As Spring abruptly changes into Summer here in Seattle, I’ve been reflecting on what we can expect out of Apple and their Summer plans. First, WWDC is coming in just under a month-and-a-half. We know that iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 are virtually guaranteed to be unveiled at the event. Also, word is that engineers are being pulled off the next Mac OS X release to help shore up development of iOS 7.
I would be absolutely shocked to see the iPhone 5S, or any other iPhone (the big one, the cheap one, etc.) make an appearance at WWDC. Whatever iOS-related hardware Apple does have to announce will happen later. But, that’s not to say that WWDC won’t be exciting. First, Jonathan Ive is rumored to be making significant changes to the look and feel of iOS, ostensibly with an eye towards removing the skeumorphic elements that have caused many to label parts of the OS as "tacky".
Second, we may finally see first-class support for out-of-process shared UI components. It was revealed last year that mail compose view controllers in iOS 6 actually run in a separate process. Ideally, this would mean that the somewhat bizarre nature of UIActivityViewControllers we see today, where every developer has to add support for every activity they wish to support, would be supplanted by a centralized service where, for instance, support for saving to Instapaper or opening a link in Google Chrome would only have to be created by the developers of that app.
Third, given the amount of anger, disappointment, and frustration that has been generated towards iCloud syncing over the past few months, it seems inconceivable that Apple would not offer up major improvements to this incredibly important feature. Ideally, I’d love to see Apple acquire a company like Kinvey or StackMob, and offer a cross-platform, web-accessible platform for building syncing apps, but I consider this to be about as likely as Apple opening up their operating systems to clone manufacturers again.
Fourth and finally, I hope that Apple finally adds support for user accounts to the iPad. This seems like a total no-brainer, but that doesn’t mean it’ll actually happen. Time will tell. And, on the subject of a personal wishlist, I also want to see an Apple TV SDK, a retina iPad mini, easier WiFi toggling, and a pony. But, I’m not holding out much hope for any of these.
Until next time,
Aaron
New Commercial Control: KLScrollSelect
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A control that infinitely scrolls up and down at variable speeds inspired by Expedia 3.0 app. The cells can be selected in an identical fashion to a UITableViewCell. Added a category to NSIndexPath to add a column property for this control. This control is dual licensed:
Commercial, Apache 2.0 licensed. |
Control of the Week: APParallaxHeader
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This category makes it super easy to add a parallax header view to your table views. MIT licensed. |
MTZTiltReflectionSlider
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A UISlider subclass mimicking and improving the tilt controlled slider added to Music.app in iOS 6 The knob changes it’s lighting reflection based on the motion of the device. BSD licensed. |
Swipe-to-Select-GridView
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A example project to make a swipe-to-select GridView based on UICollectionView BSD licensed. |
Animated-TableViewCell
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A example project with Animated Cells In this example, I created a customCell1 which demonstrate that how the animated call user to subclass and customize their own tableViewCell. Add everything into the atcContentView in cell, configue it’s height then you can use the defined animated. Animated Cell provides push animation from 4 directions and pop out animation. BSD licensed. |
AVPhotoSlider / SightResight
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Shows how simple it is to use UIScrollViews to create a gallery with zooming etc. This is the code for the app Sight Resight in App Store. CC BY-SA 3.0 licensed. |
Drag Menu
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A drag-to-reveal menu that allow user to drag at somewhere and see a menu show up. The drag menu will stick at the point that user dragged, configurable if you want it’s center to stick at a point. As a League of Legends lover, I made an example to show that how i customize it and make it like the radial ping menu in League of Legends. Thinking to add ping sound and notification for user lol In addition, I also wrote some code to show that how to restrict a pointer view within a radius. It may suitable for making a virtual D-Pad or something. BSD licensed. |
SPLockScreen
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A simple pattern lock control for iOS (similar to the android pattern lock)
MIT licensed. |
LPThreeSplitViewController
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LPThreeSplitViewController is a custom UISplitViewController with three views (MenuView, ListView, DetailView). MenuView and DetailView are always visible, and ListView’s visibility can be toggled. ViewControllers contains UINavigationController so it’s easy to make standard navigation by pushing and popping UIViewControllers. LPThreeSplitViewController is compatible with both ARC and non-ARC projects. MIT licensed. |
NJKWebViewProgress
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NJKWebViewProgress is a progress interface library for UIWebView. Currently, UIWebView don’t have official progress interface. You can implement progress bar for your in-app browser using this module. MIT licensed. |
DZWebBrowser
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A simple web browser controller with toolbar controls (backward, forward, stop loading and export options). Also features loading progress bar and sharing to Twitter and Facebook MIT licensed. |
AFImagePager
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The AFImagePager is a modified version of KIImagePager that uses AFNetworking instead of SDWebImage. This image pager lets you load and swipe through a series of images. It’s easy to implement and provides a nice way of presenting a not-fullscreen-gallery to your user. This control looks a bit like Foursquare’s Image preview on their location pages. MIT licensed. |
Fingertips
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Fingertips is a small library that gives you automatic presentation mode in your iOS app. BSD licensed. |