Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:07 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 79, and today is Thursday, September 13th.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:18 ◼   ► All right, so yesterday was the big day.

00:00:21 ◼   ► iPhone 5 announcement day, all the rumors, all the anticipation, all the speculation

00:00:27 ◼   ► all kind of culminates yesterday,

00:00:28 ◼   ► and I wouldn't say, I'd say it was a good show.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I haven't actually been able to watch

00:00:34 ◼   ► through the whole video yet,

00:00:35 ◼   ► but from watching the live blogs

00:00:38 ◼   ► and reading all the summaries and things,

00:00:40 ◼   ► it's pretty much right what we were expecting,

00:00:42 ◼   ► and as a developer, I'm pretty happy.

00:00:45 ◼   ► As a user, I'm also pretty happy.

00:00:47 ◼   ► It's funny, the iPhone 5 is basically,

00:00:50 ◼   ► it's everything I was expecting,

00:00:52 ◼   ► and I mean that in the best possible way,

00:00:54 ◼   ► that there's certainly a part of me

00:00:55 ◼   ► that would wish it was a bit more of a surprise,

00:00:58 ◼   ► that there were a few things that I was like,

00:00:59 ◼   ► "Whoa, that's crazy," but it's perfect.

00:01:03 ◼   ► The iPhone 4 that I've had, or the 4S,

00:01:05 ◼   ► the iPhone 4 form factor that I've had in my pocket now

00:01:09 ◼   ► for about two years is really, really good

00:01:13 ◼   ► in terms of feel and shape and size,

00:01:17 ◼   ► and I like what they did to sort of take

00:01:20 ◼   ► the overall feel of that and make it better.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I made it thinner, lighter, extended about,

00:01:26 ◼   ► made a little longer screen.

00:01:27 ◼   ► The screen I'm not totally convinced on yet.

00:01:31 ◼   ► It's a funny thing.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Which I'll talk about a little bit later,

00:01:35 ◼   ► but what I was doing a little bit earlier today

00:01:37 ◼   ► was doing my iOS 6 updates,

00:01:39 ◼   ► so getting all my apps ready for iOS 6.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And so one of the things you can do

00:01:42 ◼   ► is run it in the new iOS 6 sort of tall simulator.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And it's funny, 'cause I was spending a lot of the day

00:01:49 ◼   ► in that simulator, playing with it,

00:01:51 ◼   ► you know, making sure everything looks right,

00:01:53 ◼   ► doing a few updates, things like that.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And so after spending most of my day,

00:01:58 ◼   ► whatever, five, six hours just in that view,

00:02:01 ◼   ► I then picked up my iPhone and looked at its screen.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I was like, man, it kind of looks short.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And it's a funny thing because I was so,

00:02:08 ◼   ► you kind of had that weird thought like,

00:02:09 ◼   ► really, is this going to work?

00:02:11 ◼   ► I'm so used to this three and a half inch screen

00:02:14 ◼   ► that's been the same way for, gosh,

00:02:16 ◼   ► five years, something like that, six years.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I mean, it's been like that for a long time, five years.

00:02:21 ◼   ► and you're like, is that really going to work?

00:02:25 ◼   ► And it seems like it will.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Really, the only thing that I'm at all concerned about

00:02:29 ◼   ► is one-handed operation and reaching all the way

00:02:33 ◼   ► to the back button on the nav bar.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And I think that's going to be the trickiest part

00:02:37 ◼   ► of the slightly new longer screen.

00:02:40 ◼   ► It seems like they've tweaked things such that

00:02:43 ◼   ► it's not going to be too bad because they also

00:02:45 ◼   ► sort of shifted the screen outward, down on the device,

00:02:50 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

00:02:51 ◼   ► the home button bezel smaller so that the screen's

00:02:54 ◼   ► a little bit lower.

00:02:55 ◼   ► So there's a few things that they're doing.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But overall, looks great.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Mostly I just care about it being faster.

00:03:01 ◼   ► That's the one thing that I saw that I was going

00:03:02 ◼   ► through the video and I'm like, that is great.

00:03:05 ◼   ► They say it's about two times faster.

00:03:08 ◼   ► For me, that's key.

00:03:11 ◼   ► It allows me to do more things in a more beautiful way.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And that's awesome.

00:03:17 ◼   ► That's really what I want to do as a developer

00:03:19 ◼   ► I want to be able to make awesome, quick things

00:03:21 ◼   ► and not have to spend too much of my time

00:03:24 ◼   ► in the nitty-gritty, low-level, super--

00:03:28 ◼   ► in some ways, almost pointless optimizations,

00:03:30 ◼   ► where I'm sitting there trying to tweak

00:03:32 ◼   ► all these tiny little variables and details of performance

00:03:35 ◼   ► to make it responsive and look good

00:03:37 ◼   ► and have all my animations be 60 frames a second and all

00:03:39 ◼   ► this stuff.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And I don't mind doing that.

00:03:42 ◼   ► It's part of being an Apple developer.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But the thing that I always worry about

00:03:46 ◼   ► is I'm not really spending that time on functionality.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I'm just many around, compensating for the slowness of the device.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And so as the devices get faster and faster, I'll have to do less and less of that.

00:03:57 ◼   ► And I mean, one of the best things about Apple and the way that their iPhone has been selling

00:04:02 ◼   ► traditionally is each iPhone traditionally has sold more units than all preceding iPhones

00:04:09 ◼   ► combined, which is a pretty crazy statistic if you keep that in mind.

00:04:13 ◼   ► They're saying that more likely than not, if that pattern holds, the iPhone 5 would

00:04:18 ◼   ► sell more units than they sold of the original, the 3G, the 3GS, the 4 and the 4S combined.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Which is nuts.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And what I love about that is that that is speeding the adoption curve as quickly as

00:04:30 ◼   ► possible.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I'm really looking forward to next Wednesday, whenever they release iOS 6.

00:04:35 ◼   ► You know, I have, as many of you probably know, I run a thing on my blog where I track

00:04:41 ◼   ► iOS version stats in my applications and publish it.

00:04:44 ◼   ► it's david-smith.org/ios-version-stats,

00:04:48 ◼   ► is the URL if you need it.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Basically, I just keep track of where we are

00:04:53 ◼   ► in terms of iOS adoption.

00:04:55 ◼   ► If the over-the-air update stuff I've seen in iOS 5

00:04:59 ◼   ► is any indication, iOS 6 will probably have

00:05:02 ◼   ► some pretty cool things.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I remember I posted a iOS, I think it was a 5.1.1

00:05:08 ◼   ► hourly adoption curve, and I remember the biggest comment

00:05:11 ◼   ► that I got that stuck with me was when you were saying,

00:05:14 ◼   ► it's a pretty crazy thing when you can track meaningfully

00:05:17 ◼   ► an iOS adoption on an hourly basis.

00:05:21 ◼   ► That's pretty nuts, the speed at which it's happening,

00:05:24 ◼   ► that you're moving serious percentages every hour

00:05:27 ◼   ► after it gets released is pretty cool.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And so I'll be blogging about that,

00:05:30 ◼   ► probably doing the same thing there.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And that's really cool, and I'm looking forward to it.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Alright, so then, next, the second part

00:05:38 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about today is a little bit

00:05:40 ◼   ► about iOS 6 and getting ready.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So if you haven't already, you need to be submitting

00:05:45 ◼   ► your iOS 6 updates for your applications

00:05:48 ◼   ► as soon as possible.

00:05:50 ◼   ► App Review at this point is probably overwhelmed.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And if history is any guide, what typically is going

00:05:57 ◼   ► to happen is if you submit an update that is just

00:06:01 ◼   ► iOS 6 compatibility, and especially if you only say

00:06:05 ◼   ► that that's what you're doing in your release notes,

00:06:08 ◼   ► they're usually pretty good about getting you approved

00:06:10 ◼   ► by launch day, so by next Wednesday.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So if you are going to, if you have things that don't work,

00:06:18 ◼   ► if you have things that are funny,

00:06:19 ◼   ► you definitely want to get that submitted

00:06:20 ◼   ► as soon as possible.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I finished wrapping up mine earlier today.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I guess it was about 20 hours after the GM shipped,

00:06:27 ◼   ► so it was pretty good.

00:06:28 ◼   ► In terms of I was pretty largely ready for it,

00:06:30 ◼   ► I just had to do a bunch more testing

00:06:31 ◼   ► to make sure everything was good in the final GMs.

00:06:35 ◼   ► But definitely get on that, because if you don't,

00:06:37 ◼   ► the most awkward thing is if someone buys

00:06:39 ◼   ► brand new phone, iPhone 5, they think it's awesome,

00:06:42 ◼   ► they pick it up, they see your app, they think it's cool,

00:06:45 ◼   ► they download it, and it doesn't work, or it works oddly,

00:06:49 ◼   ► then you've got a big problem on your hands,

00:06:51 ◼   ► and you kind of have to deal with that.

00:06:53 ◼   ► The most important thing, just sort of,

00:06:55 ◼   ► there's some getting into the details of it,

00:06:56 ◼   ► I think it's still NDAAed until Wednesday,

00:06:59 ◼   ► but I'm just going to say, the number one place

00:07:01 ◼   ► that you need to be testing in iOS 6

00:07:03 ◼   ► is making sure your app works in all rotations.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And specifically, if you support landscape and portrait,

00:07:10 ◼   ► make sure that that works like you'd expect.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And if things are going funny, make sure,

00:07:14 ◼   ► look at your Windows root view controller

00:07:16 ◼   ► and see if that is correct.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So basically, that's what I've spent my time doing,

00:07:23 ◼   ► is I've, sitting there, I've got two devices on iOS 6,

00:07:26 ◼   ► an iPad and an iPhone, and right now I support iOS 5 and 6.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And I think most of my apps now are up to

00:07:35 ◼   ► base revision of 4.3, which looks like it's largely

00:07:38 ◼   ► becoming that sort of the base, the lowest that you can go

00:07:42 ◼   ► at this point.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And I'm on there mostly just because I think it counts for

00:07:46 ◼   ► about 3% of users, which is a pretty small number, but I'm

00:07:49 ◼   ► still on 4.3 because I don't have a compelling reason to

00:07:51 ◼   ► drop it yet.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It'll probably be dropping it this fall-ish.

00:07:56 ◼   ► But what I've tried to do is I'm usually one back, sort of

00:08:01 ◼   ► like whatever the latest is minus one is where I like to

00:08:04 ◼   ► be.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And so obviously when six comes out,

00:08:09 ◼   ► five becomes the next sort of cutting point.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And five is a great place to be, I think,

00:08:14 ◼   ► when you hit that point.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Because there's a lot of great sort of APIs

00:08:17 ◼   ► and things that came in five that,

00:08:19 ◼   ► like six wasn't as huge of a step forward,

00:08:21 ◼   ► at least for my kind of apps.

00:08:23 ◼   ► So five will be a great place,

00:08:25 ◼   ► and I'll probably be doing that this fall

00:08:27 ◼   ► as iOS six's adoption picks up.

00:08:29 ◼   ► And the old iOS four devices just start getting sunset.

00:08:33 ◼   ► A lot of people who bought older phones

00:08:37 ◼   ► will likely be re-upping this year

00:08:39 ◼   ► and those kinds of things, so it should be good.

00:08:42 ◼   ► OK.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Other things to keep in mind with iOS 6.

00:08:45 ◼   ► You are going to need to do new screenshots for the new form

00:08:48 ◼   ► factor for the 16 by 9 iPhone.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And if you don't, iTunes Connect will complain

00:08:53 ◼   ► and you won't be able to submit your app.

00:08:55 ◼   ► So just make sure you have those ready to go.

00:08:59 ◼   ► It shouldn't be too big of a problem compared to what

00:09:01 ◼   ► that you had for iOS for the old three and a half inch screen,

00:09:05 ◼   ► but just make sure you have those ready to go.

00:09:09 ◼   ► You're gonna need to submit them.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And I'm also just gonna remind you all that,

00:09:13 ◼   ► make sure that you're also giving some attention

00:09:16 ◼   ► to the iPad.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I ran into this trap a little bit this morning,

00:09:19 ◼   ► where I was so focused on getting everything ready

00:09:21 ◼   ► for the iPhone 5, that there were a few little bugs

00:09:24 ◼   ► that I almost shipped on the iPad,

00:09:27 ◼   ► which is for iOS 6 compatibility,

00:09:29 ◼   ► just because I wasn't thinking about it,

00:09:30 ◼   ► wasn't a focus.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And so it's just something you really need to keep in mind

00:09:34 ◼   ► and focus on.

00:09:36 ◼   ► And make sure you're not forgetting the iPad.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Especially as we start getting ready for the theoretical iPad

00:09:42 ◼   ► Junior, iPad Mini.

00:09:44 ◼   ► It's going to come out maybe next month.

00:09:46 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:09:47 ◼   ► But either way, it's just something

00:09:48 ◼   ► you want to make sure that you're having

00:09:50 ◼   ► a really good experience there.

00:09:52 ◼   ► If you're taking advantage of new iOS features, iOS 6

00:09:55 ◼   ► features, make sure you mention that loud and proud

00:09:57 ◼   ► in your app descriptions, your release notes,

00:10:00 ◼   ► in your description, maybe in your screenshots.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Apple traditionally will feature apps

00:10:06 ◼   ► that are sort of taking advantage of the new stuff.

00:10:08 ◼   ► So if you're doing stuff with Passbook,

00:10:10 ◼   ► make sure that's really clear and obvious,

00:10:12 ◼   ► and get some sort of-- make sure you're communicating that

00:10:15 ◼   ► loudly so that the app reviewers can see it.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And more likely than not, they've been told, hey,

00:10:19 ◼   ► if you see apps that are using Passbook, if you're using--

00:10:22 ◼   ► I guess the routing APIs, those kinds of things--

00:10:25 ◼   ► if you're doing the big marquee features,

00:10:27 ◼   ► make sure Apple knows.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Because there's a good chance they'll feature you,

00:10:29 ◼   ► or at least they'll feature apps in that area,

00:10:31 ◼   ► and so you want to make sure

00:10:32 ◼   ► that you're releasing their running.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And that's most of what I wanted to talk about today.

00:10:37 ◼   ► It's kind of exciting and kind of fun.

00:10:39 ◼   ► I mean, tomorrow morning I'll be ordering my new iPhone 5.

00:10:44 ◼   ► It looks like I'll probably be sticking with AT&T again.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I've just been on AT&T forever,

00:10:51 ◼   ► and I have this big family plan.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And also, I still have one of the unlimited data plans,

00:10:56 ◼   ► which is something you can't get anywhere else.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Not that I really use it all that often.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I sometimes go over what would have been my limit,

00:11:03 ◼   ► usually when I'm traveling,

00:11:04 ◼   ► but what I really like about it

00:11:05 ◼   ► is I just don't have to think about it,

00:11:07 ◼   ► and from a cost perspective, it's a great deal.

00:11:09 ◼   ► So I'll probably stick with AT&T and just get,

00:11:12 ◼   ► I think you save about $200 by extending my contract,

00:11:16 ◼   ► which isn't a huge extension at this point,

00:11:19 ◼   ► just because I'm not even, I think I'm about

00:11:20 ◼   ► nine, 10 months into my old one, so it's not too bad.

00:11:24 ◼   ► So I'll be doing that.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I think pre-orders open at midnight Pacific,

00:11:29 ◼   ► So about 3 a.m. Eastern time, if you want to get up early,

00:11:32 ◼   ► I'll probably be getting up just because I'm a nerd

00:11:34 ◼   ► and I have small children, so I'm used to waking up

00:11:37 ◼   ► at three in the morning, so I'll probably wake up

00:11:38 ◼   ► at three in the morning to try to do my pre-order.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I've done the whole sort of camping out,

00:11:45 ◼   ► waiting in line thing, and that's cool,

00:11:46 ◼   ► and it's kind of fun that you get your phone early,

00:11:49 ◼   ► a few hours, but at the end of the day,

00:11:51 ◼   ► it's just not as important as it used to be

00:11:55 ◼   ► for me to have it right, right, right

00:11:56 ◼   ► first thing in the morning.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Instead I just kind of will do it as it plays out and just ship, you know, they'll ship

00:12:05 ◼   ► it and I'll get it whenever it arrives.

00:12:07 ◼   ► But yeah, so that's it I think for today's show.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Hopefully you had a fun, exciting announcement week.

00:12:13 ◼   ► It should be fun sort of heading into next week, the new phone, new SDKs launching, all

00:12:19 ◼   ► that kind of stuff.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I'll be picking up my weather app theme probably in the next show.

00:12:24 ◼   ► I've got a lot of great questions from you all that I'll be sort of picking up and walking

00:12:27 ◼   ► through and otherwise if you guys have a great weekend happy coding and I'll talk

00:12:32 ◼   ► to you next week bye