The iPhone event has come and gone, and now we have a number of fascinating new developments to endlessly conjecture about. What I'm still most curious about, for example, is why Apple decided to make the new A7 chip 64-bit. It's not like the iPhone 5S (s?) has more than 4GB RAM, right? We will eventually have mobile phones that need to address more than 4GB, but why take that plunge now before it's necessary?
Unless, of course, it is necessary in the next 12 months. Like, for example, if Apple wanted to release a beefed-up Apple TV sometime soon that could go head-to-head with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, they'd need to support more than 4GB RAM, plus support for game controllers, and much-improved graphics. Oh wait, they just did.
Of course, we won't really know what—if anything—is coming until it's ready, but some rumors indicate this could be sooner than expected. I've oft-opined that this next generation of video game consoles is likely to be the last with mainstream appeal, and that all Apple needs to do to become the dominant video game console maker is simply choose to become it. I just didn't expect this to happen for a while yet. But, who knows? Maybe kids will beg their parents for the new Apple TV instead of an Xbox or PlayStation this holiday season. We shall see.
Until next time,
Aaron
What We're Reading
- On Using SQLite and FMDB Instead of Core Data
- In Defense of Core Data
- Date parsing performance on iOS (NSDateFormatter vs sqlite) - Jens Alfke one-ups last week's SQLite date formatter performance improvements by extracting SQLite's date parsing code into a discrete library. Win.
- Improving Etsy for iOS with server-based logging
App of the Week: OneBusAway
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An open source real time bus information system, for iPhone, Android, the web, and more. This is a very cool project, and one that I've actually spent a lot of time working on. Check it out: OneBusAway provides access to real-time arrival and schedule information for public transit vehicles operated in Seattle, Atlanta, Tampa, and beyond.
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Control of the Week: MapBox
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An open source alternative to MapKit. BSD licensed. |
Weekly Roundup
nvgallery
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A simple sample for building Flickr-style galleries. MIT licensed. |
ChatSecure
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ChatSecure is a simple multiprotocol IM client for iOS that supports encrypted "Off-the-Record" messaging using Cypherpunks' libotr GPL licensed. |
OpenWatch
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A next generation OpenWatch client for iOS devices. OpenWatch is a global citizen journalism project with the goal of building a more transparent and less corrupt society. This app will allow you to stream video and photos directly to the web! It's the easiest possible way to get your media online. Use this application to record any events you witness, your encounters with the police, border agents, or other authority figures, or to just record anything you find interesting. Your recordings will appear online to be used in public interest investigations and news stories. GPL licensed. |
BCSliderView
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Animatable Slider View for iOS Apache 2.0 licensed. |
iOSValidator
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UITextField Validator for iOS is a rule based validation framework. Apache 2.0 licensed. |
EAN13BarcodeGenerator
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Simple and performant solution to generate EAN13 barcode for iOS applications MIT licensed. |
SCStackViewController
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SCStackViewController is a container controller which allows you to stack other view controllers and build custom transitions between them. MIT licensed. |
GoldRaccoon
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An FTP component for iOS. MIT licensed. |
TestFlightFeedback
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Dropdown replacement for the feedback view controller functionality which was removed from the TestFlight SDK. Apache 2.0 licensed. |
AksDeviceConsole
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An on-device console for easy and quick debugging. MIT licensed. |
UALogger
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UALogger is a simple and lightweight logging tool for iOS and Mac apps. It allows you to customize the log format, customize when to log to the console at runtime, and allows collection of the entire recent console log for your application. It includes the UALogger class and class methods, and a few handy macros. MIT licensed. |
RMSTokenView
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RMSTokenView is a text-field like view that handles tokens as seen in the Mail app. It was inspired and reworked from davbeck's TURecipientBar. MIT licensed. |
RSTMALLCell
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Yet another clone, the target is Tmall (天猫) this time. The latest update contains a cool feature, on the second tab, images on the right of the cell could be moved by finger if not releasing and when finger is releasing the image will go down and then invisible. This repo provides easy to use data object, cell, tableview controller and a sample for doing this. MIT licensed. |