Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:04 ◼   ► news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:08 ◼   ► an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Virginia. This is show number 132, and

00:00:13 ◼   ► today is Friday, July 5th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's

00:00:17 ◼   ► get started.

00:00:18 ◼   ► All right, so this week was kind of fun. On Monday, Google finally shut down Google Reader

00:00:25 ◼   ► about 3 a.m. on, I guess, Tuesday morning. And so that's made my life much, much simpler

00:00:31 ◼   ► since the weekend and the days leading up to it were a little bit crazy. Things are

00:00:35 ◼   ► settling down and that makes me excited mostly because it means that I can focus on building

00:00:39 ◼   ► new things, on focusing on that, rather than focusing on scaling and customer support and

00:00:45 ◼   ► those types of issues. Things are settling down and I can focus now on what I really

00:00:49 ◼   ► enjoy and what I'm good at building things. And so what I'm going to take up most of the

00:00:53 ◼   ► think there's today's show and talk about is some of the things that I'm doing to get

00:00:57 ◼   ► ready for iOS 7. So iOS 7 announced WWDC now about a month ago, I suppose. You know, some

00:01:04 ◼   ► amount of it's obviously still under NDA, but a fair amount of it has been shared publicly

00:01:08 ◼   ► by Apple. I mean, they have sections on Apple.com talking about iOS 7. There's a lot of information

00:01:13 ◼   ► out there, and just generally, you know, there's a lot of conversation. So some of the things

00:01:17 ◼   ► I can talk about, typically the things that I can't are some of the lower level, the API

00:01:21 ◼   ► changes, the functional changes, those types of things.

00:01:23 ◼   ► But in terms of just the overall things, this is kind of what I'm doing, I think I feel

00:01:28 ◼   ► pretty comfortable talking about.

00:01:30 ◼   ► So first, this is something that I think happens every year, every time there's a new big beta

00:01:34 ◼   ► coming out.

00:01:35 ◼   ► It's always the question of like, at what point do you put on your carry phone?

00:01:38 ◼   ► At what point do you use it?

00:01:40 ◼   ► How do you indoctrinate yourself and get used to the, you know, get used to using iOS 7

00:01:45 ◼   ► on a daily basis?

00:01:46 ◼   ► This is kind of the approach that I take.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I take a fairly conservative approach, I'd say.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Some people go that first day at WWDC when it launched, they throw it on their phone

00:01:56 ◼   ► and they just run with it and hope for the best.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I've always found that a little bit reckless in some ways, and not necessarily in an overtly

00:02:03 ◼   ► negative way.

00:02:04 ◼   ► If you understand the risks and the implications of what you're doing, that's a perfectly

00:02:09 ◼   ► reasonable thing to do.

00:02:10 ◼   ► But for me, I use my phone on a regular basis.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I use it for things beyond just checking Twitter and Instagram

00:02:19 ◼   ► or email and those types of things.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I use my phone periodically for things

00:02:23 ◼   ► that are very related to my work in terms

00:02:25 ◼   ► of getting notifications about server outages

00:02:27 ◼   ► or about all kinds of things that are much more critical

00:02:32 ◼   ► to what I do.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And so I find that I want to make sure that I always

00:02:36 ◼   ► have a phone that works well, especially when I'm out.

00:02:40 ◼   ► When I'm at home, it's a little bit different.

00:02:41 ◼   ► And so that's kind of created this pattern that I think I've been using, and I think

00:02:46 ◼   ► it seems to work pretty well.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And so I have, I got an iPod Touch specifically for iOS 7.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I typically wouldn't go out and buy one just for it, but this one, it only works on the

00:02:56 ◼   ► 5th gen iPod Touch.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I had brought an iPod Touch 4th gen with me to WVDC hoping that it would work, but turns

00:03:03 ◼   ► out Apple says, "Nope, only 5th gen or above."

00:03:07 ◼   ► So I went out and just went to the Apple store and bought a 5th gen iPod Touch, installed

00:03:09 ◼   ► iOS 7 on that and did a restore from my latest iCloud backup of my iPhone. And so that means

00:03:16 ◼   ► that I'm in a nice position where that iPod now has all the configuration and setup that

00:03:22 ◼   ► I'm used to. I don't have to go through and download all the apps and configure them all

00:03:25 ◼   ► and do all that kind of stuff. So I don't have this inertia to overcome. And so now,

00:03:29 ◼   ► I essentially have a clone of my main iPhone that is available and useful to me that I

00:03:37 ◼   ► can use to get used to iOS 7, get used to some of the operations and how it works, without

00:03:42 ◼   ► having to give up my main iPhone when I need it. And essentially what I try and do now

00:03:47 ◼   ► is when I'm at home, or when I'm in an environment where I have Wi-Fi, I just use my iPod touch

00:03:52 ◼   ► as though it were my main phone, which has the advantage of allowing me to take it, you

00:03:57 ◼   ► know, use it, get used to the OS. If I need to, for whatever reason, I can pull out my

00:04:01 ◼   ► iPhone, you know, dig my iPhone up and start using it. Or, you know, alternatively, when

00:04:05 ◼   ► I'm out and traveling and I'm out and about, and in situations where having my phone and

00:04:08 ◼   ► having it work reliably is more important, I have that option available to me right away.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And so that's kind of what I've been doing, and it seems to be working fairly well in

00:04:18 ◼   ► terms of allowing me to get used to it, just to play with it.

00:04:22 ◼   ► You know, iOS 7 has a lot that's changed, has a lot that lets you--it feels differently,

00:04:29 ◼   ► is probably the best way to say it.

00:04:31 ◼   ► In terms of the-- the fundamentals are very similar.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But the feel, that thing that you can't really

00:04:37 ◼   ► tell from static mock-ups, is probably the biggest change

00:04:41 ◼   ► and the biggest thing that you want to get used to.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And so I find myself doing that just by getting used to it.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And at some point, you kind of get used to it.

00:04:49 ◼   ► It feels pretty natural and it feels pretty good.

00:04:51 ◼   ► But you have to spend that time inside of there

00:04:55 ◼   ► doing that experience and doing that work before you'll

00:04:58 ◼   ► be able to, I think, to really be able to effectively make apps

00:05:00 ◼   ► for it, which is ultimately my goal. My goal is that at the end of the summer when iOS

00:05:07 ◼   ► 7 drops, I'll have major updates for probably all my apps, potentially some new apps, things

00:05:12 ◼   ► ready in the next couple of months that I can have that'll feel good and to be part

00:05:16 ◼   ► of that first wave of apps that are going to be hitting the store with iOS 7 and hopefully

00:05:22 ◼   ► getting the attention of the press, of Apple, of people like that who are going to be looking

00:05:27 ◼   ► for things that showcase iOS 7, who embrace the UI

00:05:30 ◼   ► and the aesthetic of it wholeheartedly

00:05:33 ◼   ► and let's Apple look good.

00:05:36 ◼   ► That's probably one of those things that is worth talking about,

00:05:39 ◼   ► that at the end of it, this is a very pragmatic part of it.

00:05:42 ◼   ► There's some amount of it, some of the discussion, some of the things people talk about,

00:05:45 ◼   ► where, "Oh, here's all these things that are wrong. Here's the things that aren't good.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Should we have buttons with round-recks around them,

00:05:51 ◼   ► or should we just have unlabeled buttons like we do in iOS 7?"

00:05:54 ◼   ► Those kinds of questions, they're interesting, they're useful.

00:05:59 ◼   ► But the reality is, and I think this is probably from a--

00:06:02 ◼   ► this is just sort of, as an independent developer,

00:06:05 ◼   ► as someone who sort of just does this,

00:06:07 ◼   ► the reality is whether I think it's a good idea or not,

00:06:09 ◼   ► I think that's the direction that Apple's going in.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And there's some amount of, maybe it's helpful,

00:06:15 ◼   ► you know, filing bugs or writing articles and things

00:06:17 ◼   ► and kind of pushing Apple a little bit.

00:06:20 ◼   ► But I think you always have to be starting

00:06:23 ◼   ► from a position of being comfortable

00:06:21 ◼   ► and embracing whatever it is they're doing.

00:06:22 ◼   ► If you want to develop on this platform

00:06:25 ◼   ► and to ultimately to fit in and to have Apple,

00:06:29 ◼   ► to make Apple look good,

00:06:31 ◼   ► which is ultimately what you want to do

00:06:32 ◼   ► because if you make Apple look good,

00:06:34 ◼   ► they'll make you look good.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And that comes back to you in a lot of different ways

00:06:38 ◼   ► in terms of being featured,

00:06:39 ◼   ► about having good access to people like Apple

00:06:42 ◼   ► and whatever it is.

00:06:43 ◼   ► You want to make them look good

00:06:44 ◼   ► and you don't want to call them out

00:06:45 ◼   ► and too aggressive in a way.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And so what I do is I'm just embracing it

00:06:50 ◼   ► saying, OK, this is what it is.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I'm not a designer.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Some of the things I hear people talking about

00:06:55 ◼   ► are things that I just don't really understand, necessarily.

00:06:58 ◼   ► People start talking about how the grid and this and that

00:07:00 ◼   ► and how this layout and this aesthetic and this ratios

00:07:04 ◼   ► aren't quite right.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I really don't know.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I'll just trust that whatever's in the human interface

00:07:10 ◼   ► guidelines is good enough for a lot of my purposes.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And honestly, one thing I like about iOS 7--

00:07:17 ◼   ► I think I mentioned this when I first

00:07:18 ◼   ► thought and my first thoughts from WWDC, the thing that I love about iOS 7 is that I think

00:07:24 ◼   ► it's very developer friendly in that way, because it's not--the kind of design that

00:07:30 ◼   ► it is is not the kind of design that is very artistic. It's a design that is much more

00:07:37 ◼   ► aesthetic and much more--I don't know, it's like having good taste rather than just needing

00:07:44 ◼   ► to be very artistic. And so when I look at these designs--and this is actually a site

00:07:48 ◼   ► that I'll recommend.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I'll have a link in the show notes to it.

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's called iOS7redesigns.tumblr.com.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It's a great little site that has people who've been--

00:07:56 ◼   ► it's basically just somewhere that someone's collecting people

00:07:59 ◼   ► who have been redesigning iOS 6 apps for iOS 7,

00:08:03 ◼   ► and they're just kind of collecting them.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Designers posting things on Dribbble.

00:08:07 ◼   ► These are the actual app designers themselves,

00:08:09 ◼   ► or people just sort of taking it on themselves

00:08:11 ◼   ► to kind of think about it and kind of do these mock ups

00:08:13 ◼   ► and these designs.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And the thing that happens when you look at them, which

00:08:16 ◼   ► which I've been making sure that I kind of follow these sites.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I've subscribed in Feed Wrangler, and I look at it.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Every time a new one comes out, it's

00:08:22 ◼   ► because it's good to get a sense of where people think

00:08:24 ◼   ► this aesthetic is going.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And the nice thing is it's very simple.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And simple is hard to get exactly right.

00:08:30 ◼   ► But simple is something that I think most developers are much

00:08:32 ◼   ► more capable of executing well at a high level.

00:08:35 ◼   ► If I was going to sit down and make a tweet bot in terms

00:08:37 ◼   ► of really nice, rich textures and shadows and effects

00:08:41 ◼   ► and all those kinds of things, I think I would really struggle.

00:08:44 ◼   ► It's just not a skill I have.

00:08:45 ◼   ► I can't go into Photoshop and do that.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Whereas a lot of what this is about is about--

00:08:50 ◼   ► it's just about drawing rectangles

00:08:51 ◼   ► and putting a color on them, or those types of operations.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And a lot of the rest of it is just the question of layout,

00:08:59 ◼   ► a question of spacing and sizing,

00:09:01 ◼   ► which I think is much easier to get correct.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Because there's much more of an intuition about that.

00:09:07 ◼   ► You can kind of look at it and say, oh, that's

00:09:08 ◼   ► too close together.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Let me space that out.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Let me kind of adjust those types of things.

00:09:14 ◼   ► I don't actually have to go in and draw any pixels.

00:09:16 ◼   ► I'm mostly just worrying about layout, about sizes,

00:09:18 ◼   ► about font weights, about font choice, which I think

00:09:21 ◼   ► is easier for me to do.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And that's kind of something that I've been enjoying.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And I think then, leading on to that, I think iOS 7 is going

00:09:29 ◼   ► to be a very interesting time.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I think it's probably going to be the biggest break in

00:09:37 ◼   ► development, I think, up until-- since the original SDK

00:09:41 ◼   ► launch.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And this is something that I'm preparing for.

00:09:43 ◼   ► and I haven't quite come up with a full strategy for, but I think I'm kind of getting close

00:09:47 ◼   ► to it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And that is, I think I'm going to be developing, you know, essentially this week, or probably

00:09:52 ◼   ► next week, when all the feeder angleers settle down, now that I'm kind of starting off on

00:09:55 ◼   ► all of my next major updates, I'm going to be looking at it and saying, I think for all

00:09:59 ◼   ► my apps, I'm going to start a new branch, that's essentially going to be iOS 7, and

00:10:03 ◼   ► I'm going to start off assuming that iOS 7 is the only thing I'm going to support, for

00:10:07 ◼   ► the most part.

00:10:08 ◼   ► There's a few, assume a couple of my apps for that probably won't make sense, but for

00:10:12 ◼   ► most of them for the feed wrangler app, for check the weather, for those kinds of apps

00:10:15 ◼   ► that I have, I'm probably going to just say, okay, I'm going to go iOS 7 only, assuming

00:10:19 ◼   ► that that's what I'm going to do.

00:10:20 ◼   ► I'm going to go and implement it that way.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And then, you know, I'll run and embrace all the new features, embrace all the new hotness,

00:10:29 ◼   ► the new UI, the new APIs, the new background fetching, all the stuff that you can do.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And I'll see, once I've built that out, what it would take to retrofit iOS 6 back onto

00:10:40 ◼   ► that in terms of are there things that I can do to relatively easily re-add support or

00:10:47 ◼   ► not. And if I can't, that's fine. I'll just launch an iOS 7 app. iOS 7 only, whatever

00:10:52 ◼   ► it is, probably say October 1st is a good straw man for when I want it to be ready.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And I'll just live with the consequences. Because I think it's one of those things that

00:11:02 ◼   ► I worry about most with iOS 7 is being left behind, about being one of these people who

00:11:08 ◼   ► is too worried about the past, about Iowa 6, about supporting Iowa 6 users, about

00:11:13 ◼   ► kind of all those things going on there, and missing the boat

00:11:17 ◼   ► in terms of where everything's heading in the future.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Because I think it's pretty clear that Apple is putting a lot of effort and energy behind this

00:11:25 ◼   ► and it's not something that, like, "Oh, they're going to add support for our classic mode"

00:11:30 ◼   ► or something like that for existing Iowa 6 users.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And while I'm sure there are changes and there are things that they're going to do,

00:11:37 ◼   ► you know, things Apple is going to change over time in terms of pulling back some of

00:11:42 ◼   ► the aesthetics or improving some of the usability or whatever it is.

00:11:46 ◼   ► This is where they're heading.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And especially being a one-man shop, you know, being an independent developer, being just

00:11:50 ◼   ► myself, I don't think I can afford to spend too much time trying to worry about, you know,

00:11:55 ◼   ► add all the extra time and effort it would be to add backward support, you know, in general.

00:12:01 ◼   ► So I think in general I'm going to be focused on going iOS 7 only.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And that's a bit of a gutsy thing.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I mean, the tricky part of that, I think, that's most complicated is that the people

00:12:10 ◼   ► you'll annoy going iOS 7 only are less likely, I think, to be new customers.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Your new customer is more likely to be somebody who got a new device, someone who has a device

00:12:21 ◼   ► that's capable, and so on.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And so your new customers, which especially because of the way iOS sort of payments work

00:12:28 ◼   ► in general, where most of your money comes from upfront payment, are people who, you

00:12:34 ◼   ► If you're worried about getting those people, making those people happy, being on the latest

00:12:39 ◼   ► thing is great.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And having this fast, awesome, new, sleek-looking application for them is awesome.

00:12:44 ◼   ► The people who are going to be annoyed are the people who bought your app a year ago

00:12:47 ◼   ► on using it on a fourth gen iPod touch, and they can't upgrade.

00:12:52 ◼   ► And if that's the case, it's sad, and I wish there were some way to magically make them

00:12:57 ◼   ► happy.

00:12:59 ◼   ► But spending too much time on that person who has already gotten a lot of utility out

00:13:03 ◼   ► of the application, who is already--

00:13:07 ◼   ► who's already-- for the moment, this into some approximation,

00:13:10 ◼   ► who's already paid me and made use of it.

00:13:13 ◼   ► It's a bit complicated for me to put a huge amount of time

00:13:16 ◼   ► and energy into supporting them going forward,

00:13:18 ◼   ► in terms of rather than just focusing

00:13:20 ◼   ► on making the best experience for the next 10 years,

00:13:23 ◼   ► for whatever it is, for the next five years.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And so I think that's probably where I'm leaning.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And it's something that, if you have feedback or thoughts

00:13:29 ◼   ► on that, I definitely appreciate kind of reaching back out to me

00:13:32 ◼   ► I mean, just let it sort of go-- if you have blog posts or things about that.

00:13:36 ◼   ► This is the thing that I think is going to be the biggest decision that I think most

00:13:39 ◼   ► iOS developers are going to have to make over the next couple of months.

00:13:42 ◼   ► If you're building something new, you can go iOS 7 only.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Sure, it's pretty straightforward.

00:13:45 ◼   ► If you have a legacy, it's a weird question.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Right now, I think I'm leaning towards, you know, I'm just going to drop support and say

00:13:51 ◼   ► that this is a big difference.

00:13:54 ◼   ► It's as though Apple is releasing a new OS, not just like iOS 6 for iOS 7.

00:13:59 ◼   ► It's almost like this is this new thing.

00:14:00 ◼   ► is 7 OS or whatever you want to call it, that Apple is releasing and that I'm writing my

00:14:05 ◼   ► apps for it.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Because there's a lot of changes both aesthetically as well as fundamentally in terms of app structure,

00:14:11 ◼   ► the way network operations work and so on.

00:14:15 ◼   ► There's just a lot of changes and I think I want to make sure that I'm as the strongest

00:14:21 ◼   ► position I can put myself into is where I am totally invested in that and really become

00:14:28 ◼   ► an expert iOS 7 developer rather than someone who's an expert iOS 6 developer who can make

00:14:32 ◼   ► his app work on iOS 7.

00:14:34 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:35 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:39 ◼   ► I'm on AppNet @davidsmith.

00:14:40 ◼   ► You can email me david@developingperspective.com.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And otherwise, if you have a great weekend, happy coding, and I'll talk to you next week.