Ramble

So at Apple’s (final) Town Hall event they announced CareKit, which looks pretty interesting, although details are kinda scarce beyond their press kit so far, with release being “Spring 2016” so I guess sometime before WWDC. After making Repeat thinking about meds, it’s kind of funny to see Apple bring out a framework aimed at that sort of thing. Particularly since I was having a shower thought the other day about making an app around tracking wound recovery, logging spots-that-might-not-be-spots and so on. Glad that it was only a recent thought and only half-considered, seeing as that seems to be one of the card functions which is going to be released as part of CareKit. ...

This morning my 1.1 update for Repeat got approved on the store, which brings some basic improvements to interaction with tasks, a much nicer visual for repeat history as a calendar view, rather than as a simple list of events, the ratings system I wrote about in a previous post, and a Today Widget containing upcoming alarms along with an indication of how close they are. Since I’m still learning my way around the iOS frameworks it’s been an interesting experience, particularly with respect to the way that Core Data works. When I first started looking at using Core Data, and coming from having done stuff with SQLite and MySQL in the past, it seemed pretty terrible in terms of the overhead of code compared to what you actually wanted to do with it (OK, it actually still seems pretty terrible in that respect). ...

Some of the quality Role Playing Games in the Explore section of the iOS App Store. So today whilst having a coffee and waiting to pick my wife up I casually opened the iOS App Store and had a look at the Explore tab to check out the Role Playing Games section. It usually takes a few times a year to reinforce the fact that Explore is completely useless for both the “New” apps as well as the top lists, particularly in any of the games categories. ...

Pond Scum Texture X (CC-BY 2.0) (Note that this is from the perspective of a consumer. It’s probably also far more rambly than it needs to be.) Discovery One of the common problems of app delivery stores is discovery. Particularly in today’s mobile app stores, the sheer volume means that discovery tends toward to drift towards the “scumbag” end of the scale very quickly in much the same manner as SEO does with web page ranking algorithms. ...

Back in 2014 (and earlier) there was a kerfuffle about the practice of apps being in your face with requests for reviews: Wil Shipley @ The Loop John Gruber and suggesting one star reviews as a response Marco Arment suggesting that a popup request for review should go away entirely Todd Zarwell on being somewhat better behaved and showing a popup dialog only on new versions, and after a certain number of launches I was thinking about this while noodling around with a couple of improvements for Repeat, which has an unobtrusive rating link in the about screen. Whilst wanting to be well behaved, at the same time I think about the number of times I’ve rated apps by using a link in the about screen. I try to rate apps I like fairly regularly since I’m aware the reviews go away when new versions appear on the store, but even so I just don’t think about it when using apps. ...

Becky Hansmeyer posted a couple of items recently on app pricing (and a followup) which I thought fit in with my thoughts on pricing pretty closely. She also goes into some stuff I didn’t know (but I guess makes sense in retrospect) about the non-restorable nature of repeatable IAPs, meaning if you use a tip jar method for unlocking content, if you install the app at a later date, you would need to pay again to regain the benefits. ...

This morning I hit the release button on my holiday project, Repeat. As part of my marathon of listening to every development podcast I can, I was recently catching up on the backlog of Release Notes episodes, and in particular the two episodes with guest Justin Williams, where he joked that like every other developer, he started out with a notes app, a task manager and a bug tracker. Repeat is my task manager (at this point I don’t plan on making a notes app or a bug tracker though…). ...

Since hitting Submit for Review for my side project app, I’ve been having an interesting time. My first version was rejected in review due to a “bug” (actually an intended feature - a disabled button control which became usable once initial setup was completed, which goes to show that even Apple testers don’t read the help docs ;), and I did some cleaning up of my Core Data code, made some graphic changes to make things look nicer, tested some more, and then resubmitted. ...

I tend to collect software. I read about things that people I follow recommend and if it’s free or affordable and looks interesting I’ll usually get it. It gives me an opportunity to look at different paradigms, recommend alternative software to students who might be on different platforms than what they use at school, and generally nerd out. As a result I have a bunch of graphics software sitting around either in the Mac App Store or installed on my laptop (mercifully the Adobe suite is licensed through work so I don’t have to buy it myself or make space on my own machine). When it came time to sit down and “design” (the air quotes are deserved) the graphical assets for Repeat, I had plenty of software to play with, if not a surfeit of talent. ...

This is a post about the process of developing and posting an app on the iOS App Store for the first time. It’s is a long one, sorry. There will be another post looking at toolsets later on. Background I write code pretty frequently. I’ve always been interested in technology and the best way to learn about it is to tinker. I write small programs to automate my own tasks, I look at the way that different languages work and I write snippets of code just to try out new things. Of course being an ICT teacher I also teach my students how to get into programming themselves as part of their courses as well as running a code club for some self-directed learning. ...