stlplaceiPhone app
There was not an easy way to show the number only keypad on iPad. I used to create a custom number input pad like below.
I loosely followed raywenderlich.com custom input tutorial. Email me at minjie Dot xu At gmail Dot com if you need the source code. And please ask nicely.
I used to watch NBA game quite a bit. I noticed in many teams, there are usually a go-to-guy who attempts the last shot, in close game. This is especially true in important games, such as playoff or elimination games. We all know Kobe Bryan and Lebron James are among those. Is there such a role in software development? Is this role becoming less obvious with the pair programming? When I reflect about all the places I worked, I think the answer is yes for the first question. Actually I played that role from time to time.
And again use that basket ball analogy, I think in a truly agile team everyone can be the go-to-guy. Because in that case, basically the opposing team cannot easily defend, which is ideal for the team. On the other hand, the opposing team just needs to figure out how to defend Lebron James, and they will be more likely be successful. At the same time, Mr. James will get frustrated too as teammate cannot step up, and the loss of games.
This is a bit fitting as we are at march madness, the traditional NCAA basketball playoff game season.
For the pretty reports?
About a year ago, I worked for a client for an iOS project. The developer I worked with is very enthusiastic about unit testing, test driven development. I recall he used some tool (lcov, stands for line coverage), and set up the build script such that the unit test and lcov runs frequently. I was also shown the pretty chart created by lcov. All is good. except one day, I found a utility function I wrote was broken in the iPad simulator. Turns out the developer modified the code and added test for that function (a good thing), but at the same time forgot to run the real thing to check it.
Real motivation for unit testing
I think the unit test as another perspective to verify the code works as desired, this is from my own experience. I recall we have regression test suites in the software company I first worked professionally, that was more than 10 years ago! I started with waterfall, slowly transitioned into agile, test driven development. When we found new test cases (from problem report, etc.), we added those to our regression test suites as we see fit. We ran those unit testing suites before checking in code. This does not means the product we are developing is prefect, but it does give me more confidence as we add features or do bug fixes. This is also true in the many JUnit tests I saw/added in many places I worked since then.
More recently, as I saw the “mock” concept in JUnit, while I am not expert on “mocking”. Conceptually I liked this idea, as we don’t want to repeat the same thing in the production code, we add one more perspective. I also recall the famous investor Charlie Munger (Vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway) once said, he used at least two models to value a company/investment. Check and balance.
(Update) Came across this article on the disadvantages of pair programming. Also, saw this launchCodeSTL a while ago.
Recently I cancelled iPad mini $30 per month 3gb data plan from AT&T, note I also have not have phone data plan since the beginning of April of last year, at which time I returned the employer iPhone 4s when I changed job. Now I am without the data plan on 3G, I am formally without the always on data. Some of the work around I have used to get around:
1) Wifi, at work place I usually get free wifi, and I asked the Wifi password at the places I will be for a while, my daughter’s pre-school, her gym class, JCC, the Chinese restaurant I go often, my friend’s house, etc. Most places have free wifi now. The only thing is just ask: the office manager, my friend. Usually they don’t laugh at me 🙂
2) Not all wifi are equal, besides speed, and coverage and reliability is the most visible. Personally, I like the JCC wifi the best, because they are reliable. At one time, I had Nexus 4 phone, it takes a bit work to get connected (Setting, turn Wifi off and back on).
3) GPS. I found out this lately, even without data plan, I can use GPS on my iPad mini, the only thing is before I start, I need the Wifi to set up the destination and the route. After that the navigation is just the same as the dedicated GPS. A small inconvenience. And one reason I still kept my TomTom GPS.
4) Apps’ working without Wifi. I found the iOS support for apps without Wifi varies greatly. I liked the Facebook “Internet connection required” status bar. And I tried to implement something similar in my app when the connection is required.
(Update 03-07-14) Found a solution to a puzzled problem for iPhone 5s on T-mobile pre-paid plan (no data plan). There is no visual voice mail, which is fine. The annoying part is once there is a voice mail, the red dot on the phone icon won’t go away easily. I found how to fix it, basically I turned off cellular data, I turned it on, then off, the red dot will be gone. A small tip.
The golden era is over. Some readers/developers will argue it was over a while ago. I know I know. But this problem was confirmed as I read this article on BusinessInsider: it takes 107 swipes to get to the hottest app in app store.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple is still evolving and innovating on this space, with the new iPhone 5s, motion sensor (FitBit app), iBeacon (for retailers), the only thing is the momentum is definitely slowing. All these changes even Siri is not that impressive in my opinion. I do like Facetime, though, esp. I noticed an article talking about Facetime audio which essentially allow one to call other phone over Wifi fore free. Btw, I noticed the article over Zite.
For me personally, I have created 3 apps, and one (myNestEgg) of the 3 still have decent downloads. The problem there is two folds: 1) I did not spend enough time to work on some features to make the user happy; 2) Not many paying customers. I think I will still put some effort on it in the future, but I won’t put a lot hope there. Need to find something more interesting or scalable. It’s too hard to stand out from a million apps. Or even out of 50 and 100 apps in the category.
Competition
Another sign the iOS app developers has to expand their horizon, noticed the No. 1 iOS tutorial website (ebook producer) is doing the Android tutorial? Actually it’s not the first Android tutorial at RayWenderlich.com, I noticed this very first one here. So technically the new one is second series, but it actually helps confirming the popularity of Android platform.
It has been almost 6 years since iOS SDK first came out (early 2008, source: wikipedia), and the industry is entering a consolidation stage. From my own experience, last year, iOS developers are widely sought after for enterprise app development, and among digital/marketing agencies. But it has a few caveats:
1) Many new developers, some with web development background, have gained experience on app store, and started working for consulting agencies. This trend drives down the hourly rate for iOS developers;
2) From development point of view, some customers realized it’s too costly to develop and maintain native app, and in some cases native apps are not needed. On the other hand, javascript/html5 apps gained some more momentum with the introduction of new frameworks such as AngularJS.
3) The consolidation of iOS/android/mobile custom development firms. Latest example: MartianCraft: its co-founder Jeff Larmache is one of the first iPhone author/developer (his blog here).
In the next series, I will talk about the app store. Got this idea from my own experience and this BI article.
Two social media companies are in news today, Facebook released the new Paper app on iPhone, and Twitter announced the user growth is not as fast as the Wall Street liked. Maybe the 3rd, LinkedIn announced not so spectacular quarter after market today.
I tried Facebook Paper app. To be honest I have been Facebook user for about 5 years, not heavy user in terms of posting news feed or pictures. But I did use Facebook to communicate with a few friends, and did post some of my daughters’ pictures: fewer and fewer as time goes. The main reason for “fewer” is two folds: 1) Fear of privacy, I saw this “tag” feature there and never liked it; 2) Baby grew up. Btw, as I talked about the picture, by now most of us knew about the Facebook “yearbook” feature which automatically puts together some of the uploaded picture, and I saw Google+ was doing the same thing recently.
Back to Facebook Paper app, “slick” is the first word I would describe it. It tries explain things when I first installed it. I am a Zite user, and I only used Flipboard briefly. In terms of the news feature in Paper app, I think they are similar. And I heard one commentator on Bloomberg saying the “twitter of news” feature. But the commentator likes it too. It may have some impact on the competing news media curating services/apps.
About Twitter, personally I always liked Twitter better. I have 3 Twitter accounts (out of 250 million Twitter users). I used it because when I started using Twitter, I found it’s popular among geeks and iOS developers, the hash tag thing. I feel this quarter or near term is just a bump of the road, Twitter basically does a lot news service now. I recall refreshing twitter feed when important events fold. In terms of their business, I liked their integration with Amex (AmericanExpress card).
I will talk about LinkedIn sometime later.
(Update 02-07-2014) Used Facebook Paper couple days now, one annoying feature appears to be the fast flicking of the news feed for each news section. For now I am using google news and Zite for news and geek stuff.
I learned the lesson the hard way. Almost a year ago, I left my former employer, and I had to turn in my iPhone 4s. Being a computer professional, I knew the backup thing, so I backed up the photos to iTunes, both via iCloud and via iTunes to PC. But I forgot one more backup, to the iPhoto on my Mac. The backups on iCloud and iTunes are good, but I can not view the individual photos from there, and eventually I got a new iPhone 5s and got the backup iPhotos to my new iPhone this way. The first thing I did after I receiving my new iPhone is to restore the photos, and backup to iPhoto on my Mac.
I did one more thing, as I learned from my Nexus 4 experience, is turn on auto back up on google+. I paid $20 extra for the additional 10gb space on iCloud (for one year), when the time of renewal comes, I plan to cancel it, as now I will do backup via iPhoto, iTunes and google+.
Personally I felt the management of all these photos on iPhone/iPad is an interesting project. With Apple TV, I did see I play videos on iDevices more, and sometimes even slide show the photo. I did this quite a few times to my young daughter, when I found that’s more fun than the Netflix TV shows 🙂
(Update 02-06-2014) My UP band died. I fully charged it, tried both soft reset and hard reset, as discussed below, but seems could not revive it.
The following was written on Nov. 14, 2013. I have a bit more experience with UP band since then, note Jawbone also came up with new UP 24, which has bluetooth connectivity with the smartphone. Also, Fitbit released the app for iPhone 5s which has the basic pedometer functionalities, I just started using it and so far so good.
Good
Does the job, record walking steps and sleeping time
Bad
Need to reboot the iPad sometimes to get sync
The corrosion, partially my dumb mistake
Odd
The switch from “sleep” to “walk” is automatically most of the time. but not the other way around. Occasionally I saw the UP band flashes (both sleep and walk indicators), or would not sync. There is this soft-reset, and I found turn off iPad (iPhone) and turn it back on solves most sync issue.
I sold it much quickly than I thought (sold right after I posted on Amazon on Nov. 18, 2013), and I did back up photos using 3 approaches.
1) Dropbox;
2) Back up to PC using the backup utility on the Phone;
3) Google+
After using google+ backup on my Nexus 4 for a while, I liked it and decided to give it a try on my iPhone and iPad. I enabled the auto backup feature. There is a limit for each account, I believe. An interesting thing I found out about google+ in the new year, is it creates a slideshow (about one minute) using the photos in google+, for me it’s mostly about my daughter’s activities. This reminds me of Facebook year in review feature (kind like year book). One thing keep in mind is the privacy, if you decide to share it, the default setting it share to public, so use your judgement when you share.