Today I received a sizable update for the alpha of TextMate 2 which I use as my mainline programming editor. The move from build 9495 to build 9503 (today’s) took a few months, but it looks like there were a sizable number of nice little changes.
Go ahead and click the above link to see a list of the changes pushed. Good to see development continue.
It is usually a good idea to have a plan, of sorts, in place when you head out to try to do something. Learning iOS development shouldn’t be any different.
So here is my current roadmap-wish thing that I’m probably not going to stick to and probably won’t help me one bit … but I’m going to put this out here anyway in the vain hope that maybe having it published, even here, will help me stick to things more.
The the two on the list are really part of the same thing and I am hoping the update will be out before I get there. One thing missing, and I’ll probably add it to the end, is a good Objective-C book that I want to look at.
Everything I am going to work with needs to be available on at least the iPad and the Mac in electronic form (and they all are), and they follow (somewhat) a progression from C to iOS app. I’m hoping to build my first app after or during item two and then continue from there into more dangerous (and fun) water.
We’ll see what happens, but right now, I need to dig into C.
Time to dig into the past again … something I have been hoping to do but never jumped in and actually accomplish.
I’ll let you, the reader, search through the archives to find my failed attempts at learning iOS development/programming along with any number of other technologies. It is really a running joke in my own mind by now that I can’t follow-through with anything in this realm. I haven’t launched any products (web or otherwise) and haven’t put anything up on the App Store either.
I’m back at it again, however, and I hope I can get something onto the App Store this time (no matter how small it might be). This time I have Learning iOS Development from Addison Wesley to work through along with my prior work in iOS 5/6 to get me through this and to the next level.
Apple has pushed the platform ahead quite a bit with iOS 7 and there is a lot to learn. I’ve been lucky enough to watch the iOS 7 Tech Talks along with some of the WWDC 2013 sessions as well. It has worked not so much to give me an overview of the changes (which it has), but to get me pumped up and excited about development and the platform as a whole.
I’m shifting my focus a little bit to some small agricultural apps to start (I hope). There are many “paper only” tasks on the farm right now and I want to be able to capture those in some useful ways along with eliminating the need to write so often for things which really are just numbers.
I’ll hopefully have some more information that in the future as I continue to try to work out the specifics, but it will piggyback on the new farm entity we created (more on Martens Family Farm in the future, obviously) and the primary use will be small-to-medium farms and helping them get the most out of their work.
I hope.
Apple released a new ad for Christmas.
http://youtu.be/ImlmVqH_5HM
I really like it. Ben Thompson has thoughts which echo my own (for the most part).
Apple has had some hits and misses recently with their advertising, but most of their recent work has been really understated and I think of very high quality.
For advertising, that is.
When originally released, I did not use Siri all that much besides checking to see what would be thrown back at me when I asked a strange question … or to see if she can understand my boys better than I can.
However, something changes about two months ago and now I use Siri every day, multiple time a day, and I expect her to work every time. That’s a big change for me as I always expected Siri to get it wrong in the past.
I’m not a power user by any means, but the things Siri allows me to do quickly and easily make her an invaluable resource.
Here is how I use Siri:
I also make heavy use of the dictation feature of iOS while I am holding my newest son. However, a good portion of my day is made easier by allowing me to just dictate to Siri the above things and then let the algorithms take care of the rest.