10 July 2014

The rtpi.ie website has access to real-time data for the Galway Bus Éireann transit system. Unfortunately, this data is not officially accessible to developers, and is in a weird, proprietary, JSON-ish format. The aim of this project is to provide a simple API to access this data, returning it in a valid JSON format. It was also a good excuse to finally learn how to use node.js :)

A couple of notes/caveats:

• Google Maps provides this info already, but it doesn't seem to be available in the Directions API right now. - In theory, the code could be modified to service the entire country. I'm not sure of the extent of the RTPI, but it seems to cover commuter services, in addition to the city/town services.

Live demo available at https://galwaybus.herokuapp.com

Source code available on Github. Please feel free to send pull requests!

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11 June 2014

https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/ios-developers-need-to-know-objective-c/

The Swift language lets the compiler do more work for the programmer. This is great — less typing for the programmer, right? — but it means that when you look at a line of code, it won't mean much without a deep understanding of the context in which that line lives. Explicit languages are easier for beginners to understand.

So far, I've found Swift to be a tricky language to grasp from reading code samples alone. However, writing Swift code against frameworks I'm already familiar with through Objective-C, has proven much easier.

Aaron Hillegass literally wrote the book on Objective-C, so he should know.

13 May 2014

As a follow-on from this post, I wanted to link to a few excellent articles that run through my favourite additions to the iOS SDK —the majority of which were added, or vastly improved, in iOS 7.

• Introduction to UIKit Dynamics
• Custom UIViewController Transitions
• Custom Container View Controller Transitions
• Animating Collection Views

Actually, that entire "Animations" issue of objc.io is well worth reading, if you haven't already checked it out.

12 May 2014

https://blog.jaredsinclair.com/post/84237156390/ios-7-squandered-a-year-of-third-party-development-on

I'm frustrated with the current state of affairs on iOS. It's been almost a year since version 7.0 was announced, yet as a developer I feel like a year's worth of work has brought about only superficial changes to the apps I work on and the apps I use…

It's been a frustrating year for iOS devs and Jared Sinclair sums up perfectly my own feelings on the matter. I disagree, however, that the aesthetic changes were "unnecessary"— there's never a good time to perform a UI overhaul. At least with that now out of the way, Apple can focus on making the OS even better. I have high hopes for iOS 8.

7 May 2014

https://github.com/neonichu/BBUDebuggerTuckAway

BBUDebuggerTuckAway - Xcode plugin for auto-hiding the debugger once you start typing in the source code editor.

Awesome! Get it using Alcatraz.

31 March 2014

https://ciechanowski.me/blog/2014/03/05/exposing-nsmutablearray/

Inserting object at index 0 uses the circular buffer magic to put the newly inserted object at the end of the buffer[…] This is fantastic news! It means that __NSArrayM can be processed from either side. You can use __NSArrayM as either stack or queue without any performance hits.

This is a fascinating deep-dive into how NSMutableArray works.

28 March 2014

https://subjc.com/castro-playback-scrubber/

Castro is an exercise in bold restraint. It eschews buttons wherever possible in favour of gestural interactions allowing the screen defer to the content, rather than the controls.

Castro is my go-to app for playing podcasts and I use it literally every day. This article shows the ridiculous amount of thought and hard work that goes into creating just a tiny, but crucial, part of the app.

20 January 2014

https://dancounsell.com/articles/how-to-write-an-app-press-release

Dan Counsell has some great tips on writing a press release for your app. He's even created a press release template on Github to get you started.

17 January 2014

https://daveaddey.com/?p=916

Want to spruce up your iOS app with a non-standard font? Dave Addey explains how, using free Google Fonts.

13 January 2014

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/digital-life/item/35358-most-apps-to-be-considered

Fewer than 1pc of consumer apps will be considered financial successes by their developers, technology analysts at Gartner predicted in a report released today.

While this sentiment does ring true, I had to laugh at the closing paragraph:

Future developments are also seen in the continuing development of HTML5, which Dulaney predicted will change the smartphone market froma restricted one operating system-only ability to a multi-platform model.

HTML5 has been "almost there" for several years now, so you'll have to forgive my skepticism. It's in danger of becoming the new "year of linux on the desktop".