Developing Perspective

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

00:00:02 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a near-daily podcast discussing what's new and interesting in iOS,

00:00:07 ◼   ► Apple, and related technologies.

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

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This is show 0.10.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Today is Tuesday, July 26th, the format of Developing Perspective.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Basically, I'll cover a handful of links and articles that I found interesting in roughly

00:00:24 ◼   ► the last 24 hours or so, and I'll have a more general discussion towards the end.

00:00:28 ◼   ► The show will never be longer than 15 minutes.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And I unload third party advertising.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Before I dive into today's show, I just have a little note about the show numbering that

00:00:38 ◼   ► you may have noticed.

00:00:39 ◼   ► So currently we are on 0.10.

00:00:41 ◼   ► As a developer, I'm essentially naming the show as though I were a software product.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And the show I would say is currently in beta.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I'm still working on both some of the audio engineering, some of the format, some of the

00:00:52 ◼   ► style, those types of questions for the show.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And so as I get better and better at that, version numbers will continue to zero point

00:00:59 ◼   ► something.

00:01:00 ◼   ► At some point probably in the next, hopefully in the next week or two, I'll be switching

00:01:04 ◼   ► that over to 1.0 and then at that point it will probably be a more understandable and

00:01:08 ◼   ► typical numbering scheme.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Alright, without further ado, let's get going.

00:01:14 ◼   ► First over on Plinky.me, there's a great review of what's new and useful in Xcode 4.1.

00:01:23 ◼   ► You may remember this blog for its massive review of Xcode 4.0 that was published a couple

00:01:31 ◼   ► of months ago.

00:01:32 ◼   ► And again, he does an excellent job of just talking about what's new, what's interesting,

00:01:35 ◼   ► things you should know in Xcode 4.1, which is now the current shipping master version.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Our next kind of interesting note is yesterday seemed to be the magic day when Apple started

00:01:50 ◼   ► enforcing its in-app purchase rules.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Either that or the deadline is the end of the month or something like that, because

00:01:57 ◼   ► a couple of applications, most notably the Kindle application, released updates to create

00:02:04 ◼   ► compliance with that.

00:02:06 ◼   ► If you're not familiar with this, basically applications that sell content can either

00:02:14 ◼   ► do that with in-app purchase, or if they don't do it with in-app purchase, they are not allowed

00:02:18 ◼   ► to link to an external store in which they can buy that content.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So previously the Kindle app had been doing this with books, where if you wanted to buy

00:02:30 ◼   ► a book, you would go to the, you know, you'd say, "I want to go to the Kindle store."

00:02:34 ◼   ► You wouldn't buy it inside of the application itself.

00:02:36 ◼   ► It would launch you into Safari, where you'd do the purchase.

00:02:39 ◼   ► That is no longer the case.

00:02:41 ◼   ► There's no link.

00:02:42 ◼   ► So if you want to buy something, you have to know to go to Open Safari, go to Amazon.com/Kindlestore

00:02:48 ◼   ► order to do that. For a while there'd been a lot of speculation about whether Amazon

00:02:53 ◼   ► would actually be in compliance with that or whether Apple would flinch first or whatever.

00:02:59 ◼   ► It seems as though the deadline has been pushed but the rules have not. The rules themselves

00:03:03 ◼   ► were changed a couple of months ago to loosen some of the restrictions but still at this

00:03:08 ◼   ► point there's some fairly strong rules for in-app purchase content.

00:03:14 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:03:17 ◼   ► Next we're going to talk about a delightful feature that I discovered recently in 1Password.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It's called 1-Click Bookmarks.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And so if you are the 1Password user, which if you're not, I highly recommend it.

00:03:29 ◼   ► It's a great tool for managing and sort of keeping track of all of your different passwords.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It allows you to generate custom secure ones and those types of things.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It's just a great tool.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And it also integrates sort of everywhere you'd ever need it on your iPad, your iPhone,

00:03:45 ◼   ► on your Mac.

00:03:46 ◼   ► It's got pretty good Lion compatibility.

00:03:49 ◼   ► They've made a lot of improvements to the Lion Safari extension, which now works really,

00:03:55 ◼   ► really well.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But I recently discovered this feature.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Basically what it allows you to do is create a bookmark, I guess it's a bookmark lid probably,

00:04:03 ◼   ► rather than a bookmark, in Safari or any browser that when you click on it, rather than simply

00:04:09 ◼   ► taking you to the site.

00:04:10 ◼   ► So as an example, say I wanted to go to iTunes Connect to submit an application.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Typically I had a bookmark to itunesconnect.apple.com.

00:04:18 ◼   ► In my bookmarks bar, I hit that, it opens it up.

00:04:21 ◼   ► However, typically what it will do is rather than taking me to iTunes Connect itself, it's

00:04:26 ◼   ► going to show me to the login screen.

00:04:27 ◼   ► What you can do with this bookmark is, to create from one password, is when you click

00:04:33 ◼   ► on it, it will actually automatically log you in, which is a great time save and it's

00:04:38 ◼   ► And it's just kind of a nice little, it just removes that little bit of hesitation, a little

00:04:41 ◼   ► bit of friction from your workflow.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And it's very straightforward to do.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Basically, you just drag the item from the 1Password app into your Bookmarks bar and that's

00:04:51 ◼   ► that.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So definitely thumbs up to that.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Check it out.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Next, I have a link to an interesting article over on leancrew.com or Dr. Drang, who is

00:05:03 ◼   ► talking about, it's just another thing in this ongoing BBEdit versus TextMate saga,

00:05:11 ◼   ► I guess we could call it at this point.

00:05:14 ◼   ► And it just talks about some of his history, where he was on BBEdit from way long ago,

00:05:18 ◼   ► back when it cost $200.

00:05:21 ◼   ► But then recently he was a pretty early adopter of TextMate, and he loves it, and has written

00:05:27 ◼   ► large numbers of bundles and snippets and all kinds of things for it.

00:05:32 ◼   ► And so, it's just one of those things that you kind of look at now, and he's like, you

00:05:38 ◼   ► know, I think he's talking of trying to go back to BBEdit and giving it a go.

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's just kind of, he says, he'll post his notes and his comments.

00:05:49 ◼   ► And I think he says something, he's in a fairly similar way to me, where he really looks forward

00:05:54 ◼   ► to TextMate 2.

00:05:55 ◼   ► If it came out tomorrow, that'd probably be it for him.

00:05:58 ◼   ► He's kind of nervous, he's kind of looking around.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And so, this is just something interesting to Kier because I think his perspective on

00:06:04 ◼   ► these types of things is very low level, very detailed, and very thoughtful.

00:06:09 ◼   ► So worth looking at there.

00:06:10 ◼   ► And last, I have two links that are just kind of helpful and useful if you're a developer.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Basically they're two sites that have a large collection of quality patterns and textures

00:06:22 ◼   ► that you can use in your applications.

00:06:24 ◼   ► They're both fairly liberally licensed.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And they're just a really nice tool for either if you just want to use them as a background

00:06:31 ◼   ► in your app, or if you want to do it for your wallpaper, those types of things.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I use them for the most of the wallpapers on some of my devices.

00:06:42 ◼   ► All right, so that's today's links.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Today's discussion is probably going to be a little bit shorter than normal, but it's

00:06:52 ◼   ► sort of covering something that I've just been noodling on and kind of thinking about

00:06:55 ◼   ► for a while.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And it's kind of the way I started thinking about it is, is there a difference between

00:07:01 ◼   ► what I would call a founder and what I would call an indie?

00:07:06 ◼   ► And to sort of define those terms, so I would say a founder is someone who is starting a

00:07:11 ◼   ► business and starting a business for the purpose of that being a business, a going concern,

00:07:16 ◼   ► a typical startup would fall into this category, something for which employees are a likely

00:07:22 ◼   ► extension for which the goal is sort of growth more than sort of anything else and it's to

00:07:29 ◼   ► kind of build and establish a brand and all those types of things that go along with that.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And contrast that with sort of being an indie or being an independent developer, entrepreneur,

00:07:40 ◼   ► those types of things, which is the category I'd put myself in.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And the interesting thing that I've been kind of trying to decide is sort of are those two

00:07:47 ◼   ► things different and if they are in what ways.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And what I've found, this all got started from a discussion about sort of selling out

00:07:54 ◼   ► your business and what that looks like, does it make sense, is that good?

00:07:59 ◼   ► And I was thinking, I think for a founder, for someone who's trying to build a business

00:08:03 ◼   ► and whose goal is to build that business and that the business itself is the goal, it probably

00:08:09 ◼   ► doesn't make a lot of sense to sell it.

00:08:11 ◼   ► You're building up a lifestyle and an energy and a focus into something that would be hard

00:08:18 ◼   ► to recreate because it has much more moving parts.

00:08:21 ◼   ► You're building something that is hard to recreate.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Whereas for an independent or an indie, the interesting thing is, for me, I do my job

00:08:31 ◼   ► because it lets me live the lifestyle I enjoy, take care of my family, etc.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And those goals would be fairly well met by selling out.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I think the challenge there perhaps would be in things in terms of exactly what that

00:08:47 ◼   ► looks like, but if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I like your audiobooks app.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I like your recipe book app.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I'd like to give you a substantial sum of money for that," I think I'd probably be foolish

00:08:59 ◼   ► to not take that for the most part.

00:09:03 ◼   ► The purpose of those applications were created to support my family to pay the bills.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And if I could exchange the ongoing revenue from them for a one-time large payment, that

00:09:16 ◼   ► seems like a very good thing for my family to create a lot of stability and security.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And I think even also, I was describing it to myself as, I think a lot of indies become

00:09:29 ◼   ► indie for the purpose of controlling their destiny, to be able to choose what it is they

00:09:37 ◼   ► do, how they do it, when they do it, those types of questions.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And those activities are essentially the more financially secure you are, the more able

00:09:49 ◼   ► you are able to control your destiny, the more you're less tied to the whims of your

00:09:54 ◼   ► customers to the market to all kinds of things.

00:09:57 ◼   ► And so even more so there, I think there's a lot of interesting benefits in creating

00:10:02 ◼   ► that distinction.

00:10:03 ◼   ► However, if you're a founder, if you're someone who's trying to build a large business, while

00:10:09 ◼   ► you may say to yourself, "That's what I want.

00:10:11 ◼   ► I don't want to work for the man.

00:10:13 ◼   ► I don't want to..."

00:10:14 ◼   ► Those types of things.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Every time you do something, like for example, hiring someone, you dramatically reduce your

00:10:20 ◼   ► ability to control your own destiny, because suddenly you have to account for and take

00:10:26 ◼   ► care of all these other people.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so that is just a, you're sort of relying to yourself, you're saying, "Oh, I'm an entrepreneur

00:10:34 ◼   ► because that's what I want."

00:10:38 ◼   ► I think it's also an interesting note that I think the kind of people who do the two

00:10:41 ◼   ► things are very different.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I imagine, just from my experience, people who are really founders, who are trying to

00:10:46 ◼   ► do sort of that startup or trying to build a whole business, are much more likely to

00:10:51 ◼   ► be sort of that classic type A go-getter, just work, you know, work 60 hours a week

00:10:58 ◼   ► and enjoy it kind of people.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And that's something that I think you, sort of on the flip side, sort of the more independent

00:11:05 ◼   ► developer I think is a much more likely to be an engineer, much more likely to enjoy

00:11:10 ◼   ► the engineering of what they're doing rather than necessarily the business of what they're

00:11:14 ◼   ► doing.

00:11:15 ◼   ► And as a result, I think you end up with a very different kind of set of goals.

00:11:19 ◼   ► So it's a little bit rambling, but it's just kind of a thought that's been developing over

00:11:24 ◼   ► the last couple of weeks, and I thought it would be interesting to share it and kind

00:11:29 ◼   ► of just discuss that.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Hopefully that resonates.

00:11:31 ◼   ► If not, let me know.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Otherwise, that's today's show.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Hope you enjoyed it, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

00:11:36 ◼   ► All right.