The App Initiative: Recent Episodes
Marc Schwieterman, Bill Blue
The title of this episode sounds like a Beck lyric, no? Odelay!
This week the guys have some fun with the number 34. Bill mentions Hour of Code, and Computer Science Education Week, although he knows NOTHING about it, when it is, or what is involved.
In Apple news the fellas debate the rumor of Apple removing the headphone jack and using the lightening port for audio. There is also discussion of the ugly new battery case from Apple.
Watch the screencast on YouTube!
- Show Notes
- Dave Matthews Band: #34
- Dave Matthews: Some Devil
- Computer Science Education Week
- Hour of Code 2015
- Removing headphone jack from iPhone in favor of lightning audio
- Monoprice
- Apple Battery Case
- Sketch leaves the MAS
- Sandboxing
- Gatekeeper
- Picks
- Monument Valley
- Now free!
- UsTwo
- Spigen® Exact-Fit - Smooth Black
- Diztronic
- Monument Valley
This week Marc kills Bill in Shooty Skies, the fellas discuss Bourbon, and the pitfalls and struggles of using Bluetooth. Marc introduces Bill to Twelve South and their super sexy Apple only accessories. The discussion wraps with some talk of Tattoos and whether Bill should get a PS4 just to play Star Wars Battlefront.
Watch the screencast on YouTube!
- Show Notes
- ASCII 33
- Shooty Skies
- Threes
- Buffalo Trace
- Bulleit
- MacBook
- Apple TV
- Roku
- AirPlay
- Twelve South
- Monkey Bones Tattoo & Piercing
- PlayStation 4
- Star Wars Battlefront
- Picks
- Interstellar
- True Detective
- The Man In The High Castle
- Interstellar
It’s the Thanksgiving Episode! There’s talk of food comas, feeling dead & bloated, burning down houses with deep fried turkey, and all sorts of holiday cheer! As with any good American Thanksgiving discussion we discuss Black Friday and what Apple deals may be out there, Singles Day in China, and Pie.
Technical talk is a brief mention of our screencast on Xcode Behaviors and over all efficiency when working in Xcode.
Watch the screencast on YouTube!
- Show Notes
- ASCII 32
- Stone Temple Pilots - Dead & Bloated
- 56 Seconds of Deep Frying Turkey Gone Wrong
- Cult of Mac Black Friday deals
- Apple Refurbs
- Singles Day - China
- Alibaba
- Xcode Behaviors
- Ray Wenderlich - Supercharging Xcode Efficiency
- Xcode Cheat Sheet
- Shooty Skies
- Picks
- BananaKong
- TP-LINK TL-WPA4220KIT Powerline Extender Starter Kit
The talk this week immediately takes a tangent into fantasy fiction of the 1980’s, followed by cheesy 80’s television. The “real” talk settles on the iPad Pro, the availability of the Apple Pencil, and what the guys recorded in a screencast of Marc helping Bill troubleshoot some application bugs.
Watch the screencast on YouTube!
- Show Notes
- Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
- Dragonlance Chronicles
- The A Team
- Knight Rider
- Airwolf
- Upgrade 63
- Wacom
- iPad Pro
- Apple Pencil
- Ferrite Recording Studio
- Picks
- Enlight
- Ikea
Yet another episode of two dudes shooting the breeze! No app talk this week. Marc reviews the new Apple TV, setup, usage, Siri, what it does and what it does NOT do.
- Show Notes
- Apple TV
- iPad Pro
- Federico Viticci
- Connected #65: The iPad Pro Review
- iPad Pro Review: A New Canvas
- iPad Pro Review
- BTLE
- NFC
- Crossy Road
- Canabalt
- Hulu Plus
- Amazon Not Selling Competitor’s Devices
- Picks
- The Random Show
- Movers!
This episode is basically an Apple commercial. No real tech talk this week. Just the boys chatting about mostly Apple products and various other nerdy topics.
- Show Notes
- Apple TV
- Hulu w/o Commercials
- Plex
- Amazon dropping competitors’ devices
- iPad Pro
- Apple Pay
- iMac Retina
- Picks
- EODM - Zipper Down
- Queens of The Stone Age
- Them Crooked Vultures
- The Engineered Network
- Pragmatic
- Causality
- Neutrium
- EODM - Zipper Down
This episode is both totally new and totally late! This is our first test of doing a screencast. Watch Marc help refactor part of Bill’s application. This is like Xcode reality TV and the boys do away with Bill’s gross use of global variables (gasp!)
- Watch the video on YouTube
- Show Notes
- Cadillac Ranch
- Route 66
- BJ’s Brewhouse
- Dictionary
- HomeBrew
- Cocoa
- Singleton
- NSUserDefaults
- immutable references
- Derived Property
- subscript
- Type Safety
It could be the Halloween episode! This week’s number reference is a bit morbid. Marc follows up with an iPhone 6s+ status report. The guys talk about buying refurbished Apple devices vs Windows PC vs Hackintosh.
The coding discussion touches briefly on the CLGeocoder and CLPlacemarks
classes used to reverse geocode and get thoroughfare/street information.
- Show Notes
- 27 Club
- Apple iPhone 6s
- Apple Refurbished
- Hackintosh
- CLGeocoder
- CLPlacemarks
- Picks
- Fast and Loud
- Gas Monkey Garage
- iMazing
- Fast and Loud
This week we kick it off with some coffee chat about finding a roaster in the desert. Marc follows up on some AppleCare+ details from last week as well as some updates on the edge gestures on the new iPhone 6s.
The technical discussion hits on UINavigationItem, MapKit, and further discussion and debate on the UI design of Bill’s location scouting app. Marc talks about updating his app for iOS 9 and what he ran into when submitting for review in the App Store.
- Show Notes
- Coffee Roasting
- AppleCare+
- 3D Touch
- UINavigationItem
- MapKit
- Universal Type Identifier
- Picks
- ClassDojo
- Windows 10 Family Tracking
- Shooty Skies
- Star Fox
- ClassDojo
Episode 24 starts on a tangent about the television show 24. Back on track the guys talk about watchOS 2, the Apple XcodeGhost news, and the Apple Car speculation.
The technical talk is all about CoreData and persisting CLLocation.
- Show Notes
- 24
- watchOS 2
- Omnifocus
- XcodeGhost
- Apple Car
- DeLorean
- Mr. Fusion
- Core Data
- Ray Wenderlich Core Data Tutorial
- CRUD
- Saving CLLocation Article
- NSValueTransformer
- NSKeyedArchiver
- Picks
- Headspace
- CompuLab Display Emulator (fit-Headless)
- Mac Mini
- Geek Bench
- Mac Mini Colo
This week the fellas discuss the Apple Special Event from last week. Bill pines for an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, and they discuss how this combo could be a competitor for some Wacom tablets. They also hit on Apple TV and iPhone 6s.
The technical discussion covers Bill’s app progress and Marc points and laughs at Bill for using global variables. Marc makes some recommendations on storing data, and loading saved annotations.
- Show Notes
- Apple Special Event
- Apple Pencil
- iPad Pro
- Apple Pencil vs Wacom
- Bills Wacom Tablet
- Moleskine
- Apple TV
- Plex
- iPhone 6s
- Global Variables
- prepareForSegue
- Keyboard covering text field!
- Picks
- We Heart Swift
- Smart Alec
- Bill’s Pack
- Molle
This week the gents talk about iPhones and kayaks, which segues into a discussion on iPhone insurance options, Bendgate, and Dr. Drang.
The technical talk centers around Bill’s need to pass variables from one view controller to another. Marc offers up advice while weighing the pros and cons of a couple possible solutions.
- Show Notes:
- AppleCare+
- Sony Walkman
- Kayak!
- Apple Event September 2015
- iPad Pro
- Apple TV
- Amazon Echo
- Bendgate!
- Aluminum and Strength by Dr. Drang
- CLLocation
- prepareForSegue
- Scope
- Callback Functions
- Singleton
- Flow
- The Daily Show
- John Oliver: Government Surveillance
- Between Two Ferns
- Picks:
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
- Duolingo
This week is recorded LIVE and face to face! The guys discuss the current
status of Bill’s app, unwinding to multiple view controllers. The conversation
also hits on some basics such as the viewDidLoad method and the didSet
observer.
- Show Notes
- Unwinding to multiple view controllers
warning: directory not found for option '-F/Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator9.0.sdk/Developer/Library/Frameworks'- viewDidLoad
- didSet
- Liftoff (from thoughtbot)
- iPhone 6 Plus camera issue
- Picks
- NameChanger
- Liftoff (the podcast)
This week the guys discuss Apple Watch ergonomics and 4K TVs as monitors. The
development talk centers on Bill’s aggravation in implementing unwind segues and
some of the challenges encountered when storing CLLocation data.
- Show Notes
- Apple Watch Orientation
- Coding Horror
- Kerfuffle
- Unwind Segues… one more time!
- Static Table View Cells
- Storing CLLocation
- NSCoding Protocol
- Define a Data Model
- Collection Types - Arrays, Dictionaries, etc
- Phone Tracking Via Battery
- Picks
- Momentum
- PAC-MAN 256 - Endless Arcade Maze
- Crossy Road - Endless Arcade Hopper
This episode starts with some more discussion on Apple Music and the renaming of the iTunes Music Festival to The Apple Music Festival.
The guys discuss what is involved in moving a project to a new version of Xcode and when
it makes sense to rewrite from scratch. Bill brings some of his current issues to Marc
to discuss. The issues hit on file organization, CLLocation, Table View Cells, the
MACHO LINKER, and Unwind Segues.
- Show Notes
- iTunes Music Festival -> Apple Music Festival
- Xcode 7b5
- CLLocation
- “Apple Mach-O linker command failed with exit code 1”
- “Misplaced View: frame for
will be different at runtime” - “prototype collection view cells must have reuse identifiers”
- Table View Cells
- Unwind Segues
- Picks
- Foundation
- TWiT
- John Gruber
- “Young” Mark Gurman
- Audio Hijack
- Soundboard Routing with Audio Hijack
- Intermission
- Relay FM Anniversary
- Foundation
This episode is all about Minimum Viable Product, the smallest thing you can build that delivers customer value.
As Bill struggles with just how big his app should be, the guys discuss what MVP is and how a developer may benefit from getting an MVP in front of users in order to quickly get feedback before investing a significant amount of resources on features that may be of no benefit.
- Follow Up
- Git as a Document Format
- Show Notes
- The Internet Archive
- Ash Maurya - MVP Article
- SXSW video from article above
- Henrick Kniberg: MVP Infographic
- 3 New Ways to Think About MVP
- PDF:How Do You Know That Your Product Works?
- MVP: Quickly Validate your Start-Up - Will Dayble
- BDD: Behavior Driven Development
- Maximum Viable Product
- Chris Liscio
- Super Mega Ultra Groovy
- Release Notes: Chris Liscio Part 1
- Release Notes: Chris Liscio Part 2
- Picks
- Stacked Pickle
- Prune
This week is all about source control. The guys discuss Git and all things related. The discussion centers around Bill’s study of some resources from The Pragmatic Bookshelf and Marc’s experience using source control in the real world.
The guys hit on how Git works, how it is used, what tools are available, and some guidelines and best practices.
- Show Notes
- Git
- Resources
- Source Control Made Easy
- Jim Weirich
- Pragmatic Guide to Git
- Pro Git
- Source Control Made Easy
- Commit Messages
- stopwritingramblingcommitmessages
- Note About Git Commit Messages
- Workflow
- A Successful Git Branching Model
- Gitflow
- Tools
- gvimdiff
- Fugitive
- GitX
- Tower
- SourceTree
- GitUp
- Hosting
- Github
- Bitbucket
- Git as a Document Format
- Picks
- Tim Ferriss Show
- Airplane Mode
Following a tangent on headphones, sweet (episode) 16 sees the guys discussing yet more UI. Bill learns about the Human Interfaces Guidelines from Apple that he should have read like 2 months ago.
The UI discussion continues as the fellas discuss a couple design articles found in iOS Dev Weekly. The articles touch on why to almost never use drop down lists, page controls (dots showing which page you are on), the plus icon (+), and the move (aka hamburger jr) icon.
- Follow Up
- Head-Fi
- Headfonia
- Marco Arment’s headphone reviews
- Whole Module Optimization
- Generics in SWIFT (around 16:40)
- Show Notes
- HIG
- iOS Dev Weekly
- Dropdowns Should be the UI of Last Resort
- 4 iOS Rules to Break
- Clear
- McDonalds Promo Shots
- The Only Good Hamburger
- The Weasel!
- Picks
- File Explorer
- Geometry Wars 3
With the guidance of Marc’s input from the previous show, Bill has redesigned the layout of his app. The guys discuss the look and feel of the new prototype, and Marc once again provides solid feedback on transitions and UI guidelines.
The debate over whether to require a photograph continues and leads to further questions to be added to “The List”.
We wrap up with Marc providing even more feedback related to Bill’s code and a discussion of warnings, Hosey Warnings, the Broken Window Theory, and the pros and cons of using Xcode 7 while it’s still in beta.
- Show Notes
- Bill’s App Screen Shot
- Hosey warnings
- Broken Window Theory
- Malcolm Gladwell/Tipping Point/Broken Windows
- Liftoff
- Xcode 7
- Picks
- Mack Weldon
- Mr. Robot
- TV Talk Machine
Discussion continues on the UI design for Bill’s app. Bill shares some new screens showing ideas for adding a new location, editing location name, and adding a photo. Marc offers up some EXCELLENT ideas on how to greatly simplify the UI.
Bill also shares his first stab at the code to get your current location, center a map view on that location, and allow you to add an annotation to the map.
- Show Notes
- Bill’s App Screen Shots
- iTunes 12.2 requires RCD
- Upgrade
- iOS Dev Weekly
- iOS Dev Tools
- Dribbble
- pttrns
- Core Data (2nd edition) by Marcus Zarra
- The Core Data Stack in Swift
- My Core Data Stack
- Picks
- Yonder
- AltConf Videos
- Building in Success with Marker-First Development by Charles Perry
- Design Is Not for Designers by Joe Cieplinski
- Planetary Engineering by Mike Lee
- How to Get Your App Noticed by the Media by Peter Cohen
- Legal Survival Kit by David Sparks
- Localization! Because 영어 n’est pas 足够 por todo el mundo by Laura Savino
Lucky number 13 starts with a follow up on UI design and why you may NOT want to roll your own. The boys then discuss the newly released Apple Music, Beats 1 and wax nostalgic about The Chronic.
Bill unveils his homework, the first two screens of his photo location app, and Marc provides some excellent feedback on design and things to think about moving forward.
- Show Notes
- Apple Music
- Beats 1
- Teehan+Lax - CLOSED!
- Another Sketch Repo on GitHub
- GLYPHISH
- Cloud Kit
- Bills App - Sketch 3 Images
- Picks
- Via Alpina
- Chris Eidhof
- objc.io
- Genius
- Via Alpina
The fellas try to be friends via Apple Watch, but Bill is maxed out on friends and now has to decide which favorite contact gets the boot. They then talk third party watch apps, share doodles, and various “how do you use this feature…” questions.
The technical talk is all about UI design this week. Bill shares his thoughts on the Sketch 3 course on Treehouse. The discussion hits on Photoshop comparison to Sketch 3, using mockups to sort out app features, and UI design principals.
Marc clears up some of Bill’s questions regarding how assets for various size screens are applied, Asset Catalogs, and how Xcode deals with these groups of assets. He also hits on some of the Accessibility features and how rolling your own UI can hinder the usage of an app for VoiceOver users.
Bill has a need for deliverables and assigns himself some homework for next week.
- Show Notes
- Treehouse
- Bohemian Coding
- Sketch Toolbox
- Marc’s Sketch Preview
- SketchSquares
- GitHub Sketch Plugin Repo
- Picks
- American Sign Museum
- Bills Photos
- Ghostery
- American Sign Museum
It’s all about WWDC this week (or last week). Marc and Bill discuss the highlights of the WWDC Keynote and the Developer State of the Union, touching on OS X, iOS, iPad, Xcode, Swift 2, and more. Marc shares some of his experiences at AltConf.
- Show Notes
- WWDC 2015
- iOS URL Scheme Changes
- Guard Clauses
- AltConf
- Peter Cohen
- WWDC Parties
- Parties App
- Picks
- Hours
- Release Notes Conference
- Other Dub Dub Cov
- ATP
- Clockwise
- Connected
- Core Intuition
- Debug
- Design Details
- Developing Perspective
- Exponent
- Apple Music and Apple’s Focus
- Mobile Couch
- Release Notes
- Rocket
- The Rebound
- The Talk Show
- Transcript by iMore
- Topical
- Upgrade
The boys discuss researching apps that are similar to Bill’s app idea. Marc offers up some excellent advice on data scraping, finding similar apps, and searching based on top grossing apps. The talk gets more technical on topics such as Top Down v. Bottom Up design approaches.
Marc takes us on a deep dive into UIDocument and shares what it can and cannot do in
relation to his current project and how that relates to Design vs. Architecture.
- Show Notes
- iTunes Charts - Top Paid
- AppShopper
- Apple Sample Code
- Start-to-Finish: Building an App by David Smith
- UIDocument
- UIManagedDocument
- Document-Based Programming Guide
- Lister
- Turing test
- Picks
- Ex Machina
- Catfish The TV Show
Bill is ready to start working on a real app, but is afraid to look at the competition for fear of “stealing” ideas. The guys discuss where to start, whether or not to look at similar apps before starting, tools such as Sketch 3 and App Icon Template, and the design process in general.
Marc curates a list of books from his personal library covering iOS, GIT, refactoring, and development in general.
- Show Notes
- Downcast
- Overcast
- Castro
- CRC
- Sketch
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- App Icon Template - Michael Flarup
- Git Started With Github - Udemy Course
- iOS Core Animation: Advanced Techniques by Nick Lockwood
- Core Data by Marcus Zarra (direct)
- Effective Objective-C 2.0 by Matt Galloway
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (direct)
- YAGNI: You aren’t gonna need it
- The Pragmatic Bookshelf
- Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz
- Refactoring by Martin Fowler
- Pragmatic Guide to Git by Travis Swicegood (direct)
- Pro Git by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub
- xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros
- Test-Driven Development with Kent Beck
- Picks
- App Camp for Girls Fundraiser
- Amazon Fire TV Remote Control App
- T-Mobile Complete SIM Kit
“Coding is HARD.” Bill shares his frustrations learning Swift, the nuances of debugging in Xcode, and what was covered in the animation modules of his Udemy course. Marc dives even deeper into Apple Watch, the release of Watch OS 1.0.1, Apple Pay, and discusses the cost of changing an app’s flow.
- Show Notes
- Rubber Duck Problem Solving
- Key-Value Coding Programming Guide
- View an animated GIF’s frames
- Animating Views with Block Objects
- Apple Watch OS 1.0.1
- Apple Beta Software Program
- Apple Watch Calibration Data
- Off by One Half
- Brazil is Big
- Picks
- 8 Ball Pool
- PCalc
This installment of The Initiative begins with some follow up on “swipe to delete” in
regards to UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource. Marc points out that WKWebView
is unable to load local HTML files.
Bill discusses the latest app he has created as part of the Udemy course; a “What’s The Weather?”
app that takes a city name and parses the HTML from weather-forecast.com to display a blurb.
The guys discuss NSString and its many uses and Marc reveals that he cheats by using Foundation classes.
Marc shares more insights on the Apple Watch which includes play controls for the native Now Playing app vs 3rd party, watch packaging, differences in bands between the 38mm and 42mm models, as well as location of complications and how they complicate things.
- Show Notes
- WKWebView bug
- Six Colors double-tap article
- iOS Core Animation: Advanced Techniques
- Tampon Run Story
- Girls Who Code
- App Camp for Girls
- Picks
- Tampon Run
- App Camp Quiz Compendium
In this episode Bill reveals that he has not written any code this week. Marc and Bill discuss how to access web content via Swift, the pitfalls of synchronous vs asynchronous, and how to avoid doing noob shit.
Marc has figured out why his app is getting rejected and points a finger at receipt validation with the candle stick in the 3rd party library. Marc preaches the gospel of testing, testing, and more testing. Marc talks about his new Apple Watch! He talks about the home screen, Glances, other UI features, and some of the bugginess he has witnessed. Bill back burners his Apple Watch Fartbox idea.
Bill lures Marc off topic and they discuss OmniFocus, but Marc recovers quickly. Nice focus man! The episode wraps up discussing Marc’s experiences with the Watch and the Picks of the week.
- Show Notes
- David Smith article on startup time for watches
- fastlane
- OmniFocus
- One Bus Away
- Dark Sky
- Overcast
- Picks
- Black Jack Strategy Trainer - flashcards for gamblers!
- Receigen
Bill creates his first “realish” app, a “To Do List”. This is the first app with multiple view controllers and seems like something that could actually be used. He buys the Apple Watch developer class on Udemy, but he has not yet bought a watch.
Marc talks about his continued App Store shenanigans, resubmitted with new icon, in review again, rejected again in record time! He also talks C programming, Structs, and Tuples in Swift
- Show Notes
- Greyhound Slo Mo
- Udemy Apple Watch Class
- Lynda.com
- Picks
- TRRS to TRS converter
- Greyhounds - Accumulator
Bill talks about table views, persisting data with NSUserDefaults, and segues.
Marc talks about the need to do some proof of concept coding prior to jumping into a new
project and bestows wisdom related to audio markers and Cue Sheets.
Marc discusses receipt validation and his ongoing interactions with the App Store, as well as his app being rejected for the second time.
The guys also discuss Apple’s WWDC and the odds of getting good Chinese food in Chinatown.
Marc rants about Marvel’s subscription service and sync issues.
- Show Notes
- Apple WWDC
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Marvel Comics Unlimited
- Dead Pool
- Picks
- Clapton’s Choice Guitar Strings
- Daredevil
Bill creates a stop watch app and finds the Udemy course becoming more challenging.
Marc explains selectors in Swift vs Objective C, the pitfalls of NSTimer and sending
and app to the background. Marc addresses the dangers of killing your apps in iOS
and reopening each time.
Bill talks about CaSe SeNsItIvItY and the less than helpful error messages from Xcode.
Marc shares his continuing adventures with the App Store and developing for the Apple Watch.
- Show Notes
- IRCHA
- Richard Barrow
- Picks
- KiiToys Quadcopter
- Rectify
In this episode Bill finds himself infinitely looping. Topics include more talk about the Xcode interface and autolayout, using Google to find stuff on Stackoverflow vs the native search, and Marc uses the Pythagorean theorem!
Marc discusses his first rejection from the App Store.
- Picks
- Polaris Slingshot
- Lore Podcast
The pilot episode of The Initiative lays some foundation: who are they?, what do they do?, and why this show? Marc and Bill discuss their backgrounds in the IT world and discuss how the show came together.
Bill talks about the Udemy iOS class, what has been covered thus far, and shares his wife’s enthusiasm for his first iOS app.
Marc talks about the Xcode interface, autolayout, and designing UI for varying devices.
- Show Notes
- Big Nerd Ranch books
- Pragmatic Programmers
- Apple Documentation
- Ray Wenderlich
- iTunes U Stanford class
- Udemy course
- Picks
- XBMC / Kodi
- The Jinx