0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:08an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herne, Virginia. This is show number 133,
0:00:13and today is Friday, July 12th, 2013. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes,
0:00:18so let's get started.
0:00:19All right, so I'm going to start off the show today talking about a bit of an interesting
0:00:23anniversary. So as I said, today I'm recording on July 12th, but tomorrow, July 13th, will
0:00:29be the two-year anniversary of Developing Perspective. I started, or I posted my first
0:00:34episode on July 13, 2011. So, you know, been doing this for two years straight. I think
0:00:40I've missed maybe a couple of weeks here and there, but typically it's been pretty much
0:00:44consistently at least one show a week for that long. I think I've up to 146 unique episodes.
0:00:51This is episode 133, but I've done 146 unique episodes, including some beta episodes at
0:00:56the beginning, some interviews I've done, and other things that I didn't consider in
0:00:58normal net numbering. If you add it all up, it works out to be 38 hours and 9 minutes
0:01:04so far. So quite a while. Quite a lot, especially when you consider a lot of that is 15 minutes
0:01:10at a time. But yeah, so I'm just kind of excited about that. It's something that when I remember,
0:01:14I still remember sitting down and starting recording the first episode back, you know,
0:01:19two years ago. I was sitting here, sort of sitting at my desk. I had a Logitech USB headset
0:01:23that I just plugged into my computer. I opened up Audacity, which was the, like the free
0:01:28MP3 audio recorder editor thing and just started talking.
0:01:33And I'll think I'll insert in a moment my original intro,
0:01:38which I thought was kind of awful and also kind of cool
0:01:42to hear, just in terms of it's something that at the time,
0:01:45I don't think I really understood what I was doing.
0:01:47And audio quality was terrible.
0:01:49My inflection, my diction, a lot of those things
0:01:51were just not very good, as you can now hear.
0:01:56This is Developing Perspective, a new daily technology podcast about what's new, what's
0:02:03interesting, what's worth talking about.
0:02:08I'm your host, David Smith.
0:02:10I'm an independent iOS developer.
0:02:13Yeah, so pretty terrible, right?
0:02:15But the reality is, and this is I guess sort of the lesson that I thought would be interesting
0:02:19to draw from, is that that's just the nature of anything.
0:02:23that you start off sounding kind of terrible,
0:02:25and you're not very good at it, and you don't necessarily
0:02:28know what you're doing, but things get better.
0:02:30And you just kind of stick with it.
0:02:32And that stick-to-it-iveness, I think,
0:02:33is what makes most things successful.
0:02:35Success is rarely overnight.
0:02:37It is the process of working at things over and over
0:02:40and over again, and making every mistake you can make.
0:02:43And then once you make every mistake twice,
0:02:45you hopefully won't make it again.
0:02:47And so you just kind of want to keep at it.
0:02:49And so it's kind of an exciting thing
0:02:50for me to have gotten to this point with this show, where
0:02:53you know, I've developed an audience. I've, you know, I've met a large number of you at
0:02:57various things at conferences, at times, I mean, you know, whenever I'm in San Francisco,
0:03:00I always find it seems like I'll run into people who listen to the show, just all over
0:03:05the place. And it's really encouraging to me when I hear stories, and I get these emails
0:03:08back from people. And I love when I get these emails from someone who says, you know, hey,
0:03:12I've been working on this app on my part time, you know, it's just something that I wanted
0:03:15to do. And I wanted to build it and thank you for doing your show. It was really motivating,
0:03:19it was really encouraging, and it helped me to kind of get it out. And it's some, you
0:03:21You know, some of these are awesome.
0:03:22Some of these are simple.
0:03:24Some of these are just, you know, people scratching an itch that only they have.
0:03:29The awesome part about that is it's great to hear that it's actually useful, that it's
0:03:32not just me sitting in front of a microphone once a week talking about, you know, sort
0:03:36of talk about my life in a way that doesn't actually, you know, sort of adding something
0:03:40to the discussion to helping people out, which makes me excited.
0:03:45So it's kind of cool that we've now hit two years of that.
0:03:47And, you know, at this point, I have no plans to stop anytime soon.
0:03:50It's something that I've continued to do, mostly just because of the feedback I get.
0:03:55And it's just become kind of part of my routine that about once a week I do an episode.
0:03:59Sometimes I have a lot to say, sometimes I don't have much to say.
0:04:01But in general, it's just something that I enjoy.
0:04:03And so I just wanted to thank you, the listeners, for sticking with me for two years.
0:04:07I don't know if there's that many of you who would have heard the first episode.
0:04:11And if you are actually, if you are somebody who's listened to this one and also remembers
0:04:14listening two years ago to the first episode way back, you know, a couple years ago, I'd
0:04:19I'd love to hear from you, just because that's kind of an interesting thing.
0:04:22Because I think at the time it had almost no audience.
0:04:25It's not a huge audience now, but there was almost, it was probably measured in a handful
0:04:29of people, dozens of people.
0:04:30So it'd be kind of cool if you could reach out and let me know that.
0:04:32I just really appreciate it.
0:04:34But generally also, just one thing I wanted to say is, I get a lot of people who talk
0:04:38about the show and how helpful it is and useful it is and kind of what they can do to support
0:04:42the show.
0:04:44And it's something that really, I've never done the show for sort of financial purposes.
0:04:48never been a sponsorship. You know, this, this show is not brought to you by Squarespace.
0:04:52It is brought to you by, you know, by me. It's something that I just, something that I do,
0:04:56and I want to contribute back. And so I keep doing it for that reason. And so really, the only thing
0:05:01that you can, when I hear that, it's always kind of a little funny. It's like, you don't really
0:05:04just support it. I'm just, I'm doing it for you. So, you know, just enjoy it. But really, if the
0:05:09biggest thing that you can do as a listener, if you want to support the show or wanted to help it out,
0:05:13is just to share it in whatever venues you have, you know, to talk about if you enjoy it,
0:05:17and you like it, to tell other people about it, whether that's personally, whether that's
0:05:21in any kind of venues, in Twitters, in blog posts, in things, podcasts, whatever it is,
0:05:25if you have places where you can share the word and you think it's useful and you think
0:05:29other people would benefit from it, please do that. That's the best thing that you can
0:05:32do because the kind of the more feedback I get along those lines, the just the more encouraging
0:05:39it is for me to keep at it and to keep, you know, sort of making sure that I'm doing a
0:05:42good quality show on a regular basis. So yeah, so that's kind of it just an exciting little
0:05:46side note that I thought I wanted to share. So two years of developing perspective, and
0:05:51here's, I guess, to another another year. All right, so I'm going to talk about now
0:05:55and get into the kind of the main topic that I'm going to talk about today. And this is
0:05:59something that is very relevant, I think, to anyone, mostly iOS developers, people listen
0:06:03to the show, is related to iOS seven, like, I think a lot of things will be probably over
0:06:07the next coming coming weeks and months, I think basically right now, I'm starting to
0:06:12kind of get into a mode of really focused on iOS 7. I think I'm currently guessing that
0:06:17iOS 7 is going to ship on or not ship my conservative estimate that I'm basing my planning on is
0:06:23that the GM for iOS 7 would ship in the middle of September, specifically, I think, for my
0:06:28planning purposes, I say September 12, which I think is on Monday. And so, which is a conservative
0:06:35estimate, I think that's probably a little earlier than they will actually be ready.
0:06:38But that's kind of the date that I'm trying to be ready for so that when Apple says here's
0:06:42the GM, you can now submit to the app store, I'm ready. Because the actual day that it
0:06:46ships to the public is kind of irrelevant as a developer. It's relevant in a few ways.
0:06:50But for actual shipping to the store, I want to have a home, you know, all my apps updates
0:06:54and things ready, queued up, lined up, tested, ready to go. So when the GM comes out, I can
0:06:58do, you know, one last round of testing against the GM and then submit them. And that's, I
0:07:04think, so that's kind of the date that I'm working towards. And that works out to be
0:07:06right now about 45 business days between now and then. So that's kind of what I'm planning
0:07:11for that I have about nine weeks of work ahead of me to update all my apps, to build some
0:07:15new apps probably, to do a lot of interesting things. And as I've kind of really gotten
0:07:19into iOS 7, the things that I found have found really interesting and I'm starting to really,
0:07:24really get excited about is the new UI, I think, allows non-designers, non-art, maybe
0:07:31non-artistic designers to really make interesting and compelling things. For a lot of my apps,
0:07:36I take a little bit of time and I've kind of sat down, I haven't done a whole scale
0:07:39iOS 7, you know, sort of conversions yet, but I would have sat down and done, you know,
0:07:45open them up in the new Xcode, open them up in iOS 7 and start playing with them and start
0:07:49seeing, you know, tweaking little parts and seeing how it how that process is going to
0:07:53go so I can kind of plan accordingly. Is this going to be weeks of work months of work days
0:07:57of work. And the thing that I found fascinating is that it doesn't take nearly as much effort
0:08:01as it used to, I think, to make something that looks really sharp, and really fresh.
0:08:07Now, some of that freshness is certainly just coming from difference, that it's just a new
0:08:10thing.
0:08:11So when I compare the old UI to the new UI, it just looks beautiful because it looks different,
0:08:16and people love different things.
0:08:17That's the nature of fashion.
0:08:20That's the reason that new car designs, new clothing designs, new whatever designs keep
0:08:25coming out, because people like that newness, that freshness, that sense of something that's
0:08:30changed is exciting and interesting.
0:08:33But on the other side, I think that there's just this kind of UI.
0:08:36It's much more minimalist, much more simple, much more or less artistic design lends itself,
0:08:46I think, to developers, or not only developers, but non-designers.
0:08:49And it reminded me of a book that I read a while ago called The Non-Designers Design
0:08:56Book by Robin Williams, which is a book I'll have a link in the show notes to, which is
0:09:01a great little book.
0:09:02It's a little bit dated, especially in terms of the way that it's styled and written.
0:09:06But the content, especially the core principles of it, I think are really good and relevant.
0:09:11And if you're someone who is trying to sort of beef up your design chops, it's a great
0:09:15book, I think, to kind of just browse through, and especially about these next four things
0:09:20that I'm going to talk about.
0:09:21And so in the way the book is structured, at the beginning at least, the first portion
0:09:24is sort of expanding upon her concept of four basic design principles.
0:09:31And these are contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
0:09:36And those four things, as I was kind of thinking about it in iOS 7, is that's the core of making
0:09:41a good iOS 7 app, is nailing those things.
0:09:45Because that is kind of what your design is resting on.
0:09:49That's the fulcrum that you're kind of using to make a compelling interface to a large
0:09:52degree.
0:09:53Now obviously there's things that you can do way beyond this, and I'm sure I'll be amazed
0:09:56interested in some of the things that really--
0:09:59is some of the more imaginative or artistic or designer
0:10:04oriented development shops are going to do.
0:10:06For someone like me, I think using those kinds of tools
0:10:10and techniques appropriately will
0:10:12lend to create really, really nice looking, useful,
0:10:15functional, and aesthetically pleasing interfaces.
0:10:18And so I'm going to kind of unpack those four
0:10:20areas a little bit.
0:10:21And like I said, if you want more information,
0:10:22just definitely get the book.
0:10:23I really recommend it.
0:10:24So the first one is contrast.
0:10:26And this is the idea is you want to avoid elements on the page
0:10:30being similar that are not the same.
0:10:34So if you want to think-- if two things are different,
0:10:36you want to make them very different.
0:10:38If they're the same, you should make them very the same.
0:10:40And you create this-- by creating that contrast,
0:10:43you can make it clear kind of the visual importance of things
0:10:48and also help the user very quickly digest
0:10:51the content of a page.
0:10:52And so contrast is interesting, I think, in iOS 7, because it's one of the few things
0:10:57that you have to draw contrast between things.
0:11:02So say like you have buttons or text or those types of things where before you would have
0:11:09a button would look like a button that's potentially because it has a nice big drop shadow, big
0:11:12round rect, all kind of things that visually make it really stand out, that there's a huge
0:11:17amount of contrast.
0:11:18Contrast is more complicated in iOS 7.
0:11:20do it with things like color. You do it with things like spacing, which I'll talk about
0:11:25a little bit. But the reality with contrast is that it becomes very important that you're
0:11:29very aware of it. That you look at it and say, "Things that have the tint color of my
0:11:34application should have, should be buttons or should be actionable. And if it isn't one
0:11:40of those, it needs to be different. You know, so the body copy should be black and the buttons
0:11:45should be blue, for example." And being very aware of that, that that is that contrast
0:11:49is important and significant for an iOS 7.
0:11:52I think it's taken on kind of a new role.
0:11:55The next one is repetition.
0:11:57And this is repeating visual elements of design
0:12:00throughout your application, throughout your process.
0:12:04And this helps to create kind of organization and unity.
0:12:06And this is the same kind of thing, where
0:12:08you want to make sure that you're using consistency
0:12:10across your application, because you want to teach your user how
0:12:13to use things, because you're taking away
0:12:15of the affordances and kind of crutches that they could lean on to kind of work your way
0:12:21through your app a little bit. So you want to be very consistent. You know, say you want
0:12:24your tint color to probably be the same throughout your entire application. If it's blue on one
0:12:28screen, green on the other screen, purple on the other, it's going to be much more complicated.
0:12:31And so this repetition helps a lot. And the same kind of thing, if you can structure screens
0:12:36so that they're very, you know, they have the same kind of visual layout, it'll help
0:12:40your user kind of be able to navigate it in kind of a cool way. Alignment talks about
0:12:46making sure that things aren't placed on the page in an arbitrary way. They should have
0:12:49a visual--visually, you know, be very kind of visually aligned. And this--that isn't
0:12:56necessarily a sort of all in a straight line, but you're making sure that they're kind of
0:12:59on a grid, that things are laid out with appropriate spacing, that you're kind of using kind of
0:13:03good metrics to lay things out. And especially with something like iOS 7, this is where I've
0:13:08kind of seen this a lot, is that you have, because you have almost nothing on the screen
0:13:14except for text and typography, you'll have a few lines and things, the alignment and
0:13:19the spacing of how you lay things out is the thing that sort of gives your page structure
0:13:25and gives it order, and so becomes very important. And last one is proximity. And this is, again,
0:13:32something where you're trying to relate items by putting them close together and then creating
0:13:36space between things that aren't related. And it's an important thing. I think it's
0:13:41again in Iowa 7, I found that I've as I've been in my kind of trials is it becomes very
0:13:45important to get this right, that you want to make sure that you're because you're not
0:13:49you don't have these harsh lines between things. You want to you're you're separating things
0:13:54with white space. And so you want to make sure that you're grouping and improving the
0:13:58proximity of items appropriately as a result. So those kind of those are the four basic
0:14:02design principles. And I thought that was just kind of an interesting thing that this
0:14:05book I'd read probably a couple years ago that really kind of applies really well to
0:14:09iOS 7. And obviously, part of why it does is because this book was, I think, mostly
0:14:14written for page layout and that kind of design. So it's kind of the old kind of page layout
0:14:19design, which is very, very -- those kind of skills now apply very directly to iOS 7.
0:14:25That's how you lay out a good piece of copy on a piece of paper, you know, doing an advertisement
0:14:31or even you could imagine seeing a restaurant laying out a menu.
0:14:34The same kind of rules apply now in iOS 7 because it's a very similar kind of look and
0:14:39feel.
0:14:40So I definitely recommend that and just kind of some things to think about that you want
0:14:42to make sure your apps have good contrast, good repetition, good alignment, and good
0:14:46proximity.
0:14:47All right, that's it for today's show.
0:14:48As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, I'm on Twitter @_DavidSmith.
0:14:51I'm on AppNet @DavidSmith, David@DevelopingPerspective.com.
0:14:53I hope you have a great weekend.
0:14:56Happy coding.
0:14:57I'll talk to you soon.