Developing Perspective

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

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a near daily podcast discussing what's new and interesting in iOS,

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

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

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

00:00:13 ◼   ► The format of the show is pretty straightforward.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about the things that I found interesting, worth looking at over the

00:00:19 ◼   ► last 24 hours or so, talk about that for the first half of the show, and kind of have a

00:00:25 ◼   ► a more general discussion and the show will never be longer than 15 minutes.

00:00:30 ◼   ► So it should just hopefully be an ill adjunct to your day rather than being a major time

00:00:36 ◼   ► sink.

00:00:37 ◼   ► The show is currently, I guess you could call it, beta.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I'm kind of trying it out, shaking a few things out.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So if, as they say, pardon the dust.

00:00:47 ◼   ► All right, let's get started.

00:00:49 ◼   ► The first thing I'm going to talk about is a pretty interesting article over on Macworld

00:00:53 ◼   ► talking about why Apple dares to change your apps.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And I think this is a discussion about the Final Cut Pro 10 sort

00:01:03 ◼   ► of debacle and the interesting thing

00:01:05 ◼   ► about it is it's just a pretty honest description

00:01:07 ◼   ► of I think why Apple's doing what they're doing there.

00:01:10 ◼   ► And you just kind of understand that Apple's purpose

00:01:16 ◼   ► in that is to go their business and fit their strategy.

00:01:20 ◼   ► It's not that they don't care about creatives anymore

00:01:23 ◼   ► But what they really care about is the millions of other people who buy their products.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And so definitely worth checking that out.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Next, there's an interesting article about on --

00:01:34 ◼   ► over on Ars Technica about getting a -- making a clean start with Lion.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I think, let's see, today is July 18th.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And it's expected, I think, that Lion will be coming out at some point this week.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And as part of that, you have sort of the usual dilemma

00:01:52 ◼   ► of how do you actually set that up?

00:01:54 ◼   ► Do you want to do just the native migration

00:01:58 ◼   ► where you run the installer and it'll set it up for you?

00:02:01 ◼   ► Do you want to set it up on a totally clean install?

00:02:04 ◼   ► Set it up on a clean install and use migration assistant.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And this article is a walkthrough of how

00:02:10 ◼   ► to do a totally clean install on migration,

00:02:14 ◼   ► which is what I'm expecting to do myself when I get live.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I think OS updates come out infrequently enough that it's definitely worthwhile to sit down

00:02:24 ◼   ► and really go through the effort of making a clean start.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I think your performance for your machine, as well as unused disk space and those types of things

00:02:32 ◼   ► will just be so much better starting from scratch,

00:02:34 ◼   ► making sure you're pulling over only the things that you really use,

00:02:37 ◼   ► and you're just kind of removing the cruft, all the stuff and junk that builds up over time.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Next, I was going to talk about a delightful little script over on the iPhone development

00:02:50 ◼   ► blog by Jeff LaMarche. And it's just a really nice little script that he's been working

00:02:56 ◼   ► on that auto-updates build numbers from within Xcode. And this is especially helpful if you're

00:03:03 ◼   ► using something like TestFlight or a related technology where the build number is used

00:03:09 ◼   ► not just for marketing and related

00:03:13 ◼   ► uses actually used for

00:03:17 ◼   ► fit for the system to be able to keep track of what the build is

00:03:19 ◼   ► where it uh... where it fits within your job and scheme etcetera so it's a really

00:03:23 ◼   ► nice way

00:03:25 ◼   ► uh... do that stuff it's going to be worthwhile looking at it if we would

00:03:28 ◼   ► check that out

00:03:31 ◼   ► i said that's uh...

00:03:33 ◼   ► jeff lemarch

00:03:34 ◼   ► repair development block

00:03:36 ◼   ► Next, there's a really interesting video series.

00:03:39 ◼   ► I think this is probably going to be an ongoing thing,

00:03:42 ◼   ► but at this point it was just the first episode was posted.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And it's an interview done by David Hanemeyer-Hanson

00:03:48 ◼   ► of 37signals of different founders.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And his first candidate was the Slicehost guys,

00:03:55 ◼   ► which for a little bit of background is a company

00:03:58 ◼   ► that was founded a couple years ago doing virtual private

00:04:01 ◼   ► server hosting.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And they've recently, maybe a year ago or two years ago,

00:04:08 ◼   ► got bought by Rackspace.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And there's been a little bit of drama about that.

00:04:14 ◼   ► They recently denounced that they're shutting

00:04:16 ◼   ► down their VPS system and moving everybody who was on that

00:04:20 ◼   ► to the Rackspace cloud and a whole bunch

00:04:23 ◼   ► of interesting things.

00:04:24 ◼   ► But what's really interesting here,

00:04:26 ◼   ► certainly David Hanmer Hansen's interviewing them

00:04:29 ◼   ► from the perspective of his sort of standard online persona

00:04:32 ◼   ► of someone who doesn't really like VC, who doesn't think you should ever sell out, those

00:04:39 ◼   ► types of things, which I don't argue with.

00:04:42 ◼   ► But it's a very interesting story nonetheless.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And it's especially interesting when you see the section where they're talking about what

00:04:48 ◼   ► it was like after they sold out, after their golden handcuffs came off and they finally

00:04:54 ◼   ► just found themselves, probably, I don't know exactly how old they are, but in their late

00:04:58 ◼   ► early 30s with a lot of money and a lot of time.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And kind of it's just sort of a good sobering thing to see

00:05:06 ◼   ► that, you know, that's really not that fun.

00:05:10 ◼   ► It's fun for a little while but especially if you go

00:05:13 ◼   ► from running a successful business that sort of the let

00:05:16 ◼   ► down that you'll get at the end

00:05:17 ◼   ► of that is probably not worthwhile.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And then our last link that I was going to point

00:05:25 ◼   ► to is something I haven't had a chance to play around with yet

00:05:27 ◼   ► but that looked really interesting and fascinating.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And this is over on the corner, the development blog

00:05:32 ◼   ► for the Square guys.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And basically they just released a new framework

00:05:36 ◼   ► for iOS integration testing.

00:05:38 ◼   ► It's called KIF, I guess Kif.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And basically this is a framework

00:05:44 ◼   ► by which you can script interaction

00:05:47 ◼   ► and integration tests.

00:05:49 ◼   ► So for a little bit of background there,

00:05:51 ◼   ► an integration test is something whose purpose is

00:05:54 ◼   ► you simulate the system in use rather than something like a unit test which is focused

00:06:01 ◼   ► on testing in the individual section of code or a functional test which is testing a particular

00:06:07 ◼   ► module of code.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Integration testing is about seeing if the system at large works together.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And so this is, if you can imagine, in many ways it works with, it's a way of setting

00:06:18 ◼   ► it up that you can simulate users actually working with your application.

00:06:22 ◼   ► So it's, the user opens this page, clicks this button, enters this text, hits this button,

00:06:27 ◼   ► does this, and it's an interesting way of doing that.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Some advantages of this, A is of course it's you get to a nice baseline.

00:06:34 ◼   ► You can do, also incorporate this into your own continuous integration system.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So if you have a base set of tests that need to always work, you can verify that nothing

00:06:45 ◼   ► breaks there.

00:06:46 ◼   ► So definitely something to check out if you're at all interested in integration testing.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Alright, for today's sort of finishing discussion, I'm going to take a slight break from what

00:06:57 ◼   ► I've done for the last couple of episodes and talk about something that's near and dear

00:07:03 ◼   ► to me, and that is coffee. And this is not atypical for a developing perspective that

00:07:09 ◼   ► I'm going to be talking about things that are not strictly developer-oriented but are

00:07:16 ◼   ► to developers, things that are interesting and fun for us.

00:07:19 ◼   ► If there's one thing I think you could say fairly categorically is

00:07:23 ◼   ► the average developer enjoys their caffeine, and many of those people enjoy it in coffee form.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And I've recently been reading a book called "God in a Cup," which is just an interesting discussion

00:07:34 ◼   ► of specialty coffee from sort of the ground up.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And there's a really interesting paragraph that I'm just going to read.

00:07:42 ◼   ► to read, it shouldn't take too long, but it was a very interesting overview of where

00:07:46 ◼   ► coffee comes from and what it starts as, which is something that, while I've drunk a lot

00:07:51 ◼   ► of coffee, I don't have as much familiarity with. So like I said, this is in God and the

00:07:57 ◼   ► Cup and starting in a section called Coffee 101. Coffee beans are dried from the red fruit,

00:08:06 ◼   ► the cherry that coffee trees produce. Coffee trees grow in farms and in forests. The higher

00:08:10 ◼   ► the altitude, in general, the better the coffee. Coffee trees require fertilizer,

00:08:15 ◼   ► organic or industrial, and pruning. They need a moderate amount of sun and rain

00:08:19 ◼   ► at certain times of their growing cycle. Coffee cherries do not ripen in a

00:08:23 ◼   ► uniform rate. In order to pick ripe cherries, pickers must make repeated

00:08:27 ◼   ► passes through coffee orchards. Once picked, coffee cherries in Latin America

00:08:32 ◼   ► are generally depulped mechanically to remove the skins and most of the fruit,

00:08:36 ◼   ► and then they are subjected to a process called washing,

00:08:40 ◼   ► which may or may not actually involve water,

00:08:42 ◼   ► during which they ferment.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Fermenting or washing, the terms used interchangeably,

00:08:47 ◼   ► dissolves the sticky coating called mucilage

00:08:50 ◼   ► that covers the hinged pair of coffee beans

00:08:53 ◼   ► and it alters the flavor of the coffee.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Washing techniques vary from farmer to farmer,

00:08:57 ◼   ► region to region, and can take one to three days or more.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Washing stations are not terribly expensive to build

00:09:03 ◼   ► build in villages, co-ops, and other small groups often have their own washing facilities.

00:09:08 ◼   ► After washing, coffee must be dried. Farmers around the world use a number of different

00:09:12 ◼   ► drying technologies. Beans can be dried on racks, on cement patios, or mechanical dryers

00:09:18 ◼   ► that may be wood burning, gas burning, or fired with coffee parchment. Some of these

00:09:24 ◼   ► machines use coffee tree prunings as fuel. Again, this process may take days, and if

00:09:29 ◼   ► rains, mold and mildew can ruin or degrade the coffee.

00:09:32 ◼   ► After drying, coffee must be milled.

00:09:34 ◼   ► During this process, a papery parchment skin covering the

00:09:38 ◼   ► coffee is stripped from the bean.

00:09:40 ◼   ► Next, the coffee beans are sorted by size and quality.

00:09:42 ◼   ► This can be done by hand or by machine.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Once the beans are sorted, they are packed into clean bags

00:09:47 ◼   ► and stored in a dry place.

00:09:49 ◼   ► After resting for a month or two, the beans are ready for

00:09:51 ◼   ► sampling.

00:09:52 ◼   ► At every step along this production process, the coffee

00:09:55 ◼   ► loses weight, and that the final milled product is

00:09:58 ◼   ► approximately 20% of the original. During the roasting process, coffee shrinks another

00:10:03 ◼   ► 15% or so. And I said, it's a bit of a diversion, but I thought that was a very, very interesting

00:10:10 ◼   ► discussion to kind of give some background on where coffee coffee comes from. And so

00:10:16 ◼   ► obviously from that stage on, you just get, you roast it and then consume it. I'm a bit

00:10:22 ◼   ► of a coffee guy myself. In case you're curious, I use an AeroPress for making almost all of

00:10:28 ◼   ► my coffee. This is the hat tip to Marco Orment who recommended that and I think he has probably

00:10:34 ◼   ► sold more AeroPresses than anybody in the history of the world. Everyone I know who

00:10:40 ◼   ► uses one uses it because of him or because someone who heard about it from him second

00:10:46 ◼   ► hand. It's an excellent way to make good, well-tasting coffee without needing to make

00:10:52 ◼   ► large quantities of it and without quite having the usual expense of high-end coffee machines

00:10:58 ◼   ► and AeroPress is 20 bucks or so. And I think that's going to be about it for today's show.

00:11:06 ◼   ► It'll be a little bit shorter than normal, but that's probably going to be common over

00:11:09 ◼   ► the weekend because less has happened. Some things to be looking for this week is hopefully

00:11:15 ◼   ► line will come out. Definitely be checking your Mac App Store for that or Twitter or

00:11:21 ◼   ► whatever you want to keep up with that. Like I said, I'd recommend doing a clean install.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I think you'll thank yourself later even though it may be a little rough at the time. Hopefully

00:11:29 ◼   ► there might be some new hardware coming out, some new MacBook Airs maybe, new Mac Mini

00:11:34 ◼   ► maybe, who knows. Rumors like that are always just kind of silly. But beyond that, I hope

00:11:40 ◼   ► you guys have a good week. Happy coding and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.