A simple, but meaningful, article by Pavlos Simas on having your app start faster.
As Pavios mentions, it is not good to frustrate your users with slow launching.
https://simaspavlos.medium.com/reduce-ios-app-launch-time-815c16e3db02
Smooth, animated, interesting transition is mark of a professional iOS app.
Dino Bozic provides a very detailed article on iOS Transitions.
https://medium.com/azikus/high-end-transitioning-in-ios-ec4e9a383c4f
Krazy Ken of Computer Clan dives into the MegaTouch, possibly the first touch screen console the public ever saw.
I remember it most for being a coin-op console inside Bars. I didn’t know it ran Linex with a hidden menu, with a Nudity mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYP7zaXeBM
"I am the genie of the lamp", the huge Robot said. "You have 10 wishes".
The man said, "That is a lot of wishes, I will start small, give me the world's best hamburger".
<poof> The man had his meal.
Then the Robot Genie said, "You now have 01 wishes."
Thanks to Rikke Friis Dam for this gem on Typography.
As Rikke says, “Effective typography enhances UX, optimizes usability, catches users’ attention and has the potential to increase conversion rates.”
https://medium.com/the-interaction-design-foundation/the-ux-designers-guide-to-typography-7ddf87288123
We knew this was coming. Arizona becomes the first state where you can legally put your driver's license on your iPhone. How soon to VA, please?
Audi & startup Holoride will bring VR headsets to their SUV this summer.
With the possibility of self-driving cars containing nothing but passengers, the team hopes to bring a new type of entertainment.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/tech/holoride-vr-audi/index.html
I am very curious about their statement that they have a solution for the motion sickness problem. Usually, this is caused by the disconnect from what you see and the impulses you get from your inner ear. I can not imagine how driving would not make this worst.
Rony Abovitz, the founder of Magic Leap, gives some thoughts on the current state of Spatial Computing (AR/VR/XR).
One of his points is that we will need at least 3 major cycles of moving to move the market from a small group of enthusiasts to a large group of average consumers.
https://medium.com/@rabovitz/thoughts-on-xr-to-date-10b50c1c563b
Oops, got this posting out of order, here is the history of the PDP 11!
My first computer at UC Berkeley was the PDP 11/3, followed by using the timeshared PDP 11/70 with terminals.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most-influential-minicomputer-of-all-time/
I posted about PDP 11 a while back, I forgot to mention the old style front panel switches & lights. Does anyone want them?
Apparently, someone loved this old-style so much, they made a replica using a Raspberry Pi.
https://www.hackster.io/obsolescence/pidp-11-a-pi-based-replica-of-the-pdp-11-70-1dcda9
Quietly, and with not nearly enough recognition, webcartoonist Illiad has shut down the site for the “User Friendly” webcomic.
Illiad, mundanely known as J. D. Frazer, started the strip in 1997, and it was “one of the earliest webcomics to make its creator a living”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly
He was always one of my favorites!
I found a journal in my basement office, where I had written "Strean of Thoughts 2021" inside the front cover. The rest of the notebook was completely empty.
Boy, does that describe that year!
The delayed ShmooCon is “an annual east coast hacker convention hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere”.
I went last year, and had a lot of fun! Tickets are still available with a little bit of searching.
https://www.shmoocon.org
Swift 5.6 was released yesterday!
Sendable and @Sendable closures, Type placeholders, Incremental migration to concurrency checking and more.
https://www.swift.org/blog/swift-5.6-released/
It is with a lot of excitement that I would like to announce my acceptance of a position at Meta. I will be leaving my current post at Digital Operatives in 2 weeks and starting my new job almost immediately. I have enjoyed my time with Digital Operatives. The people here are some of the best technical and professional co-workers I have ever had, but it is time to move on.
I think the headline pretty much covers it, Magic Leap is trying to overcome their initial flop.
Technically, I admired the software design, but I was always unsure of their business plan.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/10/tech/magic-leap-new-headset/index.html
While visiting SeaWorld this week and watching schools of fish with friends, I tried to explain the original Boid flocking algorithm by Craig Reynolds and how important it was to all computer science. I mentioned a VERY early CGI short called “Breaking the Ice”, which used it. Remember, the clip was created 7 YEARS before Pixar released Toy Story! It turns out the video was the first to use Craig’s ideas, and its own Youtube.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bTqWsVqyzE
Wiki on Video: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_and_Stella_in:_Breaking_the_Ice Wiki on Flocking Boids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids
Three Great Computer Science Arguments
1) GIF is pronounced with a hard K or a soft J.
2) Brackets { should be on at the end of a line, or on a new line.
3) C programming language should be retired/extended.
4) Off by One errors never occur.
I had not honestly thought of using Enumerated types as the subscript until this article.
Thanks to Batikan Sosun for a detailed explanation of subscripts with your custom class/structures.
https://blog.devgenius.io/subscripts-in-swift-dbcdb65233b7
Oculus Quest activity layer will soon add support for the Apple Health tool.
This may be one of the first communication between the Quest and the Apple ecosystem.
https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-fitness-apple-health-oculus-app/
Separate the handling of UI from the creation of the UI with the Composition Root Pattern.
Ethan Keisner puts it well, by explaining patterns like MVC & MVVC are UI Architecture, not System Architecture.
https://betterprogramming.pub/ios-architecture-is-not-mvc-mvvm-m-5b34a04beb98
You don’t need to be changing your job to appreciate these Apple coding questions.
Better Programming is published on Medium, and tried to “publish several hundred programming tutorials and programmer-focused essays every month”.
https://betterprogramming.pub/top-30-apple-coding-interview-questions-with-solutions-19990071ebfc
Did Apple just show us hints of their much anticipated, and wanted, Apple AR Headset?
Between the video clip and the heavy use of the word Peak (not Peak), maybe they did. The video is about the level you would see for the current state of Augmented Reality glasses. If it was just CGI animation, the effect would be better.
https://dubblydo.com/stop-everything-apple-execs-tweet-mightve-been-an-apple-vr-glasses-demo/
Direct link to video "Peek": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4gxaHECh9g
Talk about resurrecting something from the dead, Google Glass 2 for Enterprise is here.
Skarred Ghost gives us his review of this next-generation product.
https://skarredghost.com/2022/02/26/google-glass-enterprise-edition-2-review/
“The only golden rule in design is to design with your user in mind”. This article by Megan Ng is the perfect example.
White Space, Promotions, App Icons, Splash screen, each UI experience is different in US & China.
https://uxdesign.cc/a-few-ui-differences-between-chinese-and-english-apps-e72400bb08da
