only so much time to learn them.
Today Artur Rymarz teaches me about Diffable Data sources.
https://medium.com/better-programming/diffable-data-sources-in-swift-32b7d24b1f1b
Saturday April 4, 2020
Paul Hudson of Hacking with Swift give his list of best Apps for iOS developers
Sadly, I only use one of the, and recognized 1 other. I suspect I will be doing some App reviews ASAP.
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/214/essential-apps-for-ios-developers
Sunday April 5, 2020
Keeping up to date is a full-time job, these 30 swift sites help
Feedspot created a list of 30 Swift Programming websites and blogs for 2020
https://blog.feedspot.com/swift_programming_blogs/
Monday April 6, 2020
iOS author, trainer and guru Scot Gardner has given us a 3 1/2 hands-on workshop for Combine & SwiftUI
In the end, you will have created a multi-peer chat app using SwiftUI and Combine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXv7y2XkDQ
His Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/scott.gardner/getting-started-with-combine-and-swiftui
His Github Repository: https://github.com/scotteg/Crosstalk/
Tuesday April 7, 2020
An unintended consequence of the virus crisis has caused a need for Cobol programmer. WHAT!?!?
Apparently, the stress on NJ unemployment computers requires people who know how to program this ancient programming language.
https://josephsteinberg.com/covid-19-response-new-jersey-urgently-needs-cobol-programmers-yes-you-read-that-correctly/
Personal note: I actually had some one offer me a 6 months contract to do some Cobol programming 2 years ago. First, I have never programmed in Cobol, as you can guess by the name “common business-oriented language”, it was intended for the business world. Mostly main frame systems like pay roll and accounting. I have programmed in Fortran, so I do have absolute knowledge. The second strange thing about the 6 month contract gig was that it was on-site in Poland.
Wednesday April 8, 2020
Forbes magazine gives us a list of the best out-of-the-home XR from last year.
Obviously these are shut down with the current crisis, but it is great to see where we are going with VR.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2020/02/19/the-top-35-xr-installations-of-2019/#1e358e37ca08
Note: I love how pundits and others are using the term XR everywhere, without explaining what it means. Yes, there is more than one explanation of that abbreviates. Extended Reality, Extreme Reality, Cross Reality. I honestly not sure which application they were talking about, in this article.
Wednesday April 8, 2020 Addition
The current crisis has left with some time on my hands, so I am developing a project that I have wanted to work on for a while, recreating the old MacApp framework with Swift, and the heavy use of Closures. This will be a tool to make it easier to create professional-quality Mac utilities and document-based apps. All document storage will use Swift’s Codeable protocol (usually JSON on the file level). The framework will handle standard UI elements such as Preferences panels, Welcome/Onboarding screens and Help system. Under the hood, there will be better management of tasks like Undo and Sharing. The User interface will be created using Storyboards, but will rely not on IBOutlets and IBAction, but instead on Closures. This is an ongoing work in progress, that will have more building blocks as I go along, to help me produce some new product ideas I have. In my opinion, without a tool like this, creating a simple, but full feature Mac application has become to complex. I hope this simplifies it, if only for my own work.
Thursday April 9, 2020
Bruno Rocha of SwiftRocks presents some unknown but useful Global functions from the Swift Standard Library.
There small, simple, and surprisingly useful once you get into the habit of using them.
https://swiftrocks.com/useful-global-swift-functions.html
Friday April 10, 2020
Omar Rabbolini makes a compelling argument that Apple has slowed down as an innovator in design.
Where you are number 1 at something, with a huge margin, you don’t always take risks with new ideas.
https://uxdesign.cc/the-decline-of-apples-leadership-in-ux-design-b4ad1d24c953
Saturday April 11, 2020
Great website with a realtime presentation of the Apollo 13 launch, accident and rescue mission.
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the launch, with the Accident's anniversary on Tuesday at 10 pm.
https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/
CNN article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/11/us/apollo-13-anniversary-realtime-timeline-scn/index.html
Sunday April 12, 2020
Some thoughts from Software experts on the best languages to learn, with a lot of links to similar articles.
I like the idea that a developer should learn one new programming language a year. Or maybe one complex SDK or API.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-get-a-developer-job-the-best-programming-languages-to-learn/
Monday April 13, 2020
Beside Prefixes & Suffixes in the English Language, there are also Infixes, but you usually don't talk about them in school
I abso-XXX-lutely love Tom Scott tech videos, but he also dwells into another favorite topic of mine, Linguistics. As a software design expert, I think all developers should study some of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt22yWYX64w
Tuesday April 14, 2020
This is just cute, using SwiftUI, Priyans Brahmbhatt animates the famous Star Wars title effect.
Start with large text below, then scrolling them up to infinity, this is a piece of beauty.
https://www.appcoda.com/star-wars-animated-text-swiftui/
Wednesday April 15, 2020
It is hard to make a big splash, when you can’t gather people. Did you know Apple announced their new low end iPhone?
The iPhone SE is $300 less than iPhone 11, with some older features, but has a pretty impressive camera.
https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/
I would buy it.
CNN take: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/tech/iphone-se/index.html
Thursday April 16, 2020
Most developers don't know about SF Symbol.
A mostly unknown resource, Apple released the SF Symbol font to provide a range of scalable commonly used icons.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/sf-symbols/overview/
Friday April 17, 2020
The Swift organizations have come up with ArgumentParser, a method to parse command-line arguments.
Federico Zanetello of Five Star blogs explains the features of the final release version of this open-source library.
https://www.fivestars.blog/code/a-look-into-argument-parser.html
Swift Org announcement: https://swift.org/blog/argument-parser/
Repository: https://github.com/apple/swift-argument-parser
Saturday April 18, 2020
Yet another tech conference has decided to become only only, in this case Facebook’s Oculus Connect 7.
It does feel appropriate that a VR conference becomes virtual, but this conference is notorious for handing out expensive hardware. Will they still do that?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/16/facebooks-annual-virtual-reality-conference-goes-virtual-only/
Sunday April 19, 2020
An older article, talking about the business decisions Steve Jobs made after returning to Apple.
Not surprisingly, most of them dealt with getting the right people in the right position.
https://www.macworld.com/article/2009941/steve-jobss-seven-key-decisions.html
Monday April 20, 2020
A virtual Tour of the Governors House at Colonial Williamsburg show how 360 content can be used well.
There is no 360 video, but the 360 still photos are excellent, as well as the hyper linking between locations and additional information,
https://virtualtours.colonialwilliamsburg.org
Tuesday April 21, 2020
Matt Gallagher, creator of StreamToMe, gives tale of the development, and final cancelation of his iOS App.
One of the hardest things a developer has to do is make the decision when an idea is over. But you have to make these decisions.
https://www.cocoawithlove.com/blog/a-farewell-to-streamtome.html
Wednesday April 22, 2020
One of my new favorite Youtube channels, “This Does Not Computer” explores retro video games, computers and tech.
I like, not just Colin’s video style, but his insight into the past.
https://www.youtube.com/user/cwwirth/videos
Thursday April 23, 2020
Michael Katz of the Raywenderlich team gives us VIPER, a replacement for MVC.
Real world example of blending to components of VIPER (View, Interactor, Presenter, Entity & Router) with the SwiftUI and Combine frameworks.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/8440907-getting-started-with-the-viper-architecture-pattern#toc-anchor-001
Friday April 24, 2020
Some great suggestions on how to improve the UI of traditional Dropdown views.
Danny Sapio's articles have been excellent lately, I recommend following him on UXDesign.
https://uxdesign.cc/10-ways-to-improve-dropdowns-in-ui-ux-design-59d61a304b70
Saturday April 25, 2020
Anna Zhilyaeva is something new, a Virtual Reality painter and performance artist.
The videos of her creations, and watching her create them, is very impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKEfXMw7538wvuulXy_RNcQ/featured
Follow her on twitter too: https://twitter.com/AnnaDreamBrush
Sunday April 26, 2020
Apple’s MapKit for iOS has come a long way since the initial release.
Controlling camera boundary & zoom, optimized overlays, search and auto-complete, points of interest. There are all new or improved.
https://medium.com/better-programming/exploring-mapkit-on-ios-13-1a7a1439e3b6
For an early release of MapKit, my company had an iOS app that allowed you to bookmark your location. Save My Place had good reviews, but never became popular, mostly due to poor marketing.
Monday April 27, 2020
Continuing exploring variations of DropDown field UI, Tess Gadd article provides a cheat sheet.
Feedback text, multi select, groups; these are all feature I had not considered before now.
https://uxdesign.cc/ui-cheat-sheet-dropdown-field-a30025c0f432
Tuesday April 28, 2020
Don’t watch the video as a TED class, think of it as a game. Why can’t other logic games be this well designed?
Alex Gendler with Artrake Studio created this puzzler, from a classic logic puzzle book. Present the game, allow the user to play, then explain the results. A perfect game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSkw7hKN_Xg
Wednesday April 29, 2020
APIs for iOS are always expanding, so Anupam Chugh gives us a list of best new technologies to incorporate in your app.
He doesn’t just list the tech, but gives examples of using the feature, including code. Nice job!
https://medium.com/better-programming/ios-13-checklist-for-developers-ef47e413aad2
Thursday April 30, 2020
Nearly 20 years ago, Apple tried their first attempt at Virtual Reality, by introducing standard base on QuickTime
Ultimately this attempt failed, but it is an important footnote in VR History.
http://www.z360.com/blog/?p=82
Last night, while cleaning the catacombs, err, my basement, I found the first Quicktime VR disk, still sealed in the original case. I was one of the few 3rd party developers who worked on some products using QT VR (a medical app). We had no dedicated hardware glass to view the output, which may have been one of the reasons it failed. Instead one viewed the QuickTime video on the screen, using the mouse to scroll or rotate in all directions. It did introduce the idea of two different VR patterns: the panoramic view (looking outward) and the object view (looking inward at a 3D object you could rotate). Another reason for the lack of success was the timing, it was too early. There were few 360 cameras at the time, none of them not high cost. Most panoramic views were created by taking photos in all directions and stitching them together. Most object views were actually rendered in 3D graphics. Graphics were too slow to render the object in real-time, so generating an object movie actually made sense. I wonder what could have been done if we had the hardware back then.
Friday May 1st, 2020
Daniel Birch gives us 18 skill requirement for a UX designer.
User Interface is only one of them, the majority of the skills deal with communicating your ideas to others.
https://uxdesign.cc/what-are-the-key-skills-a-great-ux-designer-needs-a1ae20685396
Saturday May 2nd 2020
John Conway, the creator of Conway’s Game of Life, explains how he got the idea.
You get the definite impression he was surprised about the massive interest in his little “no player game”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Plq-D1gEk
I knew Dr. Conway died this month, but was not aware it was due to the COVID-19 virus.
Follow up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA
Sunday May 3rd, 2020
Has it only been 5 years since the introduction of the Apple Watch?
CNN reviews what these 5 years have brought us. What worked, what didn't.
https://www.cnet.com/news/remember-when-apple-watch-was-luxury-item-we-look-back-5-year-evolution/
Monday May 4th, 2020
CNN reports the use of Virtual Reality use during the current COVID-19 crisis.
Social Distancing during training is a perfect use for VR.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/tech/vr-training-coronavirus/index.html
Tuesday May 5th, 2020
An interesting article, with both the tech and the history, of the changes that iOS 7 brought.
The change in use of Skeuomorphism is still with us today, so it is worth noting.
https://uxdesign.cc/apples-ios-7-controversy-explained-b171ceb5a2ba
Wednesday May 6th, 2020
Paul Hudson of Hacking with Swift explores NavigationViews with SwiftUI
NavigationViews are the most popular form of container view, and needs to be understood for any iOS development.
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/216/complete-guide-to-navigationview-in-swiftui
Link to video: https://youtu.be/nA6Jo6YnL9g
Thursday May 7th, 2020
Luca Angelettie uses Generics and Swift Codable protocol to make User Defaults a snap.
I been using Codable to convert into a Data object, than storing them into User Defaults. This method is better!
https://itnext.io/adding-codable-support-to-userdefaults-with-swift-26a799bf00e1
Friday May 8th, 2020
Writing for another country is more than just localization of language changes, as explained by Sebastian Mueller.
You have to be aware of the culture in regards to style of App to sell well in China.
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-adapt-your-ux-for-china-73f2ab789570
Saturday May 9th, 2020
Youtube video on different Anti-piracy measures for games through the years.
There are better choice than simply quitting when you identified a Pirate. If done well, you can intice them into spending money.
You identified a Pirate, how do you handle them? Usually with a lot of shame!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWaxMZxiHWo
It was not anti-piracy exactly, but my all time favorite story regarding how to annoy your customers for not registering. Ambrosia Software’s “Escape Velocity” for the Mac was a popular game, that you could play for free, for awhile. After a given amount of time, if you did not register it, when you left a space station to head into deep space, an indestructible space pirate would pop up, and remind you to pay for the game. At first, it would just send radio messages. If you ignored it, it would start shooting at you for minor damage. If you ignored that, the shots became more deadly. I once left the game for a year, came back to play, and the pesky pirate blew me away with one shot. Definitely the most humorous I had ever been told to not be cheap!
Sunday May 10th, 2020
MacVoices with Chuck Joiner celebrates TidBITS 30th Anniversary with founder Adam Engst
TidBITS has been providing “Thoughtful, detailed coverage of everything Apple” for 3 decades now.
http://www.macvoices.com/macvoices-20131-tidbits-30th-anniversary-with-adam-engst-part-1/
Part 2 of talk: http://www.macvoices.com/macvoices-20132-tidbits-30th-anniversary-with-adam-engst-part-2/
Tidbit website: https://tidbits.com
Monday May 11th, 2020
Due to the ongoing crisis, the VivePort 2020 conference was done in an online only format.
Adhar Walia, Director of Product for Viveport, provides the Roadmap for future HTC Vive Products, which emphasis on making it easier for developer to create VR Apps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8G9EX9EiT0
Tuesday May 12, 2020
RoadToVR talks about a VR project that generates content for the popular Beat Saber game.
One of the problems with VR & Virtual Worlds is feeling the massive empty space with content. Human-made content is the best but it takes time and people to make it. Imagine if good content that could be created by an AI.
https://www.roadtovr.com/beat-saber-project-uses-ai-generate-custom-beat-maps-song/
Tuesday May 12, 2020 Bonus
It is short, and not very informative, but it was a blast to see the evolution of the Mac desktop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAjoPow15V8
Wednesday May 13, 2020
Tess Gadd comes through with another cheat sheet for UI, this time on Checkbox, Radio Boxes & more.
By breaking down the functionality, she comes up with ways to describe and expand their uses. Good job!
https://uxdesign.cc/ui-cheat-sheet-radio-buttons-checkboxes-and-other-selectors-bf56777ad59e
Thursday May 14, 2020
The scourge of VR is motion sickness from fast motion games. Researchers may have a solution.
We already know different tricks to help prevent nausea, which mostly involves distracting the player or limiting their range of view. It makes sense that haptic distraction might also solve this problem.
https://www.roadtovr.com/researchers-head-mounted-haptics-combat-vr-discomfort-walkingvibe/
Friday May 15, 2020
Tech is appearing everywhere. How about your bathroom mirror?
Forbes shows Smart Mirror that supports Alexa speech, as well as ones that display graphics and sound. Anyone want to read the news as they shave?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sherikoones/2020/05/04/mirror-mirror-on-the-wallthe-new-age-of-smart-mirrors/
Saturday May 16, 2020
Beat Saber is a smash hit, that is not news, but this small miniature version is interesting.
Oculus Quest hand gestures have yet to make a big impact, this might change that.
https://www.roadtovr.com/miniature-beat-saber-concept-ar-daniel-beauchamp/
Sunday May 17, 2020
Youtube’s “Unofficial AppleKeynotes channel “ gives us Apple Events clear back to 1984.
We have come a long way. Some of these are worth reviewing.
https://www.youtube.com/user/justinhu5
Monday May 18, 2020
Anton Marunko explains the building blocks of Clean Swift, an architectural pattern similar to VIPER.
He explains the major components, gives examples, and finally lists the pros/cons of this design. Good job!
https://medium.com/@anton.marunko/clean-swift-4891a5e3ace9
Tuesday May 19, 2020
NextVR, VR broadcaster for sports & music, has been purchased by Apple for a possible $100 Million.
NextVR had been having problems securing additional Funding, so this was a surprise move.
https://www.roadtovr.com/report-apple-nextvr-acqusition/
Original Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/apple-acquires-startup-nextvr-to-gain-virtual-reality-content
Wednesday May 20, 2020
After your game is complete is not the time to start gaining your fans, according to Simon Carless in this Gamasutra Blog.
You can start by adding fans during the development phase of your work if you follow his plan.
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200511/362780/Gaining_fans_for_your_game_A_marathon_not_a_sprint.php
Thursday May 21, 2020
For me, Generics are still the most difficult thing for me to write well. Using is easy, designing them, not!
Navdeep Singh provides a good starting explanation of Generics in Swift
https://medium.com/@navdeepsingh_2336/generics-in-swift-13e792249cad
Friday May 22, 2020
You are programming a mobile device. Face it, your available memory is small, deal with it.
Leandro Pérez provides real world things to keep your memory small, and hints on what to do when you run out.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/techniques-to-reduce-memory-footprint-and-oom-terminations-in-ios-a0f6bef38217
My favorite part in this entire article is the recommendation for when you hit low memory state, you save the users data. Low memory, and occasional crashes from it, happen. You want your users not to be upset when it does, so saving the data, and restarting cleanly, will go a long way to keeping your customers happy.
Saturday May 23, 2020
Celebrate 40 years of running away from Ghost and eating the Dots!
CNN reminds us when video gaming all got started. Yes, we had Space Wars and Pong first, but this is the franchise that made the biggest impact. And it is still going strong.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/pac-man-40-anniversary-history/index.html
Sunday May 24, 2020
Combine touch-sensitive threads with optical lighting, gives you an interesting interface with a wide range of uses.
Google AI article on E-Texture shows it is not just turning things on and off, but using different types of touch gestures.
https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/05/enabling-e-textile-microinteractions.html
Watch the videos!
E-Textile Microinteractions video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbAvY6bwZD8
I/O Braid video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_QCI8ntDM
Monday May 25th, 2020
Swift 5.3 is coming, so it is back to the books, err, blogs for us
Package Manager updates, Multiple Trailing Closures, Enum improvements, for a minor update, there is a lot to learn.
https://theswiftdev.com/whats-new-in-swift-5-3/
Tuesday May 26th, 2020
Facebook/Oculus has been creating a VR/AR interface to completely replace your desktop computer.
Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Facebook’s VP of AR/VR, posted a video showing this new vision.
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-prototype-vr-interface-replace-your-laptop/
Link to twitter video: https://twitter.com/boztank/status/1263573832889073664
Wednesday May 27th, 2020
A Gamasutra Article by Natalie Mikkelson on creating disconnected dialogue, i.e. Barks, for gameplay.
This type of interaction is common for NPC with RPGs, but I think it would also work for VR backgrounds.
https://gamasutra.com/blogs/NatalieMikkelson/20200518/363089/Adding_Life_To_Worlds_With_Dialogue_Barks.php
Thursday May 28th, 2020
Gryphon is a Swift to Kotlin translator, useful in moving iOS code to Android.
The tool was written to play well with Xcode & Android Studio, allowing debugging of shared code.
https://vinivendra.github.io/Gryphon
Github repository: https://github.com/vinivendra/Gryphon
Friday May 29th, 2020
Two Minute Video on creating Computer Animation to match Real World Sounds.
Traditionally we tried to make computer generated sounds for real video, it turns out, the reversed problem may be easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMo7pkkaZ9o
Saturday May 30th, 2020
A good article on how, and why, game developers are switching to in-game advertising.
Mobile gamers prefer free-to-play games, and 2/3 don’t spend money on in-app purchases, leaving advertisement as the best revenue source.
https://www.adcolony.com/blog/2019/10/31/the-shift-toward-mobile-in-game-advertising/
Sunday May 31th, 2020
Ehab Yosry Amer of RayWenderlich gives everyone a great tutorial on Exporting App Data.
It is one of the better explanations of creating custom file types and extensions, which often trips developers.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/8413525-universal-type-identifiers-tutorial-for-ios-importing-and-exporting-app-data
Monday June 1st, 2020
“Swift with Shani” is an ongoing YouTube VLog on everything from programming with Swift.
Shani River’s most recent videos deal with becoming an Indie App developer, both tech and business issues.
https://www.youtube.com/swiftwithshani
Her website: http://www.shanirivers.com/
And Twitter: https://twitter.com/shani_rivers
Tuesday June 2nd, 2020
Tom Scott admits to his personal worst programming mistake ever (hint: don’t edit non-backed up data).
In the process, he also gives a great back history of the Undo feature, and ways to implement it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6NJkWbM1xk
Wednesday June 3rd, 2020
Sean Allen gives a review of shape.so, with their 4300+ icons for iOS use.
Sean Allen puts up 3 videos a week on Swift/iOS development, including tutorials, VLOG, reviews & interviews. All are very professionally done. I especially like his code snippet section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUGKMgJRxvQ&feature=youtu.be
His channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbTw29mcP12YlTt1EpUaVJw/
His website: https://seanallen.co
Thursday June 4th, 2020
CES, the biggest US electronics show, is not canceled for 2021, but you can attend online or in person.
This may be the wave of the future, events that allow physical attendance, but designed for virtual also.
https://www.cnet.com/news/ces-2021-plans-to-be-live-in-las-vegas-physically-and-digitally/
Friday June 5th, 2020
Nearly released Swift AWS Lambda Runtime is designed to help Swift developers build serverless functions.
Working with Amazon Web Services, this new open-source swift library extends your applications into the cloud.
https://swift.org/blog/aws-lambda-runtime/
Saturday June 6th, 2020
Before CGI, we had the king of Stop Motion Animation, Ray Harryhausen.
The actual models he created have been restored, and will on display in Scotland soon (post virus).
https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/ray-harryhausen/
Wouldn't it be fantastic if someone were to 3D scan the original models for anyone to use?
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art details: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/exhibition/ray-harryhausen-titan-cinema
Sunday June 7th, 2020
USB-C has not been the success that was anticipated.
Conflicting proprietary standards and lack of consumer educations have left the situation a mess.
https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
Monday June 8th, 2020
Clayton Notestine provides a crash course on Game Theory (the study of strategic interaction).
“Game design is not game theory. Game theory, however, is a fundamental part of game design”.
https://uxdesign.cc/game-theory-board-games-7dd06e0ba28e
Tuesday June 9th, 2020
For the mechanical engineer in all of us, some of the strangest gears you have ever seen.
While most of these require a 3D printer, I have made a couple of these using the Laser at NovaLabs. All for fun.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/g2344/11-of-the-most-bizarre-non-circular-gears-you-will-ever-see/
Wednesday June 10th, 2020
Christos Karaiskos explains the format of Apple Binary plists files.
The other two plist formats are human-readable text, but the more compressed proprietary Binary format has always been undocumented.
https://medium.com/@karaiskc/understanding-apples-binary-property-list-format-281e6da00dbd
Thursday June 11th, 2020
Last April, a hack to log in with Apple’s “Sign in with Apple” feature was found (and patched). Here’s how it works.
Bhavuk Jain, the author of this article and the hack, was rewarded $100,000 by Apple for being a White Hat, and reporting this correctly.
https://bhavukjain.com/blog/2020/05/30/zeroday-signin-with-apple/
Friday June 12th, 2020
Ahmed Bouzid talks about some fallacies when designing voice interfaces like Alexa.
Developers should think less about the information their App provides, and more about what the user is asking for.
https://glean.info/debunking-the-myth-of-feature-discovery-in-voice-interfaces/
Saturday June 13, 2020
I once said that new computer languages are not validated until someone writes Conways Game of Life in it. Here is a Swift version of that Cellular Automata.
My argument was if Excel spreadsheet macros were a computer language, answer Yes. I wrote a Life game using spreadsheet cells and formulas.
https://github.com/zntfdr/Life
Sunday June 14th, 2020
Cutthroat business practices are not unique to the software industry, but this tale of woe is a bit extreme.
I had a similar experience once when bidding on a mobile app proposal for a hotel chain. We won the bid but then were told they were going to do it in house. Using our custom spec. Oh, and would you like to work for us?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/kerbal-space-program-2-release-disrupted-by-corporate-strife
Monday June 15th, 2020
Ray Wenderlich and company keeps coming out with great tutorials on some of the more interesting Apple APIS. In the case, Near Field Communication.
Andy Pereira provides an example of how to use CoreNFC to connect wirelessly to other devices or NFC tags.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/9582458-getting-started-with-core-nfc
Tuesday June 16th, 2020
Kilo Loco’s YouTube video exploring John Sundell’s Publish, a static site generator for Swift developers.
You can use Swift, not just for Mac & iOS development, but also for website creation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqdS-oi96Gk&feature=youtu.be
John Sundell’s Publish Repo: https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish
Tuesday June 16th, 2020 Extra
My family watched “Artemis Fowl” last night, and I understand why it had such bad reviews. I can’t disagree with that. However, I had read the original books, and I kind of liked the characters. What was very impressive was the visual effects, including the use of Augmented Reality & Holograms (Elves are tech-based, not just magical). The “Artemis Fowl” universe would make a great setting for a VR experience like The Void or standalone VR system. I wonder if anyone is working on this.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089630/
Wednesday June 17th, 2020
This is pretty awesome, replacing Green screen filming with Virtual Sets technology for shows.
A circular LED lit room project 3D image of background around the actors, so only nearby props are needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufp8weYYDE8
Only a couple old friends know that I almost didn’t go into Software Engineering as a life long career, and instead thought about throwing myself into the tech side of Films/TV. I was very active in theater in HS, and love the energy of a production. No regrets, but always wondered what it would have been like being involved in that world. So I always keep an eye on the merge between computers and films.
Thursday June 18th, 2020
Bhuman Soni shows how to create iOS app without Interface Builder, NIB files or Storyboards.
I have been using similar techniques for years. I have found for larger projects, programmatically creating your UI can be a time saver.
https://mydaytodo.com/ios-app-no-storyboard-how-to/
Friday June 19th, 2020
Parallels and Google are working on emulation software to allow MS Office to run on Chrome device
Parallels, creators of products to run Microsoft apps on the Mac, will use their technology on Google’s ChromeOS.
https://www.parallels.com/chrome/
Saturday June 20th, 2020
For your Apple DYIers, modify your Apple TV to run the Mac OS.
This YouTube videos how ripping out the Hard Drive, formatting it for Mac OS, and replacing it back into the Apple TV. Ps. It works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTDnw-fXvEI
Sunday June 20th, 2020
College Humor once created a hilarious Youtube series on If Google Was a Guy, here is the animated Quarantine Edition (part 1).
A bit of humor for Father Day. With a bit of heart too. Watch both parts (and original live-action series)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aliY82008tk
If Google Was A Guy (Quarantine Edition) Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVS5BMH-Fu4
Original Live-Action Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqca4RQd_M&list=RDCxqca4RQd_M&start_radio=1
Monday June 21st, 2020
Steven Curtis give a great article on Swift underused Defer statement.
Defer is a perfect compliment for the heavily used Swift Guard statement, to control exiting a function.
https://medium.com/swlh/using-the-defer-keyword-in-swift-b7916fa40f26
Tuesday June 22nd, 2020
The End of Adobe Flash draws near. Adobe explains their End-Of-Life process for this web content player.
Flash started in the 90s, so it was time to put it to bed. Adobe this announced this last year, so it is not unexpected.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/06/adobe-announced-that-flash-player-will-reach-its-end-of-life-by-the-end-of-2020.html
Adobes Page: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/flash-format-support-in-pdf.html
Tuesday June 23rd 2020
Facebook cancels the Oculus Go VR headset, to focus on 6DOF devices like Oculus Quest.
I understand their decision but think there was a place for a low-end 3DOF suitable for 360 video playback alone.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/23/21299311/oculus-go-headset-discontinued-quest-alternative-app-channel-launch
Oculus Posting: https://www.oculus.com/blog/an-update-on-the-evolution-of-the-oculus-platform-/
Wednesday June 24th, 2020
Danny Sapio has distilled his review of Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines into 10 useful general rules.
He was aiming at iOS design, but these could work for any platform. Ps. This would make a great talk!
https://uxdesign.cc/10-insights-from-apples-human-interface-design-guidelines-176ab7d505ae
Thurday June 25th, 2020
A well-written article by Owen Williams on the reason for Apple ARM switch, and the tools that will help this along.
Besides the technical reasons for the change from Intel to ARM, there is the business side. Apple wants to control its own hardware releases.
https://onezero.medium.com/apples-brilliant-plan-to-dominate-without-intel-processors-d664a0babd3b
Friday June 26th, 2020
TGIF, and enjoy this peak from the past, the Light Cycle Battle from the original Tron movie (1982).
This is one of the very first use of solid computer graphics in movies. It looks a lot like poor Saturday morning cartoons from today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok4iJZe5h6E
Saturday June 27th, 2020
Alexa Live 2020 conference is coming soon, all online and all free
July 22 will be Amazon’s half day virtual event on the latest in Voice Tech.
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-live
Sunday June 28th, 2020
A 3 part video from MacVoices, a Super Panel of Experts talking about WWDC 2020.
The host, Chuck Joiner, as compiled an impressive virtual conference of MacExperts, as they discuss the recent WWDC 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXSCD3mLvmw
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0y9TF9eTT0
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6s48EU6Crw
Monday June 29th, 2020
CNN does a fair job describing the state of the Gaming industry for the Tech Giants (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon).
I find it interesting that CNN, and other news services, make a big deal about reporting not just tech industry, but Gaming tech industry.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/tech/google-stadia-apple-arcade-mixer-gaming/
Tuesday June 30th, 2020
An interesting view of Apple’s WWDC announcement from a UX perspective.
Michal Malewicz believes the Apple’s User Interface is heading a Modern, Soft-UI approach.
https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-soft-ui-the-future-9f3ac69eea6f
Wednesday July 1st, 2020
A false arrest based on Facial Recognition alone turns out to be a massive mistake.
This is why Tech tools need to be tools humans decide with, not deciders that order humans around.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/tech/aclu-mistaken-facial-recognition/index.html
Thursday July 2nd, 2020
Tom Scott explains what is happening when Green Screening fails badly.
Sometimes you know it looks wrong, with understanding why it does. Scott explains the why, and suggests how to get around these issues. (Hint: don't try to be realistic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5HRvQNg4pQ
Friday July 3rd, 2020
Facebook R&D has come up with thinnest VR display ever, using Folding Holographic Optics.
This R&D project, don’t expect it as a product soon, bounces light off the display, thus allowing glasses to be thinner.
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-folded-holographic-optics-thinnest-vr-display-glasses/
Part 2: https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-folded-holographic-optics-thinnest-vr-display-glasses/2
Actual research paper: https://research.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Holographic-Optics-for-Thin-and-Lightweight-Virtual-Reality.pdf
Saturday July 4th, 2020
At a 2018 Game Developer Conference, Christopher Totten gave a talk on creating game levels as a Architect.
The GDC Game vault has gems like this for review.
https://gamasutra.com/view/news/365711/Video_An_architectural_approach_to_video_game_level_design.php
Direct Youtube video: https://youtu.be/Sco0iou_q1E
Sunday July 5th, 2020
AdColony has small graphics showing the impact COVID-10 has had on consumer game playing.
March saw an increase of 60+% in game play, I expect following months will be even higher.
https://www.adcolony.com/insights/reports/covid-gaming-trends-april/
Monday July 6th, 2020
An interesting article by Ahamed Nizar suggests that the MacBook Air is no longer needed.
2 big points for me, the iPads can now do almost everything an Air can do, and the original need for the Air has declined.
https://medium.com/macoclock/the-macbook-air-is-redundant-a8115c3fd055
Tuesday July 7th, 2020
The Swift Package manager has come of age for Apple development, so we need list of good Packages.
The Awesome Open Source website can provide a list of Swift Packages you can use, including description and some rating.
https://awesomeopensource.com/projects/swift-package-manager
Tuesday July 7th, 2020
World Chocolate Day
How come no one told me about this one? I needed to be prepared. Order supplies, and such...
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/world-chocolate-day/
Wednesday July 8th, 2020
Volumetric VR Video, where the user can move his head in 6 degrees of freedom, is a step closer with this Google Paper.
The current VR movie standard allows the user to turn in any direction, but does not allow any movement in 3D space. Until now…
https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/
Road To VR Article regarding this: https://www.roadtovr.com/google-volumetric-vr-video-siggraph-2020/
Thursday July 9th, 2020
Finally a replacement from archaic Target/Selector pattern, iOS 14 gives us UIAction (with closures)!
I completely missed this talk at WWDC, I am glad Anupam Chugh posted about it.
https://medium.com/better-programming/goodbye-target-actions-hello-uiactions-a60e1e2052d5
Side note: I am working on a public Swift Package release of my closure based SlamKit. It replaces Mac & iOS user interface elements (with Target/Action, DataSource, Delegate patterns) with a Closure approach. Since it works on almost all older OSes, I will probably stick with that until iOS14 becomes more common, before using UIActions.
Friday July 10th, 2020
Jason Yuan, the designer of Mercury OS, explains the reason behind his creation.
Yuan has been critical of the information overload of modern Desktop OS, and I like his thoughts.
https://uxdesign.cc/introducing-mercury-os-f4de45a04289
Details about Mercury OS: https://www.mercuryos.com
Earlier article against the Desktop Metaphor: https://uxdesign.cc/the-desktop-metaphor-must-die-676fbb34afdb
Saturday July 11th, 2020
Before the Mac with it’s 3.5 drive, there was a prototype Mac using the Lisa 5.25 twiggy disks. There are only 3 of these still existing, and they work!
One was on sale last year, and sold for $150K. And to think I had my hands on a broken one once, and could have grabbed it, instead they threw it out.
https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/25265/lot/60/
Some of the original team with a functional one: https://www.cnet.com/news/apples-twiggy-mac-comes-back-to-life/
Sunday July 12th, 2020
Bloomberg reports that things are changing with Apple Arcade.
Cancelation of specific games and project indicates a change in policy, in order to attract more users.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/apple-cancels-arcade-games-in-strategy-shift-to-keep-subscribers
Monday July 13, 2020
A great list of tools for all software designers, programmers, user interface or UX experts.
Most are web-based and free!
https://uxdesign.cc/13-of-my-favorite-ui-ux-goodies-ae4b8b0c133e
Tuesday July 14, 2020
Disney releases their first VR short on Oculus Quest, “Myth: A Frozen Tale”.
The 8 min long film is hint of future Disney VR titles. I watched it last night, it reminded me of a GOOD rider at Disneyworld!
https://d23.com/myth-a-frozen-tale-brings-the-world-of-frozen-2-to-fans-homes-now-on-oculus-quest/
2D Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idOjL0P_-Pk&feature=youtu.be
RoadToVR article: https://www.roadtovr.com/myth-frozen-tale-vr-short-film-oculus-quest/
Wednesday July 15, 2020
Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple Executive, thoughts on the impact of Apple Silicon on Macs.
He suggests that this may force Window to also look seriously at replace Intel with ARM.
https://mondaynote.com/apple-silicon-the-passing-of-wintel-79a5ef66ad2b
Thursday July 16, 2020
If you want to be able to loop thru the content of your custom Swift object, you need the Sequence protocol
Navdeep Singh article explains the working and requirements of this useful Swift protocol
https://medium.com/swlh/swift-sequences-fc388635c4af
Friday July 17, 2020
OpenXR Preview for Steam Games goes into Beta.
This open standard for VA/AR will only be successful if all the platforms support it. Valves release is an important step.
https://www.roadtovr.com/steam-openxr-valve-developer-preview/
Saturday July 18, 2020
An important announcement for VR fans, the PS5 will be compatible with the PSVR.
People forget the most popular VR system is the PSVR, with million more units sold.
https://www.roadtovr.com/playstation-5-ps5-psvr-2-support-backwards-compatibility/
Sunday July 19, 2020
Yes, software glitches can cause millions of dollars in damage and even deaths in riots.
Pepsi accidentally sent out 800,000 winning prize numbers in a contest in the Philippine. There was only supposed to be one.
https://medium.com/better-marketing/pepsis-40-billion-typo-caused-deadly-riots-3d671295d1bd
Wiki article about the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever
Sunday July 19, 200 Additional
A follow up for todays post: Apparently Pepsi can not do an ad campaign without getting in trouble. They accidentally offered to give a $30 million fighter jet for $700,000.
https://medium.com/better-marketing/pepsi-nearly-had-to-buy-a-harrier-jet-for-a-customer-98424e32aa46
Monday July 20, 2020
Kristaps Grinbergs explains Websocket support across Apple Platforms using Swift.
With the emphasis on high level RESTful APIs, Websockets has been a neglected technology by Apple. Until last year.
https://medium.com/better-programming/websockets-in-ios-13-using-swift-and-xcode-11-18fa3000d802
Tuesday July 21, 2020
This is an interesting blast from the past. ACM SIG on Computer-Human Interface review of the accomplishments of Apple Advanced Technology Group.
Between 1986-1997, almost all Apple’s cutting edge ideas came from ATG. SIG reviews the project's goals & accomplishments.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060705220235/http://www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1998.2/miller1.html
Be sure to go through all the pages!
Wednesday July 22, 2020
The best composition on what the unannounced Apple Glass may be.
Abhinav Chandoli is not providing new information, but he has done an excellent job of putting all the know fact together.
https://medium.com/macoclock/apple-glass-the-next-big-thing-72becda9f6fd
Thursday July 23, 2020
A well thought out article by Saadia Minhas, comparing Checkboxes vs Toggle Switches.
By defining 7 different uses of this type of UI, she show which one is best for each use.
https://uxplanet.org/checkbox-vs-toggle-switch-7fc6e83f10b8
Friday July 24, 2020
For a fun Friday, nothing screams fun as much as a Command Line interface, right?
Here are several CL tools to make you laugh.
https://medium.com/better-programming/7-terminal-commands-that-will-just-make-you-smile-3f5bc8778080
Saturday July 25, 2020
Marvel released trailers for Iron Man VR for PSVR. Is this the future of AR/VR?
Ignore the game for a moment, is this the interface general AR/VR user will expect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKweI52dP1U&feature=youtu.be
In my talks, I have often called this the Tony Stark UI, and use it as an example of what some users anticipate.
Sunday July 26,, 2020
Nicolas Bourbaki was a pseudonym for a group of young French mathematicians who forever change Math, and later Computer Science.
This TED Talk explained that prior teachers did not recognize patterns to math formula, so this group wrote papers and textbooks on this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O_boW9YA7I
Years later, the concept of reconciling patterns into various different types of formulas and algorithms is a major part of software engineering. I find it fascinating that these young mathematicians were not complaining that the older generation was not being flexible, but that they were not being organized enough.
Monday July 27, 2020
As this CNN article shows, the big difference between the upcoming Xbox vs PS5 won’t be hardware, but software.
The difference in CPU/GPU powers is almost identical, so it will be the huge amount of exclusive content on PS5 that will make it the winner.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/25/tech/ps5-vs-xbox-series-x/index.html
This may be a repeat of last generation square off, where PS4 outsold the Xbox about 2 to 1. Nintendo will continue to be the popular niche console, mostly due to its exclusive like of Mario/Pokemon games.
Monday July 27, 2020
What is the best forum for Mac Development nowadays? Any active developer groups (Facebook, Slack, LinkedIn)? My local so-called Mac Dev group has mostly become iOS developers and server-side programmers. I have been working on some open-source projects (announcements in the near future), but I am surprised how few people are working on Apple desktop coding.
Tuesday July 28, 2020
OSLog may be one of the most useful tools to come out of this year’s WWDC.
Antoine van der Lee of Swift Lee explains how to split your debug log into topics.
https://www.avanderlee.com/debugging/oslog-unified-logging/
Wednesday July 29, 2020
The in-person Consumer Electronic Show has been canceled, and goes to an online format.
This is the first cancelation of a 2021 show/convention that I know of. It won’t be the last.
https://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2021-cancelled/
Thursday July 30, 2020
People were hoping for AR Glasses from Apple at WWDC. What we got were some interesting ARKit improvements.
The Depth API, Location Anchors, Face Tracking, and more, gives us a clue of the future.
https://engineering.monstar-lab.com/2020/06/23/A-first-look-at-Apples-new-Augmented-Reality-features
Not mentioned in this article is the new Hand Gesture recognizer, also an important part of Glass based AR/VR.
Friday July 31, 2020
Bruno Rocha of Swift Rocks talks about the Swift Try feature, and why it is so great.
I need to improve my coding game, and read more articles like this.
https://swiftrocks.com/benefits-of-throwing-functions-try-swift-underrated-feature
Saturday Aug 1st, 2020
Helena Zhang gives us Seven Principles of Icon Design.
Clarity, Readability, Alignment, Brevity, Consistency, Personality, Ease of Use. And what this means…
https://uxdesign.cc/7-principles-of-icon-design-e7187539e4a2
Sunday Aug 2nd, 2020
Animated Logos are pretty, but more importantly, they are memorable.
Divad Sanders gives us 10 examples, and why they are great.
https://uxdesign.cc/10-eye-catching-logo-animations-youll-wish-you-made-a28f444f5e67
Monday Aug 3rd, 2020
Reporting in as part of the Department of Redundancy Department, Recursive Enums.
Mayur Rathod shows a Swift Enum pattern is a surprisingly useful method to describe complex structures.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/swift-understand-recursive-enum-in-five-minutes-d4aff8bd50bb
Tuesday Aug 4th, 2020
Introduced at WWDC 2019, CryptoKit provided the much needed tools to authenticate and encrypt data.
Audrey Tam of Team RayWenderlich provides a tutorial on this new Apple tech.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/10846296-introducing-cryptokit
Wednesday Aug 5th, 2020 Addition
3 Years of Daily Tech Blogging!
On Aug 4, 2017, I posted my first of what would become a daily ritual: finding a technical posting or article that I found interesting. That was the only requirement. Be it Apple Development, Swift programming language, VR/AR, Machine Learning, Computer History, Game Development, Social impact of tech, General Science, or any other topic that makes one think. A few breaks for vacation (and several double posting) means over 1100 posts on Blogger, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I post them for the same reason I teach classes and write articles; as a way for me to stay current in a technologically changing time. I have hoped others find it as useful as I see it. Thanks for listening.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sheets/
Blogger: magesteve.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/magesteve
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steve.sheets
Wednesday Aug 5th, 2020
An interesting proposal by Nickas Millard on how to improve code by reducing the use of If-Else.
I doubt If-Else will go away, but Nickas gives solid solutions on how not to use them.
https://medium.com/swlh/5-ways-to-replace-if-else-statements-857c0ff19357
In the Swift world that I live in, the expansion of the Swift Case statement has greatly diminished the use of If-Else. Personally, with the use of the Guard statement, my code immediately takes care of error states like out of range or bad parameters (a common use of Else clause) at the start of a code block. This also greatly reduced the number of Else clauses.
Thursday Aug 6th, 2020
Have we created Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)? Or at least, very close to having a program that can do anything a human can ask of it?
Sometimes called General Purpose AI, the OpenAI team givens us the language model GPT-3. Julien Lauret makes some interesting points regarding this tool.
https://towardsdatascience.com/gpt-3-the-first-artificial-general-intelligence-b8d9b38557a1
Friday Aug 7th, 2020
Using VR sensors on the foot, this mod to the popular Beat Saber is one of the first feet tracking VR experiences.
Not just for dancing, knowing feet position is vitally important for many body movement modeling uses. We should see more of this in the future.
https://www.roadtovr.com/feetsaber-mod-beat-saber-dance-dance-revolution-ddr-naluluna/
A friend at GMU is using similar technology to track the human body during historical swordplay.
Feet Saber Video: https://youtu.be/jSXJ-TJhuQo
Saturday Aug 8th, 2020
In June 2018, Apple persuaded the developers of Obscura Camera app to give their app away for free. The story is worth knowing.
The promotion was a success for the developer Ben McCarthy, but not in the way he expected.
https://medium.com/@benricem/i-gave-my-app-away-for-free-what-happens-next-will-amaze-you-22f07bf1616f
Sunday Aug 9th, 2020 Morning
Nintendo's massive security breach is causing a moral issue for Computer Historians.
These are the type of people who love to document the history of game design, but what happens when the documentation from developing Mario titles came from an illegal hack.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21347074/nintendo-gigaleak-controversy-history-preservation-archives
Sunday Aug 9th, 2020 Evening
A National Geographic photographer has a new use for Drones, using them as a spotlight for nighttime photoshoots!
The photos are time elapse, thus the lit circles are simply one drone going around in a circle. It causes an amazing effect and appearance.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/09/the-surreal-art-of-unnatural-lighting/
Monday Aug 10th, 2020 Morning
Core Haptic article by Andrew Tetlaw of the RayWenderlich team.
Just liking syncing video with audio is important, syncing haptic vibrations with audio is part of good UI design.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/10608020-getting-started-with-core-haptics
A great merger of technology, nature, and creativeness.
Monday Aug 10th, 2020 - Evening
From last year, an article by Luca Angeletti on using features of Swift Codeable to work with multiple date formats of JSON
This technique can be used for a variety of uses when dealing with Swift codable. I often have issues with simple YES-TRUE-1 JSON conversion.
https://blog.usejournal.com/decoding-a-json-having-multiple-date-formats-in-swift-9ad22c443448
Tuesday Aug 11th, 2020 Morning
An amazing useful list of Open Source Mac Applications
Christian Stewart compiled this list from the original Git repository of Serhii Londar.
https://medium.com/digiprivacy/list-of-open-source-macos-apps-4bb535816a21
Serhii Londar’s original repository.https://github.com/serhii-londar/open-source-mac-os-apps
Wednesday Aug 12th, 2020 Morning
Sometimes it is not the code you develop that makes you a great developer.
How you handle being critiqued and how you share unfinished code are 2 of the ideas that Shilpi Gupta brings up.
https://medium.com/better-programming/the-6-signs-of-a-great-developer-f098c4a660cc
Wednesday Aug 12, 2020 Afternoon
A two part tutorial on how to build an iOS Music Player, that works with Apple Music
This articles uses SwiftUI, and continues with the Music AP, and finishes with the MediaPlayer Controller. Well Done!
https://www.appcoda.com/musickit-music-player-swiftui/
Part 2 https://www.appcoda.com/musickit-music-api/
Thursday Aug 13th, 2020
As reported in Tidbit, Apple has updated their Style Guide. This is required reading for any programmer!
As the UI for Apple devices change, developers have to keep up to date on expected appearance.
https://help.apple.com/applestyleguide/#/apdaf2bc3367
Tidbit original posting: https://tidbits.com/2020/07/31/updated-apple-style-guide-available-on-the-web-and-in-apple-books/
Thursday Aug 13th, 2020 Addition
No, I am not trying to make money selling Monitors, but all single screen programmers should read this.
Only within the last few years have I started using 2 & 3 monitor arrangement, why have I not done this before?
https://onezero.medium.com/do-you-really-need-another-computer-monitor-a0534d37ba4a
Friday Aug 14th, 2020
Composer & Audio director Hwiman Ryu explains about "impactful sound design”.
I like how he talks about “hit satisfaction" when having the sound interact with the player.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-08-03-how-to-bring-your-game-world-to-life-with-impactful-sound-design
Friday Aug 14th, 2020 addition
Eric Yang gives us 5 useful Xcode extensions fro Swift Developers.
Even if you don’t want to use these tools, take a look at what is possible in your own Xcode extensions.
https://medium.com/better-programming/5-xcode-extensions-you-must-have-46fb1fd39e7a
Saturday Aug 15th, 2020
Simulator vs VR? It is unfair to ask which is better. instead, point out what each is best at.
This gentleman compares his homemade A-10C Warthog Simulator to VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvAAK3pekVY
I agree 100% with him about the importance of physical elements for a simulator. The touch and positioning of the console are impossible to simulate with VR. This is one of the reasons I was so impressed with the Void VR centers, with their brand of Hyper VR; holding weapons, and touching walls. When AR becomes better, the mixing of simulators and AR goggles will be groundbreaking.
Youtube channel for Warthog Project: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJq3cq9N6xYF0fAvTgpwoBg
Saturday Aug 15th, 2020 afternoon
Danny Sapio list of good UX/UI practices.
Yes, there are plenty of lists out there, and some of his points are basic, but other made me think. It is always good to review others thoughts on this.
https://uxdesign.cc/10-ui-ux-design-lessons-from-designing-my-own-product-2f8518d5f0a1
ps. I do not know difference between UI & UX, nor do I think it important. Before all the experts attack me, I am more than willing to state that there is a difference between UI & UX. I know this for a fact, because I could never find two experts who agreed on what made up a User Interface. Nor two who agreed what User Experience means. So of course, there is always a difference between UI & UX. Please do not worry about the nomenclature, and pay attention to the points that make up better software.
Sunday Aug 16th, 2020
With everything going on, I never noticed that MagFest 2020 posted my VR talk on YouTube.
Besides being moderate on other VR discussions, I gave my annual Steve of the Union of Virtual Reality in January.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpuUMVeu_Y
Sunday Aug 16th, 2020 After
A nice article by Ross Butler on NWPathMonitor, a replacement for Reachability.
The older Reachability API detected if and how the iOS device accessed the network, but not when it changed.
https://medium.com/@rwbutler/nwpathmonitor-the-new-reachability-de101a5a8835
Monday Aug 17th, 2020 Morning
MSCaptureView for Mac Video/Audio capture, A new Open-Source Swift Package from Steve Sheet
A replacement for AVCaptureView, this versions is much more turn key, with a lot of the functionality handled for you.
https://github.com/magesteve/MSCaptureView
I am currently working on some Video editing/capture tools for 2D and 360 Videos (VR). I wanted better control, so I created this new subclass of NSView, with similar but slightly more comprehensive abilities than AVCaptureView.
Monday Aug 17th, 2020 afternoon
This may be Epic (pun intended). Both Apple & Google shut down Fortnight, and get sued in response.
I believe that it fair for the mobile platforms to have part of the software revenue (including in-app purchases). I think 30% is too much.
https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnite-banned-from-apple-and-google-app-stores-and-developer-epic-sues/
This case will have a major impact on the future.
Tuesday Aug 18th, 2020 morning
Some of these things are interesting, some are scary, and some are just silly.
A quick review from an attendee of Black Hat, the Las Vegas Computer Security Conference
https://medium.com/pcmag-access/the-scariest-things-we-saw-at-black-hat-2020-7406f8f1d19a
Tuesday Aug 18th, 2020 afternoon
The phase-out of Oculus Go, a device I heavily recommended for low-end VR, has started.
RoadToVR reports it is no longer part of the Oculus SDK. This is a shame.
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-sdk-go-standalone-3dof/
I disagree with Oculus’ decision. 6DOF (Degrees of Freedom) is better than 3DOF, but there was a place for an inexpensive 360 video player.
Tuesday Aug 18th 2020 bonus
Followup article from CNN regarding Fortnite suing Apple & Google.
They obviously had this scheduled for a while, since the Epic had a PR campaign, complete with parody video, planned out.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/tech/fortnite-apple-google-lawsuit/index.html
Wednesday Aug 19th, 2020 morning
How do you keep up with all the good software coming out? You examine what others like.
There is enough interesting items on this list, to make me want to review all of the apps.
https://medium.com/the-innovation/epeatentne-wh10-mac-apps-that-can-simplify-your-life-27780a6d20ea
Wednesday Aug 19th, 2020 afternoon
“The most version of iOS you support means a larger base of customers” is an often debated topic.
Antoine van der Lee of Swift Lee dwells into the what version you should support.
https://www.avanderlee.com/workflow/minimum-ios-version/
Apple’s numbers are amazing when it comes to installed base who upgrade to newer Ones. Other platforms would kill for similar percentages. Combined this with fact later OSes have improved SDK and features, so in general, I only support one or two releases back.
Thursday Aug 20th, 2020 Morning
A slightly condescending journey through the early days of Phone Phreaking.
During the late 70s, John Draper discovered that a Captain Crunch serial whistle allowed free long distance phone calling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDh_XRTpXxI
John also wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple //, so he was well known in the Apple community. I met him years later at a WWDC party. He had just returned from a cultural/technical exchange with Russia. He was telling us stories about seeing the still vulnerable Soviet phone system, and suspecting they did not know who he was.
Thursday Aug 20th, Afternoon
A bit of a rambling, but interesting piece talking about Apple’s Direction.
Alex Kantrowitz has a point, Apple solution are often other people’s work.
https://onezero.medium.com/apple-searches-for-an-identity-52a668f5ae78
Friday Aug 21st, 2020
After 5 years, M. Kerem Keskin believes developers are still not using all the features of UIStackView.
I agree 100%, having only recently making IStackViews the center part of my UI.
https://medium.com/dolap-tech/hidden-gems-of-uistackview-3b94a0001d29
Friday Aug 21th, 2020
Yes, thanks to the popularity of iPad as a desktop machine, we finally have support for Mouse & TrackPad within iOS.
Warren Burton of RayWenderlich team excellent tutorial on using external iOS devices.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/10994775-pointer-interaction-tutorial-for-ios-supporting-the-mouse-and-trackpad
Friday Aug 21st, 2020 (some with photo)
While cleaning out the catacombs, also known as my basement, I found a white 8 1/5 x 11 pad of paper with the letterhead "AppleBus Developer Conference". It had a Picasso style Apple logo (not Mac logo) on it. Any ideas about the time of this conference? I am sure it pre-dates WWDC, but not as early as the first ProDOS conference (Apple's first developer conference).
Saturday Aug 22th
Panel Discussion for MagFest 2020 (Jan 2-4) on the Future of VR/AR/MR.
I am proud of the panels, and tracks, that I organized, not for myself, but for the group of experts we gathered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoKL509Ug9o
Sunday Aug 23
Youtube video of KrazyKen from Computer Clan after he purchases an antique NextCube at a computer swap.
He talks about it’s history, as he slowly takes Steve Job’s brainchild apart. Remember this is where OS X came from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB0uqZTwZOE
Monday Aug 24
From indie developer 42tones, SynthVR is a modular synthesizer for virtual reality.
I always thought that VR would be the perfect environment for designing virtual electronic circuitry.
https://www.roadtovr.com/synthvr-alpha-modular-synthesizer-vr/
Youtube video: https://youtu.be/gWQM4kGZTR0
Monday Aug 24th
One of the most common tasks is handling a cache of images, ones often downloaded from the cloud.
Building on NSCache, Maksym Shcheglov gives us this Swift implementation of an image cache.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/reusable-image-cache-in-swift-9b90eb338e8d
Tuesday Aug 25th
Things are not looking good for Epic case against Apple/Google.
The Judge made some initial comments (not ruling) that indicate how the case might go.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/24/apple-epic-court-battle-august-28-removal/
Tuesday Aug 25th
The Mac is a Unix machine, but most developers really don’t understand Environment Variables.
Himanshu Aggarwal article is great for these Mac/iOS programmers.
https://medium.com/@himanshuagarwal1395/setting-up-environment-variables-in-macos-sierra-f5978369b255
Wednesday Aug 26th
Old friend and colleague Duncan Champney release this open source gem BlueView.
BlueView is a Swift-based UIView that blurs its contents with variable radius
https://github.com/DuncanMC/BlurView
Wednesday Aug 26th
This is a good background article for those new to iOS/Mac dev, explaining into object communication.
I have slowly been replacing all my code with Closures, as the best way to handle this task.
https://medium.com/better-programming/3-methods-for-communicating-between-classes-in-swift-4-using-the-model-view-controller-3673f14c70b2
Thursday Aug 27th
Part 1 of 2 part talk on identifying the distinct subgroups within a game, and the problems in doing this.
This article was the basis of a talk by Nick Yee at the 2020 Game Developer Conference, based on 5 years of surveys.
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NickYee/20200818/368359/Player_Segments_Based_on_Gaming_Motivations.php
I am looking forward to the 2nd part.
Thursday Aug 27th
iOS 13 is established, so here is a great checklist of features you should add to be an up-to-date app.
Anupam Chugh created this list last year that any developer needs in order to modernize their app.
https://medium.com/better-programming/ios-13-checklist-for-developers-ef47e413aad2
Friday Aug 28th
An interesting story about making a “secret” iPod for Department of Energy.
Sounds like they were making something out of the Q section of Jame Bond.
https://tidbits.com/2020/08/17/the-case-of-the-top-secret-ipod/
Friday Aug 28th
A very good article on past coding conventions that you no longer need to do.
Though the article is for Kotlin, the Ideas also apply to Swift.
https://medium.com/swlh/the-7-coding-styles-that-are-dated-90eff1408d6e
Saturday Aug 29th
There are some great people in the world, in small ways that matter.
Rather than get upset when his motion detect went off, this guy chalked in a racetrack for the 3 year old trespasser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=3xj-J0NUuk8&feature=emb_logo
Sunday Aug 30th
The Ghost Howls is a great source of information regarding VR & AR.
Antony ”Skarred Ghost” Vitillo has some great opinion pieces and interviews, all worth reading.
https://skarredghost.com
Monday Aug 31st
With a lot of rework as a Swift Package, here is my official release of SlamMacOSKit, a closure based approach to Mac UI programming.
I have written and given talks on the advantages of Closure Based programming.
https://github.com/magesteve/SlamMacOSKit
Demo app showing SlamMacOSKit use: https://github.com/magesteve/SlamMacOSKit-Demo
Ps. Yes, there is an iOS version, but it has not yet been completely moved to Swift Package.
Monday Aug 31st
As a front end developer, I still need to know what is going on in the backend.
Using data from Stack Overflow and other sources, this author explores the state of JavaScript vs. Python vs. Go fight.
https://medium.com/better-programming/what-will-be-the-best-back-end-programming-language-for-2021-18096c0c6105
Tuesday Sept 1st
Nathan Lorenz of AllSwiftDev gives us a youtube video on how to make your app an iMessage app.
Thanks to new APIs, you can send almost any type of date from your app, using iMessage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8uKtLLRYSU
Tuesday Sept 1st
Janna Cameron gives us 5 of the best books on UI Design.
Great, more things to add to my reading list. Well, these ones look like they are worth it.
https://uxplanet.org/5-books-to-read-about-ui-design-b6a9fe3a3e13
Wednesday Sept 2, 2020
Antoine van der Lee of Swift Lee article on using Closure Programming.
Antoine shows the advantages of using a closure in place of target action on a UIButton.
https://www.avanderlee.com/swift/uibutton-uicontrol-closure-target/
I have been an advocate of this style of development for a few years. I am glad to see others talking about this approach.
Wednesday Sept 2, 2020
25 years ago today, cartoonist Bill Holbrook posted the 1st Kevin & Kell Webcomic on CompuServe.
That makes K&K the longest-running daily Webcomic. He really helped start the industry!
https://www.kevinandkell.com/2020/kk0902.html
Bill is also the creator of Safe Haven & On the Fasttrack comic, seen daily in newspapers everywhere!
Thursday Sept 3, 2020
Nasa patents a less expensive, but slower way, to send small probes to the move.
Gravity assists (I.e. slingshots) are well known, but this one uses the Earth to get to the moon.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-patent-moon-travel-farside-lunar-orbit-dapper-dark-ages-2020-8
It is also interesting that Nasa used an inexpensive patent as a way to distribute this idea.
Thursday Sept 3, 2020
Years before other action RPG, Dave “Dr Cat” Shapiro gave us “Caverns of Freitag” on the Apple //.
I love strolls down memory lane, thank you Samuel Messner for this trip!
https://medium.com/@obskyr/the-secret-origin-of-the-action-rpg-254a180079dd
ps. Freitag was/is a little stuffed Red Dragon that Dave often took out for meals. Last I heard, he is still around.
Friday Sept 4, 2020
A less than helpful feature of Excel forced the Science of Human Genes to change.
This falls into unforeseen ramifications category. Due to a Microsoft bug, a genetic term had to change.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates
Friday Sept 4, 2020
Anupam Chugh explains the reason behind recent security improvements to iOS 14.
TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit and other apps seem to be peaking on users private data.
https://medium.com/macoclock/apple-puts-the-spotlight-on-popular-apps-that-spy-your-keystrokes-c150a3136f3c
Saturday Sept 5, 2020
A great animated explanation of the chaotic nature of the 3 Body problem in space.
How hard is this problem? Einstein spent a good portion of the last years of his life trying to solve it. He failed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D89ngRr4uZg
This is what good online learning can look like.
Sunday Sept 6, 2020
I really like Abhinav Chandoli list of 5 MacOS products to help your work day.
To be an efficient software developer, you have to be an efficient computer user.
https://medium.com/macoclock/5-macos-apps-to-save-your-work-life-d6672fb33e9c
Monday Sept 7, 2020
Developers don’t write nearly enough custom Controls. Jordan Osterberg explains how.
When released in 1984, Steve Job & company were expected an explosion of UI widgets, that never really occurred.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/10787749-creating-a-custom-calendar-control-for-ios
Monday Sept 7, 2020
Slightly tongue in cheek look at 3 often debated topic only programmers care about.
I would blow this off, except I have had hour long arguments, err, discussion on where to put the {.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-3-wars-of-programmers-and-how-will-they-end-37fabaa0e37b
Tuesday Sept 8, 2020
In 1968, Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research institute gave the first public demo of a computer mouse.
This video has a number of other firsts, including hypertext linking, multi-windowing and more…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rKUf9DWRI
Tuesday Sept 8, 2020
An article from Space dot Com explaining how private spaceships will help the ISS.
Anyone else remembers the movie “2001”? The space clipper sent to the moon was owned by Pan American Airlines.
https://www.space.com/commercial-crew-international-space-station-science.html
Wednesday Sept 9, 2020
A lighter tech post today: some hilarious review of lines embedded by Valve Programmers.
I once found the comment “Here lies Dragons!” In an especially difficult bit of open source code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k238XpMMn38
Wednesday Sept 9, 2020
I loved the ergonomic design of Apple’s original iSite camera. Apparently so did this Do-It-Yourselfer!
He put a miniature Raspberry Pi into the case, making it a stand-alone webcam.
https://onezero.medium.com/todays-webcams-are-boring-so-i-brought-back-a-classic-291cc7c94c76
Thursday Sept 10, 2020
SwiftUI-Lab has released this Mac utility to shows you 99.5 % of the SwiftUI abilities with code and visuals.
A bit pricey, but if your project is jumping onto SwiftUI, this would be a godsend.
https://swiftui-lab.com/companion/
Thursday Sept 10, 2020
I had known people have wanted this for years, but I had no idea about the full history of Self Driving cars.
One of the complaints of horse & buggy drivers about early cars, was that when you were drunk, the horse could drive you home on it own late at night.
https://onezero.medium.com/the-100-year-history-of-self-driving-vehicles-10b8546a3318
Friday Sept 11, 2020
Nothing beats real experience developing new technology like VR!
Skarred Ghost talks about his experiences creating Venice VR.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/09/04/venice-vr-expanded-lessons/
Friday Sept 11, 2020
VR/AR is starting to appear on websites & browsers. Nicholas Kramer gives insights into these new opportunities.
It is not enough to use this tech, you need to know how to do it well.
https://medium.com/studio-design/designing-ar-and-vr-for-websites-7d6b37b94dfc
Saturday Sept 12, 2020
I been waiting for someone to explain the new Hand/Body Tracking. Thank you Jose Rossi! At Orange Loop!
This Vision Framework will be extremely important if Apple ever ships their AR Glasses!
https://orangeloops.com/2020/08/hand-tracking-body-pose-detection-with-vision-framework/
Sunday Sept 13, 2020
Mercedes is deploying 100s of HoloLens to their dealer for remote expert assistance using AR.
This is exactly the technology model that Microsoft has been imaging for the past few years, I did not expect it so soon.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/tech/hololens-mercedes-repair/index.html
Monday Sept 14, 2020
Apple acquires VR company Spaces.
Originally VR experience company, due to COVID, Spaces branched out into VR Conferencing App.
https://uploadvr.com/report-apple-acquires-spaces/
Monday Sept 14, 2020
Wow, after searching for Life in the solar system without luck, we may have found evidence of it on Venus.
The only source of Phosphine on Earth is from decaying organic matter. Venus may create it another way, but it is more likely it is an indicator of Life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/science/venus-life-clouds.html
Tuesday Sept 15, 2020
Stanford University’s 14 part class on SwiftUI is available on YouTube!
Part of CS193p (Developing Applications for iOS using SwiftUI) during the Spring quarter of 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbtqIBpUG7g&list=PLYDpTWtHskYocR-S2HGTMdOO-v9848WGZ
Tuesday Sept 15, 2020
Shoaib Bilal leads us through 3 major user interface changes to iOS.
I like how he explains the new feature, and then goes into the consequences (not all good) of the change.
https://medium.com/macoclock/why-apple-has-broken-some-basic-design-principles-in-the-new-macos-release-419cf74af099
Wednesday Sept 16, 2020
A excellent article by Steven Curtis on how, and most importantly why, you should use Apple’s Color calls.
With Dark & Light modes, hardwiring colors is not a good idea.
https://medium.com/@stevenpcurtis.sc/stop-hard-coding-colors-in-ios-apps-18f96f3b30e0
Wednesday Sept 16, 2020
RoadVR comes thru with a comparison of the new Quest 2 vs the older one.
Everything a little better, including the price, with a lot of stuff for the future.
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-2-review-better-in-almost-every-way/
Thursday Sept 17, 2020
Oculus will be phasing out Rift VR, PC linked style virtual reality.
Quest style, stand-alone VR that can also be connected to a more powerful PC graphic card, appears to be their future.
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-discontinue-rift-product-line-2021/
Thursday Sept 17, 2020
Skarred Ghost great recap of the announcements at Facebook Connect.
Where Oculus is going with their AR/VR product (Quest 2, future AR, Rift retiring).
https://skarredghost.com/2020/09/16/facebook-connect-quest-2-aria/
Also the Verge recap: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/16/21440086/facebook-oculus-connect-recap-biggest-announcements-quest-rift-games
Friday Sept 18, 2020
Even today, Apple’s binary plist file format is something of a mystery.
Christos Karaiskos provides one of the best explanation of it that I have found.
https://medium.com/@karaiskc/understanding-apples-binary-property-list-format-281e6da00dbd
Honestly, I very rarely use this format now for my own projects. Yes, occasionally Apple’s API requires it, but if you are creating your own plist, stick to the more verbose XML version. It is human-readable and easier to edit. Nowadays, memory is cheap. There is really no reason to use the binary format.
Friday Sept 18, 2020
Swift 5.3 officially released this week!
Xcode 12 supports this new version of Swift.
https://swift.org/blog/swift-5-3-released/
Use Swift Evolution to track the new changes: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution
Saturday Sept 19, 2020
LONG Video presentation of Elon Musk's Neuralink, advancement in Human-Computer Brain Interface.
I am not sure what made me cringe more, the idea of wiring connections into your brain, or that a Robot does it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVvmgjBL74w&feature=youtu.be
Sunday Sept 20, 2020
Big Mountain Studio releases their free SwiftUI book.
One of the reasons to think about switching to SwiftUI now is the great resources.
https://www.bigmountainstudio.com/free-swiftui-book
Monday Sept 21, 2020
AppCoda 4 part tutorial on Sandboxing, part 4 is Implementing security-scoped bookmarks.
Thanks to Apple, things that use to be easy, are a lot harder now. (No, I am not a fan of Sandboxing.)
https://www.appcoda.com/mac-apps-user-intent/
Monday Sept 21, 2020
Some real-world extension to Swift/SwiftUI by Shubham Singh
Not only are his extensions useful, he explains the concept so you can know how to create your own.
https://medium.com/macoclock/swift-extensions-to-speed-up-your-ios-development-dccc00c72604
Tuesday Sept 22, 2020
Biometrics like Face ID & Touch ID are available to developers as way to unlock encrypt data sensitive information,
Bill Morefield of Wenderlich explains the new additions to Apple’s Keychain Services with this tutorial.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/11496196-how-to-secure-ios-user-data-keychain-services-and-biometrics-with-swiftui
Tuesday Sept 22, 2020
Microsoft has purchased Bethesda Softworks for $7,500,000,000.00.
There is no doubt this will effect the gaming industry, specifically which titles will be exclusives now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/21/tech/microsoft-bethesda-acquisition/index.html
Wednesday Sept 23, 2020
Youtube video of computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup on the creation of C++.
One of the things I always forget was how small the community, and industry, was back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBjjnqG0BP8
Wednesday Sept 23, 2020
Apple’s Tim Cook says that remote work is working at Apple, and could continue after the crisis.
“some things that actually work really well virtually” is a big shock for a company that disliked hiring people remotely.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-22/apple-ceo-impressed-by-remote-work-sees-permanent-changes
Thursday Sept 24, 2020
CNET show off Apple’s new iPad Air Touch ID button, and suggest it would be perfect of the iPhone 12.
With the current COVID crisis, masks prevent FaceID from working. I often wish my phone had the older Touch ID.
https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-12-should-have-ipad-air-touch-id-button-and-face-id-unlock-during-coronavirus-wearing-masks/
Thursday Sept 24, 2020
A followup to yesterdays Bjarne Stroustrup posting, here is an article based on his ideas.
This article by Zachary Minott is based on interview Bjarne gave last year.
https://medium.com/dev-genius/bjarne-stroustrup-on-what-beautifully-written-code-looks-like-c68adb53c740
Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxRF5ag27A&ab_channel=LexFridman
Friday Sept 25, 2020
Eric Yang explains 10 of the most powerful @ keywords (attributes) for Swift.
If if you do not use them, you should understand when you see them.
https://medium.com/better-programming/10-powerful-attributes-in-swift-d4e4153a0001
Friday Sept 26, 2020
Photoshop is the perfect platform for algorithmic generated images.
This tool replaces the boring sky within an image with a more more vibrant one.
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/photoshop-ai-sky-replacement-tool/
Saturday Sept 26, 2020
Amazon has announced (shipping next year) an indoor-only, video drone for home security: the Ring.
I find the remote viewing and the automated docking system to be interesting. Obviously, an outdoor version comes next.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/tech/amazon-ring-drone/index.html
Ring Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2jFN_QEcS4
Sunday Sept 27, 2020
Here is a blast from the past: Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra On-Line, is releasing a behind-the-scenes book.
Sierra On-Line went from a husband-wife team to a billion-dollar industry, and then it disappeared. I want to read this book!
https://kensbook.com
The Facebook announcement: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5251478676/permalink/10160342488953677/
Monday Sept 28, 2020
I like simple rules, here are 8 for when you create a Logo.
These tips from Matt Lecours are great for all makers of graphic user interfaces.
https://medium.com/@mattlecours/8-tips-to-design-a-notorious-logo-3abaccef2a5f
Monday Sept 28, 2020
It has taken me years to learn the Mac & iOS Lifecycle, Kilo Loco video is a timesaver in learning SwiftUI’s life cycle.
Understanding an App lifecycle, the correct sequence of events from creation to termination, is vital when designing software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4_YXovq1L8
Tuesday Sept 29, 2020
Swift has come to Windows! Swift 5.3 release included a Windows Toolchain Image.
The perfect touch would be having SwiftUI is ported to Windows.
https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/
Tuesday Sept 29, 2020
Federico Zanetello of Five Star blogs gives us a great explanation of SwifUI Labels.
Why can’t all of Apple build-in documentation give us the detailed information that was Federico does? A call should not just have a brief explanation, but a breakdown of usage with examples.
https://fivestars.blog/swiftui/label.html
Wednesday Sept 30, 2020
Things are not looking good for Epic’s legal battle against Apple.
When the Judge says they do not agree with your legal case, you are in trouble.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/28/tech/apple-fortnite-epic-hearing/index.html
Wednesday Sept 30, 2020
No Second Blog
Thursday Oct 1, 2020
Numberphile explains the flaw that Alan Turning and his codebreaking team used to break the Enigma machine.
Another Youtube channel that explains tech (in this case cryptology) well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4V2bpZlqx8
Original Video on the Enigma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ
Thursday Oct 1, 2020
If you are going to use Color in your design, you need to know the Psychologic effects of different ones.
I believe color should not be the only indicate purpose of an item in your UI, but it can be used to enhance.
https://www.onepixelout.com/psychology-for-designers/the-psychology-of-colour/
Friday Oct 2, 2020
Some insights from Jean-Louis Gassée regarding Apple's recent event/press release.
Jean-Louis was an Apple Executive during the 1980s, including the head of Mac development after Jobs was pushed out of Apple.
https://mondaynote.com/apple-september-2020-event-hint-hint-a3754ffb7a12
Friday Oct 2, 2020
Abinand Sivakumar suggest using Scheme, a rather old language, to learn Functional Programming.
He might be right. Scheme, a minimalistic version of Lisp, was one of the first, and simplest language, to provide features like lambda and maps.
https://medium.com/swlh/the-easiest-language-to-learn-functional-programming-5cc5751a7cf0
Saturday Oct 3, 2020
First stabilized & sharpened, then color adjusted, and finally upscaled using a neural network to 4K resolution, here is a video from 1890 Paris.
Some of the faces are very clear. I wonder what they would have thought if told 100 years in the future, we would see their living, moving faces in such detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_eZuOTBNc&fbclid
1911 NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ1OgQL9_Cw
Sunday Oct 4, 2020
This is just funny. Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator has a massive hole in the Earth.
A small airport in Brazil had its elevation inverted. No one noticed, so now you have a pit to hell!
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/microsoft-flight-simulator-abyss/index.html
Video of landing: https://youtu.be/wasJWrt7mQQ
Monday Oct 5, 2020
VR Programming is hard. Very hard. Oculus just release a tool to help.
Oculus Developer Hub is a cross-platform app that supports a collection of common VR tasks.
https://uploadvr.com/oculus-developer-hub/
Oculus page: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/tools/odh/?locale=en_US
Monday Oct 5, 2020
To celebrate 35 years of Mario, Nintendo is releasing a free 35 player version of Super Mario Bros.
What I find interesting is the game only works for 35 day. They are making software “an Event”.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/01/tech/super-mario-bros-35/index.html
Tuesday Oct 6, 2020
The Swift consortium announces Swift Atomics.
A new open-source package that enables direct use of low-level atomic operations in Swift code
https://swift.org/blog/swift-atomics/
Tuesday Oct 6, 2020
Git is the source repository standard, while GitHub is the well-known service. Every developer should understand both.
Keagan Stokoea provides an excellent reference for beginner or advanced users, on how one works with the other.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/5-step-guide-to-git-and-github-3ca4e63a95ba
Wednesday Oct 7, 2020
The folks at Mad Machine are about to release SwiftIO, a microcontroller designed for Swift.
Due out at the end of Oct, SwiftIO is comparable to an Arduino, but with a full Swift compiler and framework environment.
https://www.madmachine.io
Documentation on MadMachine SwiftIO: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/arm/mm_swiftio/doc/index.html
Wednesday Oct 7, 2020
Dave DeLong has created an 18 part series of articles on writing HTTP in Swift
It is a great review of both Swift and HTTP! Now I just wished he would put it into a Swift Package!
https://davedelong.com/blog/2020/06/27/http-in-swift-part-1/
Thursday Oct 8, 2020
Yes, programmers have a sense of humor. We just hide it within comments people rarely read.
These are hilarious.
https://medium.com/better-programming/56-funny-code-comments-that-people-actually-wrote-6074215ab387
I never wrote anything this funny, though I did once put in the code “// If you do not understand how this work, go ask Charlie”. There was no one named Charlie on the project.
Thursday Oct 8, 2020
Owen Willams helps descramble the confusion over USB-C.
Or at least explain why we have the mess. This is the first time I heard about USB 4!
https://debugger.medium.com/usb-c-was-supposed-to-simplify-our-lives-instead-its-a-total-mess-626bb2ea3688
Friday Oct 9, 2020
Adobe has retired PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build, the cloud web service, for Hybrid App development.
Originally called Cordova, it used web technology for creating cross-platform mobile apps.
https://blog.phonegap.com/update-for-customers-using-phonegap-and-phonegap-build-cc701c77502c
Article by Ivano Di Gese explaining the impact: https://medium.com/better-programming/adobe-discontinued-phonegap-d0770179ba3c
Friday Oct 9, 2020
Sean Allan’s Youtube channel on all things Swift & iOS.
Sean posts his trice-weekly videos from Silicon Valley, that includes tutorial and announcements. A great source of info.
https://www.youtube.com/c/SeanAllen
His twitter feed: https://twitter.com/seanallen_dev
Saturday Oct 10, 2020
The creator of the VOID has a new attraction that simulates Skydiving.
Watching the video, it appears to also simulate Base jumping (cliff) and Wingsuit flying.
https://www.roadtovr.com/the-void-james-jensen-jump-vr-skydiving/
Sunday Oct 11, 2020
Starting in 2021, some Amazon delivery drivers will sit behind the wheel of a new electric delivery truck.
These Rivian designed trucks use a Skateboard layout, with electrics & batteries below, and custom chassis above.
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/amazon-electric-delivery-van-rivian/
Monday Oct 12, 2020
Emanuel Marques's exploration of why Kanban is better than SCRUM for Agile development.
I like the point “Scrum Is Not Agile Enough”, with all its attachment to Sprints.
https://medium.com/better-programming/scrum-is-dead-all-hail-kanban-the-new-king-2cd6249feef8
Monday Oct 12, 2020
This may be one of the most obscure postings I have made. In 1984, Christian rock band Prodigal encodes a Commodore 64 program on their record album.
This video shows how to retrieves this Easter egg, and execute the program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_CZpFqvDQo&t=867s
(SPOILERS: it is a message from Einstein & Jesus).
Tuesday Oct 13, 2020
SwiftUI under iOS 14 provides a new way to animate the transition from one view to another.
Simon Ng of AppCoda gives us a needed demo of matchedGeometryEffect.
https://www.appcoda.com/matchedgeometryeffect/
Tuesday Oct 13, 2020
A very detailed evaluation of Apple Splash Screens by Muhammad Yusuf.
I like his use of animated GIFs to show you what actually is happening with Apple’s apps. And explains how to improve this.
https://medium.com/evermos-tech/apples-different-perspective-about-splash-screen-2dfd38f22590
Wednesday Oct 14, 2020
A follow up to yesterday's Splash Screen, this article by Suson Thapa explores Android versions of them.
I like how Suson breaks Android Splash Screens up into types (fixed time, themed, etc.).
https://medium.com/swlh/splash-screen-in-android-8ab250e40190
Wednesday Oct 14, 2020
Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro event had one VA/AR feature, the LiDAR Scanner.
RoadToVR explains the importance of this hardware for Augmented Reality.
https://www.roadtovr.com/apple-iphone-12-pro-max-lidar-instant-ar-depth-mapping/
Thursday Oct 15, 2020
You got to love this one. When Facebook shipped the Oculus Quest 2 Developer kit, they camouflaged the box.
Instead of showing the VR headset, the box showed an Iron. And reversed the Oculus name to Suluco.
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-2-decoy-box-iron/
Thursday Oct 15, 2020
A team of hackers took up Apple on the Apple bug bounty program. Here is the results.
The bad news, they found 55 vulnerabilities in core portions, the good news, Apple fixed them as soon as they were reported. In some cases, within hours.
https://samcurry.net/hacking-apple/
Friday Oct 16, 2020
One method to run Go programs within mobile iOS or Android Apps
Roger Chapman shows how to create shared libraries that run on server & mobile apps.
https://rogchap.com/2020/09/14/running-go-code-on-ios-and-android/
Friday Oct 16, 2020
There are almost too many URLs to look at, but this list by Danny Sapio is very helpful.
For years now, I have been using design tools for Web UI to develop desktop & mobile apps.
https://uxdesign.cc/29-of-my-favorite-websites-most-designers-have-never-heard-of-d7d99179cda7
Saturday Oct 17, 2020
Soon the SCOTUS will decide what elements of computer code can be copyrighted. This has huge ramifications.
This case has been dragging on for 10 years, but an end is in sight.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/9/21506172/oracle-google-java-supreme-court-hearings-oral-arguments-metaphors-qwerty
Followup: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/6/21504715/google-v-oracle-supreme-court-hearings-android-java
Sunday Oct 18, 2020
Project Aria is Facebook's test platform (no displays) for the sensors needed for a true Augmented Reality device.
Facebook/Oculus is one of the few companies that I think have both the technical and design expertise to market a successful AR glass system.
https://www.roadtovr.com/project-aria-facebook-ar-glasses-real-world-testing/
Monday Oct 19, 2020
I came across this site that proposes using an iPad as a computer, using traditional Unix shell tools.
It has a great list of Apps in the AppStore to provide traditional command-line tools (git, python, TeX, Vim, ssh, etc).
http://maverick.inria.fr/~Nicolas.Holzschuch/ios_shell.html
Monday Oct 19, 2020
For four years, Apple’s AI groups has been blogging what they are working on.
Dave Gershogorn explains some of the work publicly being done by Apple’s team.
https://onezero.medium.com/apples-a-i-research-team-is-playing-catch-up-with-siri-ab94684deb13
Tuesday Oct 20, 2020
Reinder de Vries gives us a Tutorial on the new Swift Keypaths.
“Keypaths in Swift are a way of storing a reference to a property, as opposed to referencing property’s value itself”
https://learnappmaking.com/swift-keypath-how-to/
Keypaths have been an important part of Mac development with Objective-C, so it is nice to see them available under Swift, and iOS.
Tuesday Oct 20, 2020
The best competition against Apple’s iPad Pro may well be the latest version of the iPad Air.
At $200 less and almost all the same features, the Air may be the better pick.
https://medium.com/@rgb.raghav/ipad-air-4-vs-ipad-pro-2020-97a76d396e40
Wednesday Oct 21st, 2020
Another explanation of why the new Lidar sensor on the iPhone 12 and new iPads are so important.
This Ars Technica article gives the background of this innovative tech, along with how Apple was able to miniaturize it.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/the-technology-behind-the-iphone-lidar-may-be-coming-soon-to-cars/
Wednesday Oct 21st, 2020
Matthew MacDonald has written 38 books on coding, maybe he has learned a thing or two.
This well-written article gives some truths that every developer should know.
https://medium.com/young-coder/lessons-learned-from-writing-38-programming-books-bd8d95631663
Thursday Oct 22, 2020
A new article by Antoine van der Lee of Swift Lee exploring error handling with Swift.
Aside from fairly normal Try/Catch keywords, Swift has an interesting new try? command.
https://www.avanderlee.com/swift/try-catch-throw-error-handling/
Thursday Oct 22, 2020
Where/when did the first { } bracket appear? I thought it was C, and I was wrong.
An entertaining stroll in computer history, back when BEGIN & END were replaced by Curly Braces.
https://medium.com/better-programming/the-curly-story-of-coding-49a348a31cf2
Friday Oct 23, 2020
Zafar Uvaev uses Combine to interactive with an App’s UserDefaults.
It is good to see real-world uses for Apple’s new tech. The code is simple, but the details are important..
https://medium.com/better-programming/observe-userdefaults-using-combine-in-swift-5-4177ae62360d
Friday Oct 23, 2020
Fitts Law is a rule of human movement that predicts how quickly a user can select a user interface element. This might be useful for developers!
Yevheniia Nikitina of UXC gives real examples of how to size your buttons and views.
https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-know-that-your-button-is-enough-fittss-law-in-2020-with-examples-f871e57c6ea5
Saturday Oct 24, 2020
I grew up listening to his comedy music on Dr. Demento, without knowing who the Professor of Math was. Tom Lehrer is an amazing guy!
Mostly out of view for years, he is in the new because he is putting all his creations in public domain before he dies. An interesting idea.
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/21/satirist-tom-lehrer-put-his-songs-into-public-domain/
His Public Domain songs: https://tomlehrersongs.com
His songs on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/6funswede
His wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
Sunday Oct 25, 2020
I never knew how important Square Root of 2 was. Thanks to Numberphile, now I do.
Like the Gold Ratio, this irrational numbers is important for UI design. And I like it’s historical background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sKah3pJnHI
Monday Oct 26, 2020
I won’t be giving a talk on the State of VR at MagFest this year due to COVID, but if I did, I would have talked about this.
Road to VR list of best 2020 VR buys, with Pros & Cons on popular headsets.
https://www.roadtovr.com/best-vr-headsets-in-2020-buying-guide/
Monday Oct 26, 2020
Let’s start the week with five of the hardest languages to program, or understand why someone created them.
Possibly like your week, these are not to be taken seriously. But they do exist.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/5-most-difficult-programming-languages-in-the-world-549c3cf91b23
Tuesday Oct 27, 2020
Since 2014, Kent Bye has regularly posted his Voice of VR podcast.
He states he is a “spatial computing oral historian”. I like the topics he picks.
https://voicesofvr.com/
Top 10 episodes: https://voicesofvr.com/top-10-voices-of-vr-episodes-to-get-started-into-vr/
Tuesday Oct 27, 2020
SF Symbols was a surprise success story at WWDC 2019. The new 2020 version has updated images & display app.
Geoff Hackworth talks about what Symbols 2 on iOS 14 will bring.
https://hacknicity.medium.com/sf-symbols-changes-in-ios-14-4731937c5dc7
Wednesday Oct 28, 2020
In a surprisingly short time, Quest 2 has been hacked to allow Jailbroken features.
Among other things like non-app store apps, this frees the user from the Facebook account requirement.
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-2-jailbreak-success/
Wednesday Oct 28, 2020
Change just to change is rarely good, but when there is reason to stop coding a certain way, you should embrace it.
This article was written with Kotlin in mind, but the ideas transfer to all, especially Swift.
https://medium.com/swlh/the-7-coding-styles-that-are-dated-90eff1408d6e
Thursday Oct 29, 2020
Here is a Harvard Business Review article regarding Apple’s different business structures.
Rather than based along product lines, Apple divisions are divide up along technology lines. Unique method, to say the least.
https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovation
Thursday Oct 29, 2020
An explanation of why Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro with the ability to shoot ProRAW is such a big deal.
Up until now, Digital photography always had to contend with distortion and low resolution due to compression. Not anymore!
https://medium.com/macoclock/why-apple-proraw-is-a-big-deal-6d5ed6aadb0a
Friday Oct 30, 2020
Craig Clayton gave this remote talk on SwiftUI for this month’s DC iOS Meetup.
I like how he handles different size screens & portrait/landscape modes. This was always a pain with IB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwxozoFJ72c
Friday Oct 30, 2020
A Facebook bug in there iOS SDK crashed iOS programs that didn’t use the kit! Here is how it happened.
Developers complain about managed and protected environments, but there are advantages to closed systems.
https://medium.com/better-programming/how-facebooks-sdk-can-bring-apple-s-ios-ecosystem-down-without-a-single-line-of-code-bc8eae774b37
Saturday Oct 31, 2020
This will be an interesting Intellectual Property fight between creators of property (DragonLance) and the company that purchased the rights (WOTC).
The claim is WOTC recent “public outcry regarding Defendant’s other properties by effectively killing the Dragonlance deal”. Nothing against DragonLance specifically.
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/wizards-coast-court-dragonlance-authors-file-suit-rights-classic-dd-franchise/
Sunday Nov 1, 2020
This is not an article on Gamification, but an article on ethical writing code.
Melinda Jacobs, and many others, wants people to realize that most Gamification is manipulation.
https://uxdesign.cc/are-we-really-enhancing-or-just-manipulating-ethics-of-design-gamification-c409afff58e9
“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.” — Simon Sinek.
I am starting a week of postings on ethical software.
Monday Nov 2, 2020
In 2013, Andrzej Marczewski suggested what became “A Gamification Code of Ethics”.
The short statement of ethics is shown here, along with those who have promised to abide by it.
https://ethics.gamified.uk
Monday Nov 2, 2020
Nvidia has released a $59 single-board computer, specifically for AI research and programming.
Compared to the DIY Raspberry Pi platform, this system has the GPU needed for AI.
https://debugger.medium.com/this-59-a-i-kit-could-change-how-you-think-about-smart-devices-forever-b8ec0ee71bb2
Nvidia announcement: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-nano/education-projects/
Tuesday Nov 3, 2020
In 2017, Andrzej Marczewski was asked to write an article on the ethics of gamification for the ACM’s student publication XRDS.
“Gamification is manipulation” and as such, should only be used when ethical consideration are taken into account.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3123756
Tuesday Nov 3, 2020
“The true power of Combine lies in how it enables us to construct increasingly complex data pipelines”
An incredibly useful article from Swift by Sundell on Apple’s new declarative API.
https://swiftbysundell.com/articles/connecting-and-merging-combine-publishers-in-swift/
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2020
Leo Dion of BrightDigit has been programming and blogging about Swift since day 1.
His articles on all areas of Learning Swift are worth reading
https://learningswift.brightdigit.com
Wednesday Nov 4th, 2020
IBM publishes a document covering the Everyday Ethics for AI.
It focuses on Accountability, Value Alignment, Explainability, Fairness & User Data Rights.
https://www.ibm.com/watson/assets/duo/pdf/everydayethics.pdf
Thursday Nov 5th, 2020
Atlassian New Rules of Ethical Design in Tech
This was written by Dr Matthew Beard, a Fellow at The Ethics Centre. He provides a frame work on how to address & solve ethical issues.
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/technology/ethical-design-in-tech
Thursday Nov 5th, 2020
Adam Rush gives us a tutorial on setting up Xcode Server for iOS Ci/CD.
Continuous Integration/Development (CI/CD) on the Mac has been the holy grail, often desired, rarely found. This is a needed guide!
https://www.raywenderlich.com/12258400-xcode-server-for-ios-getting-started
Friday Nov 6th, 2020
Finishing my dwell into ethical development, Tech ethicist Shannon Vallor provides a list of ethical review questions.
She provides tools for “ways of implementing ethical reflection, deliberation, and judgment into tech industry engineering and design workflows”.
https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/ethical-toolkit/
Friday Nov 6th, 2020
Paul Hudson comes through with 8 SwiftUI Mistakes.
I really like his format of having an article, and a video to go with it.
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/224/common-swiftui-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkcKTJhDyLs&feature=youtu.be
Saturday Nov 7th, 2020
Thanks to California Prop 22, Uber & Lyft can classify their workers are independent contractors.
Why am I posting this? This will have major impact on all Gig workers, including those in high tech.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/04/tech/california-proposition-22/index.html
Sunday Nov 8th, 2020
Ok, it does not have skin, so it looks creepy as hell, but look at the interaction with the human in the room.
Disney release a paper/video regarding work on automatronic robots that respond to people. They notice some entering, nod towards them, responds to gestures.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/11/02/disney-lifelike-robot-no-skin-orig.cnn-business
Youtube video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8_VmWWRJgE
Youtube video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjDrFqwNCs
Monday Nov 9th, 2020
A reminder of the past, 14 years ago 17 year old Alan Becker gave us this wall breaking video “Animator vs. Animation”.
Since then, Alan has continued to post entertaining videos on his YouTube channel. Many in his “meta” style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npTC6b5-yvM
Alan’s channel with new material: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbKWv2x9t6u8yZoB3KcPtnw
About Alan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Becker
Monday Nov 9th, 2020
Due to COVID, the Minnesota Opera will be streaming Wagner’s Das Rheingold, it 2D, 3D & VR!
This is the first time I have heard of such a major performance done this way. They must feel there are enough VR headsets to justify doing this.
https://mnopera.org/season/fall-season/das-rheingold/
Tuesday Nov 10th, 2020
Past Raspberry Pi’s have been marketed as DIY hobby boards, this one is being sold as a PC replacement.
The Raspberry Pi 400 is an all-in-one machine, contained within a keyboard, for $70.
https://www.webpronews.com/raspberry-pi-400-is-a-70-desktop-pc-in-a-keyboard
The Raspberry Pi 400 Video: https://youtu.be/ZSvHJ97d8n8
Tuesday Nov 10th, 2020
Software company Dropbox has decided to become a “Virtual First” company, where remote working is the norm.
No personal offices or desks, just collaborative group conference rooms and working from home. Even after COVID, is this the future of tech office work?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/success/dropbox-virtual-first-future-of-work/index.html
Wednesday Nov 11th, 2020
An interesting interview with Jame Silva, an independent game developer.
James started as a one-man shop, and is now running his own studio of well-regarded cross-platform Metacritic-aggregated games.
https://medium.com/super-jump/a-conversation-with-james-silva-creator-of-salt-sanctuary-c88fc4d65337
Wednesday Nov 11th, 2020
One of the problems with SwiftUI for experienced Mac developers is that the sequence of event is just different from what we are use to.
Thankfully we have this article by Keegan Rush of RayWenderlich team to break it down.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/11781349-understanding-data-flow-in-swiftui
Thursday Nov 12th, 2020
Zoom was not providing high standard, end-to-end encryption for conferences, as promised.
IMHO, this is one of the reasons that this type of conferencing/communication software really needs to be open-source, and verified.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/zoom-lied-to-users-about-end-to-end-encryption-for-years-ftc-says/
Thursday Nov 12th, 2020\
Apple’s new M1 system on chip is not the first time they did this. Years ago, just before the Apple // line was retired, they gave us Mega II custom chip. It was essential an Apple //e system, only needing RAM & 65C02. The //e used early version of it, but the advanced Gemini version was used on Apple // card for Mac LC product line. It allowed almost all of the immense Apple // software to run on the Mac LC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe_Card
Mega II chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_II
Friday Nov 13th, 2020
File this under unintended consequences, Monday stocks for several Video Game & Entertainment Stream companies dropped. The reason? The possibility of a COVID shot, that would allow people out of their homes, where they are now watching movies and playing tons of games. I would not have thought of that reaction to good news.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/11/09/why-video-game-stocks-plunged-today/
Friday Nov 13th, 2020
Tom Brant of PCMag provides an excellent tech review of what makes the M1 chip, also called Apple Silicon, so exciting.
Some of the details were explained at Apple’s announcement this week, but Tom explains even more details.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-is-the-apple-m1-chip
Saturday Nov 14th, 2020
I was surprised Apple did not talk about it at this week’s announcements, but AppleTV is available on PS4/5 & Xbox.
It is not often that Apple writes software for the game console market.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/11/apple-tv-app-is-now-available-for-download-on-playstation-4-and-playstation-5/
Saturday Nov 14th, 2020
A follow-up to the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 400 system, it is NOT selling for $70, everyone is selling it for $100. Also, you can’t buy one, since it is sold out everywhere I could try!
I still want to get one.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/
Sunday Nov 15th, 2020
Marvel artist JL Mast has posted numerous 360 VR cartoons to be view on desktop or by VR headset.
This is one of the first artist I have seen who has created drawing specifically design to be viewed in all directions.
https://kuula.co/profile/jlmast
Related page: http://mast360.com
Monday Nov 16th, 2020
If you are consider yourself a Software Engineer, you should really know these names.
And more importantly, you should know why they are significant for what they did.
https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-5-most-influential-programmers-in-computer-science-3fa590edc729
Monday Nov 16th, 2020
I have no idea who created this, but it is an Awesome resource for iOS Development.
“A curated list of awesome iOS ecosystem, including Objective-C and Swift Projects”
http://awesomeios.com
Associated Git Repository: http://github.com/vsouza/awesome-ios
Tuesday Nov 17th, 2020
Nuke provides a simple and efficient way to download and display images in your iOS or Mac app.
Here is a tutorial by Ehab Yosry Amer on working with Nuke using Swift Package Manager.
https://www.raywenderlich.com/11070743-nuke-tutorial-for-ios-getting-started
Nuke repository https://github.com/kean/Nuke
Tuesday Nov 17th, 2020
Eight360’s high-end, motion simulator replicates the inertial & gravity force you feel for most driving/flying experiences.
Too expensive for the home market ($150,000 per year), but perfect for military & industrial use. Maybe in the future…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uzHazKkZ4o
Eight360 Website - https://www.eight360.com
Wednesday Nov 18th, 2020
Apple announced reducing their cut from 30% to 15% for app developers who make less than $1 million.
Obviously this is aimed at small developers, but I am not sure I understand the logic that large developers should pay more.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store-small-business-program-commission-cut-15-percent-reduction
Wednesday Nov 18th, 2020
I agree with the points that Mikhail Medvedev makes. Agile & Scrum do not automatically cause magic.
Not every development effort fits nicely into set boxes. Aiming for two-week sprints is a nice goal, people force to the meaningless deadline is not.
https://towardsdatascience.com/scrum-without-magic-8cbb07eb4026
Thursday Nov 19th, 2020
As people become more familiar with SwiftUI, small features are starting to have a big impact.
Antoine van der Lee of Swift Lee explains creating view based animation with SwiftUI.
https://www.avanderlee.com/swiftui/withanimation-completion-callback/
Thursday Nov 19th, 2020
Amazon is releasing an upgraded Echo Frame to everyone who wants it.
This is not AR glasses, but wearable, voice-controlled mobile computing.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21575243/amazon-echo-frames-smart-glasses-alexa-loop-second-gen-available
Side note: By most estimates, the visual AR portion of the Google Glass experiment was a failure. However, the voice-controlled computing aspect of it, for things like communication, reference and personal assistant, was much more popular with the users/testers. I think there is a niche for this. Why they don’t make it like a pin, ala Star Trek communicator, I do not know.
Friday Nov 20th, 2020
This is not a tech posting, but it is an intellectual property case I find interesting, regarding a recent lawsuit regarding DragonLance.
Wizard Of the Coast shut down authors Weis & Hickman, who had the right to continue to create Dragon Lance books. How should this have been handled?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6fk0-uAp5o
Friday Nov 20th, 2020
Ahmed Ayoub has a great head to head analysis of two major franchise mobile apps.
They don’t get much bigger than Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Marvel Strike Force.
https://uxdesign.cc/game-ux-analyzing-the-experience-of-two-major-mobile-games-89d91f91a57d
Saturday Nov 21st, 2020
Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs talks about Modbook from Axiotron, the only 3rd party pad to run Mac software.
This is amazing hardware was a failure, but still was pretty amazing, How rare? I never heard of it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoX-5KIh9Q
Modbook site: http://www.modbook.com
Sunday Nov 22nd, 2020
This amused me, clear cases for Class Apple computers, so you can see history.
Bit expensive, but I could see putting my old //e & Mac SE inside one.
https://maceffects.com/products/maceffects-clear-case-for-macintosh-se-se-30
Monday Nov 23rd, 2020
The Internet Archive has come to the rescue of old obsolete Flash archive with a new emulator.
Flash was abandoned for good reason (speed, security, proprietary), but this solution brings back some of the old playfulness of Flash.
https://boingboing.net/2020/11/19/internet-archive-turns-on-flash-emulation-already-has-1000-items-to-check-out.html
Library link: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash
Monday Nov 23rd, 2020
Facial identification for other animals (bear, cows, monkeys), is this something that was really a requirement?
It is adorable to see the animation of Bear face locating.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/22/tech/face-recognition-bears-cows/index.html
Tuesday Nov 24th, 2020
Apple recent Mac event ended with a visit from an old friend (they were missing Justin Long, I guess they could not afford him).
So I thought I would look back at the famous “Get A Mac” ad campaign (also called “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”). Has it really been 14 years?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rV-dbDMS18
Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac
Tuesday Nov 24th, 2020
Leandro Pérez uses analytics tools like Sitrep & XCLogParser to improve his Swift compile time.
The changes he talks about gave him a 40% improvement!
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/analyzing-and-improving-build-times-in-ios-5e2b77ef408e
Wednesday Nov 25, 2020
The better article don’t just give you a new tool to use, but also explain how it works, so you learn something.
John Sundell of Swift by Sundell has been digging into Combine, and we benefit from his explorations.
https://www.swiftbysundell.com/articles/extending-combine-with-convenience-apis/
Thursday Nov 26, 2020
Happy Thanksgiving!!! And enjoy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsdVPN_qip4
What are you thankful for?
Friday Nov 27, 2020
European Union is about to go after various Tech companies with their Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts.
While I agree some tech companies (including Apple) need to change policies, the EU has been just as authoritative in their decisions. And not nearly as smart.
https://www.webpronews.com/eu-poised-to-crack-down-on-tech-giants/
Saturday Nov 28th, 2020
This may be the biggest $$$ off for a Black Friday Tech Sale. $50,000!!!
A 98-inch Samsung TV is going for half off It’s normal obscene $100K price. Would that really make a difference? If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.
https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/11/27/21723138/samsung-98-inch-tv-deal-sale-black-friday-8k
Sunday Nov 29th, 2020
According to Reuters, Apple will try to move some iPad and MacBook manufacturing capacity out of China to Vietnam.
“Apple wants to diversify its supply chain due to the ongoing trade disputes between the US and China”.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/26/21721353/apple-ipad-macbook-foxconn-manufacturing-vietnam-report
Monday Nov 30th, 2020
Richard Moss, the author of Secret History of Mac Gaming, has a new project.
Shareware Heroes: Independent Games at the Dawn of the Internet is a crowdfunded book that many might enjoy.
https://unbound.com/books/shareware-heroes/
Monday Nov 30th 2020
What was for 50 years the world's largest single-aperture telescope (and a favorite villain hide-out) will soon be gone, due to age and damage by nature.
The Arecibo Observatory has been officially slated for deconstruction before it collapses on its own.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21575025/arecibo-observatory-puerto-rico-decommission-structural-collapse-cable-break
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory
Tuesday Dec 1st, 2020
In case you missed, here is the recent “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”. Well, without the Mac.
This was the tale end video shown at the introduction of the M1 Mac last month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEvXVJHTQAk
Tuesday Dec 1st, 2020
I spoke too soon! Arecibo Observatory just collapsed.
This is a follow-up to yesterday's posting, the Arecibo cables snapped, and the suspended platform came down.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/arecibo-telescope-collapses-ending-57-year-run
Background video: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arecibo-observatory-radio-telescope-puerto-rico-collapses/
Wednesday Dec 2nd, 2020
Apple announces the best Apps of 2020 for both iOS and Mac
I found it interesting the best apps were an exercise app (iOS) and a life scheduler app (Mac).
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/12/apple-presents-app-store-best-of-2020-winners/
Wednesday Dec 2nd, 2020
As Micah Bowers puts it, “Motion Is More Than Ornamentation”. He goes on in this article to describe good UX Motion Design.
I especially like his list of 12 Motion Design Principles for Digital Products.
https://uxdesign.cc/a-guide-to-motion-design-principles-7f05f10ccd79
Thursday Dec 3rd, 2020
Microsoft Team, their workspace chat and videoconferencing app, is being updated for switching between hardware.
What is interesting is that Team will not support CarPlay, recognizing the success and legitimacy of Apple’s car interface standard.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754862/microsoft-teams-calling-update-carplay-onedrive-recording-features
Thursday Dec 3rd, 2020
The new M1 MacBook Air test has it running Windows 10 FASTER than the Surface Pro X.
Taking advantage of Windows 10 on ARM, this shows the speed of Apple Silicon over the SQ2 ARM CPU.
https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-m1-chip-embarrasses-microsofts-surface-pro-x-by-running-windows-10-on-arm-much-faster
Friday Dec 4th, 2020
$27 What?!?! Anyone want to join me in a software Startup?
Slack is popular, and well designed, but I am amazed on this deal!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/salesforce-acquires-slack-for-27-7-billion/
Friday Dec 4th, 2020
Yes, Programmers have a sense of humor. Calling it Hilarious might be a bit strong.
How many of these do you think are funny? How many do you “get”? I am not 100%.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/15-hilarious-jokes-by-the-programmers-for-the-programmers-5be2e480f7fb
Saturday Dec 5th, 2020
Super Nintendo Land zone will be coming to Universal Studio Japan next year.
Besides the impressive setting, the ride will have a AR element. I would love to see how they work that.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/30/21726093/super-nintendo-world-osaka-japan-opening-date-announced
Sunday Dec 6th, 2020
I wondered how long it would take to get Wacom into the VR Market.
The expert on computer Pens has come out with pressure sensitive stylus controller.
https://www.roadtovr.com/wacom-unveils-vr-pen-built-next-creative-future/
Video: https://youtu.be/lul73Gytqvc
Monday Dec 7th, 2020
Donovan So gives a breakdown of what works & more importantly what doesn’t for Developer tools on Apple’s M1 computers.
More than anything, programmer tools touch the bare metal of the CPU.
https://medium.com/better-programming/apple-silicon-the-dev-tools-that-work-and-dont-work-yet-5288452b9b4a
Monday Dec 7th, 2020
Even with COVID, VR arcade games are being developer for LBE (location-based entertainment) venues.
Transformers: VR Invasion is the second VR game for the Transformer franchise.
https://www.vrfocus.com/2020/12/repel-the-decepticons-in-arcade-co-op-transformers-vr-invasion/
Tuesday Dec 8th, 2020
Kevin Williams gives us a history of MR/AR/VR in theme parks.
He divides their use into “props” (ex. Wizardry World’s wands) and “viewers” (ex upcoming Nintendo World AR Caps).
https://www.vrfocus.com/2020/12/mixed-reality-revolution-out-of-home/
Tuesday Dec 8th, 2020
I like Henry Cheng’s breakdown of what makes Apple’s website unique, and very memorable.
As he explains, Henry is not an Apple fan, but enjoys reading the websites. They might be doing something right.
https://medium.com/swlh/i-dont-know-if-it-s-the-gold-standard-but-i-really-enjoy-reading-apple-s-copy-3a1200fc7fc2
Wednesday Dec 9th, 2020
Filing in the “Expected” file, Bloomberg reports Apple working on more powerful Apple Silicon chips.
M1 is all about power efficiency. Since desktops have more power than laptops, they can drive more powerful chips.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-07/apple-preps-next-mac-chips-with-aim-to-outclass-highest-end-pcs
Wednesday Dec 9th, 2020
Things have changed thanks to COVID, but even before that, hiring good software developers was becoming near impossible.
Alex Cowan talks about how to identify someone who is good at their job.
https://medium.com/swlh/hiring-great-software-developers-is-really-hard-what-we-learned-this-month-bd76ec1e5837
Thursday Dec 10h, 2020
YouTuber Colinfurze built fantastic Trebuchet.
It is only average size for historical ones (“Warwolf”, the largest was 300-400’), but I do not know if anyone has ever made one out of modern steel beams!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgm9EzdCZXI
Thursday Dec 10h, 2020
Reading Popular Science best tech of the years is an adult version of the Sears Wish Book!
If you don’t get the reference, look it up (or ask your parents).
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/best-of-whats-new-2020/
Friday Dec 11th, 2020
Combining iOS APIs is both fun and scary. Anupam Chugh wants to use PencilKit & MapKit.
A great intro to both technologies.
https://medium.com/better-programming/cropping-ios-maps-with-pencilkit-da7f7dd7ec52
Friday Dec 11th, 2020
The Call of Duty video game made $3 billion over the past year. More proof video games are bigger than films.
In comparison, the entire Avengers franchise made less than that over the past 12 years.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/374782/Call_of_Duty_made_3_billion_for_Activision_in_12_months.php
Activision press release: https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/call-duty-surpasses-3-billion-net-bookings-over-last-12-months
Saturday Dec 12th, 2020
Antony ”Skarred Ghost” Vitillo reviews Finding Pandora X, winner of the “Best VR Immersive User Experience” at the Venice Film Festival this year.
I have been curious about the stagecraft of 360 shows, it is the reverse of traditional theater-in-the-round.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/11/14/finding-pandora-x-review-vr/
Finder Pandora X Trailer: https://vimeo.com/458044473
Sunday Dec 13th, 2020
RoadToVR take on lawsuits Oculus will be facing.
The lawsuits deal with anticompetitive acquisitions and anticompetitive platform conduct, that will require divestitures of assets (companies)
https://www.roadtovr.com/ftc-sues-facebook-monopolization-oculus-vr/
Monday Dec 14th, 2020
Popping up in LA and some other locations, Free Blockbuster is a kiosk-based lending library for videos.
I never thought of it, but the original Blockbuster was a $3 billion business crash due to changes in tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YcsQWwUx8U
Free Blockbuster Org: https://www.freeblockbuster.org
Monday Dec 14th, 2020
An excellent article explaining one of my favorite subjects, Genetic Algorithms.
Initial Population, Parent Selection, Crossover, Mutation, Termination. All the key components are explained.
https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/a-comprehensive-guide-to-genetic-algorithms-the-eli5-way-fcc8940ae9a4
Tuesday Dec 15th, 2020
This year's iOSDevCamp DC was entirely virtual, and now their videos are available online.
While smaller than some years due to COVID, I attended and enjoyed the session.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLUh0bIfk24ka31a-Go3smA
Tuesday Dec 15th, 2020
Yet another interesting project from the Swift organization, SwiftNIO SSH!
SwiftNIO SSH is a programmatic implementation of SSH to implement SSH-speaking endpoints.
https://swift.org/blog/swiftnio-ssh/
Wednesday Dec 16h, 2020
This wiki page is dedicated to the idea there has to be something Better Than JSON.
I have never seen such a complete comparison of various data serialization formats (JSON, Protobuf, Flatbuffer, etc).
https://wiki.alopex.li/BetterThanJson
Wednesday Dec 16h, 2020
Stream.io provides a complete iOS tutorial on adding their Chat SDK to your apps.
Their API support messaging from a single person up to team/slack-style chat.
https://getstream.io/tutorials/ios-chat/
Chat API & SDK for Custom Messaging: https://getstream.io/chat/
Thursday Dec 17th, 2020
Recently the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) sponsored a web seminar on Game Software Patents.
They discuss the 2014’s Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank case, where they ruled implementing abstract idea on computer alone is not enough to be patentable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvM0MrN7f4&feature=youtu.be
WIki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International
Thursday Dec 17th, 2020
The tech exodus from Silicon Valley has been going on for awhile, but it has just accelerated.
The expense of living in my home town makes hiring & living there difficult.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/tech/silicon-valley-moving-to-austin-miami/index.html
Friday Dec 18th, 2020
Understanding Lifecycles is important! Vadim Bulavin's blog on SwiftUI Lifecycles is a great helper for this.
His Yet Another Swift Blog is worth following.
https://www.vadimbulavin.com/swiftui-view-lifecycle/
Friday Dec 18th, 2020
So many options, so hard to to get it right. A great article on writing parallel code with swift.
Jan Olbrich is a good job with this article.
https://medium.com/flawless-app-stories/basics-of-parallel-programming-with-swift-93fee8425287
Saturday Dec 19th, 2020
Valve, creators of Half-Life, rumored new game will have Asymemetric game play between PC & VR Users
The two types of users will be in the same game, but with different interfaces or even roles.
https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-next-game-vr-pc-asymmetric-citadel/
Video: https://youtu.be/T7FEd8gnWdo
Sunday Dec 20th, 2020
Do you know what ZIP stands for? Until I read this, I didn’t.
“Zone Improvement Plan”. And this article has other trivia about Zips!
https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/what-the-zip-in-zip-code-really-means-4342492a4f1b
Monday Dec 21st, 2020
Excellent article by Eric Yang on 3 different methods to blur an image on iOS.
UIBlurEffect, CIFilter, and Metal with GPU acceleration. Eric gives us source code, as well as Pros & Cons for each.
https://medium.com/better-programming/three-approaches-to-apply-blur-effect-in-ios-c1c941d862c3
Monday Dec 21st, 2020
Wow, a lengthy and details breakdown of all Apple mobile processors by Dezsö Sima.
This Hungarian researcher really documented the history of Apple processors.
https://users.nik.uni-obuda.hu/sima/letoltes/Processor_families_Knowledge_Base_2019/Apple's_processor_lines_2018_12_23.pdf
Tuesday Dec 22nd 2020
Apple Alumni Jean-Louis Gassée discusses the “animated discussions” about the M1 release.
His column really spears the negative non-fans of Apple.
https://mondaynote.com/apple-silicon-m1-disruption-af11f639103a
Tuesday Dec 22nd, 2020
Years before Mac OS X running the NextStep flavor of Unix, Apple experimented with A/UX in order to expand into Business & Tech markets.
I remember in 1988 receiving training on this Apple flavor of Unix. It didn’t get very far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrTTXOg-KI
Wednesday Dec 23rd, 2020
The year is coming to an end, and so is the useful lifespan of these computer languages.
They won’t disappear forever, I still get requests for Fortran Jobs, but these languages will fade away.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/top-4-dying-programming-languages-of-2020-1a4149753e92
Wednesday Dec 23rd, 2020
This has ramification in all tech industries. Do consumers have rights to access internal data of the item they purchased?
Imagine Hardware and Software manufacturers being ordered to release all internal data streams.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/37890/the-car-companies-are-already-gearing-up-to-fight-massachusetts-right-to-repair-law
The law the voters passed: https://www.thedrive.com/news/37431/massachusetts-votes-to-expand-major-right-to-repair-law-force-oems-to-open-up-vehicle-data
Thursday Dec 24th, 2020
No Tech blog for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Instead I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!
Pass on this thought!
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a2dxYBY_700bwp.webp
Friday Dec 25th, 2020
NONE
Saturday Dec 26th, 2020
Not every patent Apple applied for means a new product, but looking at their ideas gives hints of what they are working on.
Here is an interesting website that tracks patents Apple has been granted.
https://www.patentlyapple.com
ps. I hope everyone's Christmas was great!
Sunday Dec 27th, 2020
Originally ARM stood for Acorn RISC Machine, and this article explains the history of Acorn.
According to this Are Technica article, the origin of the ARM chips involves a BBC TV show and a Slot Machine software company called Acorn.
https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/12/how-an-obscure-british-pc-maker-invented-arm-and-changed-the-world/
Monday Dec 28th 2020
iOSDevCampDC 2020 continues to post videos from this years online conference.
A zoom session with Connor Nelson, as he explains how to make Apple’s new Widgets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pi2aZXq5c
Monday Dec 28th, 2020
An interesting perspective against “clean code”.
I think his issue was about how he “cleaned” the code, rather than “cleaning it”. But I do like the discussion of where the right time & place is for refactoring. Sometimes it is not needed!
https://overreacted.io/goodbye-clean-code/
Tuesday Dec 29th, 2020
I never heard of PlistBuddy until recently, it is an extremely useful undocumented tool.
Both macOS & iOS are filled with plist files, so a command-line app to edit them is great.
https://medium.com/@marksiu/what-is-plistbuddy-76cb4f0c262d
Tuesday Dec 29th, 2020
Let's celebrate 2021 is almost here!
I know I don't dance this well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&feature=youtu.be
Wednesday Dec 30th, 2020
A Federal judge found security software Corellium does not violate Apple’s copyright.
Corellium provides a virtual iPhone so that security researchers search for vulnerabilities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/29/apple-corellium-lawsuit/
Corellium website: https://corellium.com
Another article: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-lawsuit-against-corellium-partly-210402490.html
Wednesday Dec 30th, 2020
It is kind of interesting how technology affects human interaction.
At our house, if you want to have everyone be silent for a moment just say "Alexia...". Everyone has learned to stop talking so Alexa can hear your request clearly.
Wednesday Dec 30th, 2020
The Midi 2.0 spec has been published!
Big news for musicians as well as software developers.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/midi-20-spec-confirmed-the-biggest-advance-in-music-technology-in-decades
Thursday Dec 31st, 2020
Best VR Game of 2020? According to Road to VR, it is Half-Life: Alyx on Steam.
Iron Man VR on PSVR, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners for Quest, the best puzzle is Cubism.
https://www.roadtovr.com/road-to-vrs-2020-game-year-awards/
Thursday Dec 31st, 2020
It has been 13 years since iOS 1.0 was released. Here is a very graphical way to see the changes.
Thanks to Alexandre Colucci for posting this great blog. Follow his work!
https://blog.timac.org/2020/1122-comparing-iphone-os-with-ios-14-using-tree-maps/
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