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Developing Perspective

Show 0.10

 

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.