Weekly Roundup: Apple Acquires Creator of Microsoft Kinect; TV Ambitions Seem Inevitable

Aaron Brethorst, November 30, 2013

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all of you in the United States! It was a slow news week, for the most part, as the United States was on holiday for half the week. But, nevertheless, there were some interesting developments here and there that will be of interest to iOS and OS X developers. Perhaps most interesting was the confirmation that Apple acquired the Israeli startup PrimeSense, perhaps best known for creating the technology behind Microsoft's Kinect. The article (linked to below) not surprisingly mentions that this has something to do with Apple's TV ambitions.

I know I sound like something of a broken record, but between the seemingly unnecessary memory headroom that the A7 affords the newest generation of iPhones and iPads, the game controller support built into iOS 7, persistent rumors about Apple making an entrance into the TV market, Steve Jobs triumphantly declaring that he'd "cracked it", and now this, it seems that Apple is looking to take on Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and—inevitably—every set top box manufacturer. That $70 billion in additional annual revenue won't just appear by itself, after all.

Best,
Aaron


What We're Reading


Control of the Week

ECSlidingViewController 2

ECSlidingViewController 2

ECSlidingViewController is a view controller container that manages a layered interface. The top layer anchors to the left or right side of the container while revealing the layer underneath it. This is most commonly known as the "Side Menu", "Slide Out", "Hamburger Menu/Drawer/Sidebar", etc...

It features support for all screen sizes, all orientations, storyboards, and custom transitions. The animation, interaction, and layout are all customizable. The examples implement a "Fold", "Zoom", and "UIKit Dynamics" type of transitions.

MIT licensed.

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Weekly Roundup

FBGlowLabel

FBGlowLabel

Label UI which supports glow effect

MIT licensed.

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LITabControl

LITabControl

A multi-tab control designed to look and behave like the tab control in Apple's Numbers spreadsheet.

MIT licensed.

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RMStepsController

RMStepsController

This is an iOS control for guiding users through a process step-by-step

MIT licensed.

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SEJSONViewController

SEJSONViewController

Easily browse the contents of a JSON file.

MIT licensed.

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ABMExpandingTableViewCells

ABMExpandingTableViewCells

Expanding table view cell to reveal a toolbar cell under the selected row

MIT licensed.

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EKAlgorithms

EKAlgorithms

EKAlgorithms contains some well known CS algorithms and other stuff. EKAlgorithms is a gradually increasing bunch of algorithms in which some well known CS algorithms, data structures & others are implemented in Objective-C language.

MIT licensed.

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ILTranslucentView

ILTranslucentView

Subclass of UIView that enables native iOS 7 blur effect.

Public Domain licensed.

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QMBParallaxScrollViewController

QMBParallaxScrollViewController

Add a parallax top view to any UIScrollView

MIT licensed.

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ITProgressBar

ITProgressBar

ITProgressBar is a simple iOS 7 style progress bar control.

Apache 2.0 licensed.

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LCNumberInputView

LCNumberInputView

This is a input control that lets you input integers or floats.

  • use Integer and float keboard input control
  • if you use integer , then you can't input a float number.

Required : ARC and iOS 6 or iOS 7

MIT licensed.

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SDSCardsFireProgress

SDSCardsFireProgress

A progress indicator inspired by AppsFire progress animation. That is:

  • 3 "cards" evenly spaced around a half-circle;
  • at each step in your progress, the set of card will rotate around the circle;
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Have a look at the demo to see it in action!

MIT licensed.

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MDSearchBarController

MDSearchBarController

A custom search controller.

MIT licensed.

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JGScrollableTableViewCell

JGScrollableTableViewCell

JGScrollableTableViewCell is a simple and easy to use UITableViewCell subclass with a scrollable content view that exposes an accessory view when scrolled. The behavior is inspired by the iOS 7 mail app. Compatibility: iOS 5+

MIT licensed.

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PBYouTubeVideoViewController

PBYouTubeVideoViewController

A view controller that embeds the YouTube iframe HTML 5 player.

MIT licensed.

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ViewDeckSegues

ViewDeckSegues

Set of segues to use ViewDeck properly within storyboards.

MIT licensed.

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ALCurrencyLibrary

ALCurrencyLibrary

Simple library to convert a value from a specific currency to another. Contains a list of 162 constants representing the common currencies in the world

MIT licensed.

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FBDigitalFont

FBDigitalFont

This library includes some kind of digital styled fonts (not TTF or something, just CoreGraphics drawing) So, you don't need to worry about redistribution license of font files when you release your application.

Currently this package provides following styles

  • Bitmap Font
  • LCD Font
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And all of them also supports glowing effect in the same way as FBGlowLabel.

MIT licensed.

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PermissiveResearch

PermissiveResearch

An iOS search engine that allows mistakes in the searched element.

MIT licensed.

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DBCompass

DBCompass

DBCompass helps you to develop iOS apps in which you need to determine the heading of the user's phone (refered to a coordinate) or the distance between the user and a given location.

It offers you a way to track the user's location and heading given by a coordinate or an address.

Really useful for geolocation AR applications.

Apache 2.0 licensed.

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