ios

[ios]

It’s the Great Tumblr Bug Hunt: iOS Edition

Help find bugs lurking in the Tumblr iOS app before they get released to the bug-hating public.

Who’s eligible: The first 10,000 people to register. You need to be an iOS user, obviously. And you should use Tumblr every day—because bugs are natural sneaks. You won’t find them if you’re not using the app all the time.

How it works: You’ll get access to each new release about a week before it goes public. When you see a bug, take a screenshot and email it to to ios-beta@tumblr.com with a description of what happened and what you were doing at the time. (Some legal stuff: Any feedback that you send in is completely voluntarily but it will be exclusively owned by Tumblr so we can use it to make Tumblr better—even the mean stuff).

What you should know: You’ll be looking for bugs, which means there are bugs to look for. Don’t register if you’re expecting a bug-free experience. But if you get tired of bugs, you can leave the beta program at any time. Also, even though it’s a beta, it’s still the Tumblr app and the same Tumblr Terms of Service and Privacy Policy applies.

How to register: Join this Google group with your email. In a couple days you’ll get an email from TestFlight with instructions on how to install the beta.

What else you should know: Is in this FAQ.

[ios]

Picks 3 - Making Fun Easier To Discover

This is Picks…

Picks is by far the easiest (and may we brag a little and say slickest) way to keep track of movies, books, places, games, TV shows, music, podcasts, and more on your iPhone.

Starting today we’re helping you discover

Picks isn’t just here to help you keep track of the things you want to do and have done, we’re here to help you find great new things to do. We’ve been collecting trending movies, books, songs, and everything across the internet, to bring it to your iPhone.

Tell Us About Yourself

We want to learn about what you love to do, so you can make the best of the little free time you have. Never again should you waste 2 hours on an awful movie, 3 days on a bad book, or a week on a lame game. That’s time you’re never getting back. Every pick you add is one piece into helping us figure out that puzzle about what you love to do. With those hints we can begin recommending only the best things to watch, play, visit, read, and listen to, for you.

Puck is here to help

Puck is our friend, and he’ll be your guide to Picks should you decide to join us on our quest. Puck is a very social creature. He loves to answer questions you ask on Tumblr, plays all day on on Twitter, and takes selfies on Instagram.

[ios]

[ios]

Suggestions to Improve Using CocoaPods with Private Specs

Speaking of CocoaPods, I’ve been running into some irritations when using CocoaPods with a private specs repo. I jotted down some suggestions in a GitHub issue. I’ll repost them here for good measure. I appreciate any advice you have if you’ve used private specs repos extensively.

Podspec linting for private specs really falls short of an ideal, streamlined experience. There are several areas for improvement:

1) Don’t Require Irrelevant Metadata.

Private specs should not be obligated to provide an open-source license. They should not have to provide both descriptions and summaries (and ideally neither one should be required). Nor should a homepage should be required. These fields should only be required for public specs as they exist solely to aid in discovery by the general public.

2) Remove the HTTPS Requirement for Source URLs.

Private specs should be allowed to use SSH source URLs. As the linting warning reminds us, the enforcement of HTTPS is a matter of hospitality to the general public who might be behind firewalls that disallow SSH. It doesn’t make sense to apply this requirement to private specs. The HTTPS requirement is especially irritating for anyone who has TFA enabled on their GitHub account. To skirt the SSH warning, you have to disable all warnings via the --allow-warnings flag. I should be able to leave all unrelated warnings untouched. Ignoring every warning as a means of ignoring a single warning is suboptimal.

3) Provide Explicit Metadata Options to Indicate that a Podspec is Private

I’d like to be able to workaround issue #1 and #2 (and any other issues that I’ve neglected to mention) by an option like:

s.private = true

When private is present and equals true, this would indicate to the spec linter to skip linting steps that are only appropriate for public specs.

4) Disallow Pushing a Private Spec to the Public Trunk

It is extremely easy to accidentally publish a private spec to the public trunk, and difficult to fix the mistake after it occurs. Any Podpec with s.private = true should not be allowed to be pushed to the public trunk.

5) Allow Podspec to Indicate a Private Specs Repo in Which to Search For a Dependency

In some cases a private specs repo contains a spec with the same name as a spec in the public trunk. If a Podfile has a pod dependency that seems to appear in multiple repositories, running pod install will result in error logs about the duplicate specs. The Podfile of the host app bears the responsibility for making sure that custom specs repos are listed in the correct search order.

It would be preferable for a Podspec to be able to declare that a dependency can only be searched for within a given private spec repo url, e.g:

s.dependency 'AFOAuth2Manager', 'repo: git@github.com:/jaredsinclair/private-specs.git`

This would address cases where a public repo has to be forked into a private spec to fix incompatibilities with other third-party dependencies (long story).

[ios]

Uh.

Disney made a GIF app.

[ios]

Now you can record Keezy, with Keezy!

Bouncing lets you record the sound coming out of Keezy back in to Keezy. In perfect quality. This opens up so many doors for you creatively:

Record yourself playing several tiles in a row, for example, turning several drum sounds into a BEAT.

Pull one part out of a longer sample. Like if you recorded yourself saying, “I’m a doofus”, you could hit play, wait a second, then hit record on a new tile to pick up just the “doofus”. Now you have a “doofus” sample!

 Sing two parts of a harmony and combine them into a single sample.

A few more things:

We improved the AutoTrim algorithm. Should “just work” now.

Playback Worms: When you play a sample that’s longer than half a second, a little worm appears showing you how much longer it’ll go for. A nice feature despite the weird name we just gave it.

Minimum sample length reduced from .125 seconds to .002 seconds. This is ridiculously short. Hold one of these samples to loop it and it just sounds NUTS.

Have fun / send emails to hi@keezy.co / write reviews (we read ‘em all)!!

Love, Team Keezy

[ios]

Happy Birthday Swift!

[ios]

We’re super excited to announce our newest app, Pinpoint, is available now for free on the App Store!

Get it while it’s hot.

You take screenshots. But sometimes you need to mark them up a bit before sharing them with your friends (or enemies). You know: point stuff out, blur out your business, jot down thoughts. Pinpoint’s got you covered.

With Pinpoint you can:

• See all the screenshots you’ve ever taken • Draw arrows and boxes to pinpoint the important parts or the stuff that’s weird • Write text to explain what you’re thinking • Blur out your sensitive info to keep it from prying eyes • Share your finished screenshot masterpiece with literally anyone • Ditch the original screenshot so it’s not clogging up your photo library • Get new colors so that you’re cooler than your friends

That’s it. It’s super simple by design. One thing: mark up your screenshots.

[ios]

#1: UIViewController Initialization in Swift

So, you’re crafting your brand new view controller and BAM! You see this:

Let me try break down how you got here:

Subclasses only inherit their superclass’s initializers if certain conditions are met. If your subclass doesn’t define any designated initializers, it automatically inherits all of its superclass’s designated initializers.

If not though, then it inherits none of them.

You subclassed UIViewController. UIViewController implements NSCoding. NSCoding requires init(coder:) be implemented.

By default UIViewController implements init(coder:) for you, and you don’t need to do a thing.

But now, you defined your own new designated initalizer called init(), so you’ve stopped meeting the conditions for inheriting all of your superclass’s designated initializers, and now have to override, implement and properly call super on init(coder:) all by yourself!

UIVC Init Party Rules

:point_up: define 1, define them all

:v: end of rules

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: lol jk there’s like 100 more

[ios]

I take meds three times a day. My dosing schedule is a bit annoying: take two of them at least an hour before and an hour after food, take one with food. It’s bad enough remembering to pop these at all, but doing so at specific times—forget about it, I’m way too dumb to stick with the program.

...

[ios]

One of the things I’ve been most impressed with at Facebook: GraphQL. It’s going to change the way APIs are done.

[ios]

Kong 1.1 – See all your favorite faces on your wrist

We are excited to be one of the first apps to support GIFs on the Apple Watch. If you’re one of the few to get in on the first Apple Watch shipments, or own an Android Wear watch, Kong is now available for download. Browse your feeds and channels, receive follow, likes and post notifications straight from your wrist. 

Our team has been working hard to get Kong 1.1 out the door and bring you some of the updates you’ve asked us for. Also new in Kong 1.1 for iOS: Selfie Stick Support: Whether you love them or hate them, you can now use both bluetooth and wired selfie sticks with Kong. Share to Facebook Messenger: Having trouble getting the message across to friends on FB? Let your face do the talking, now you can record a GIF selfie and send it easily through Kong. Smarter Notifications: Follow and Home notifications take you straight to your Follower list and Home feed, and you also have the option to follow someone back directly from a Follow notification. Easier Friend Finding: Your friend suggestions are sorted to help you quickly find friends, especially those that recently joined or followed you on Kong. Download Kong now and check out some of our most popular channels: #hahahano, #eyebrowdance and #emjoi. We’re always looking to improve your experience, so feel free to shoot us a note anytime on Twitter or directly on Kong in the #suggestions channel.

[ios]

Yahoo Sports Fantasy App: Get a snapshot of your lineup and smack talk to your league

By Will Lu, Manager Fantasy Sports iOS

Daytime baseball is here and there’s nothing like it.  But when you have a full-time job or are stuck in class, it makes it hard to check on how your fantasy team is doing.  Enter the Yahoo Sports Fantasy App on Apple Watch. With a completely re-imagined look and feel for the Apple Watch, the Yahoo Sports Fantasy App is designed to focus on the heart of the fantasy experience.  With Glances, you can now get a snapshot of your lineup, check injury status, view matchup stats, and see how badly you’re dominating your friends, all within a few seconds. Did you notice that you’re about to crush your old college buddy?  It’s time to talk smack.  Using the Apple Watch dictation feature, you can smack talk with your league without ever having to type a word.  And if they also have the Apple Watch, they’ll receive a notification right to their wrist and realize their demise in real-time.  Finally, the Yahoo Sports Fantasy App on the Apple Watch is the perfect complement to the iPhone app. While viewing any league on the watch you can simultaneously swipe up on your iPhone lock screen to view that particular league in detail. Looks like games are about to start, time to go set your lineup and talk some smack.  Just download the Yahoo Sports Fantasy App for free in the App Store. Play ball!!

[ios]

Big huge update to the iOS app today. Almost too many new features to list. Let’s list them:

New version number: 4.0

New icon: Feels good under your finger.

Create new secondary blogs: Whenever a blog idea strikes.

Submit to submission blogs: If they’re looking for posts, you can send ’em posts. 

Make video posts using a video URL: Your most-requested feature is now a reality. Copy, paste, and you’re done. 

Filter searches by post type: Just looking for photos? We’ll just show you photos. Just looking for chats? Sure. You can do that, too. 

Widget: One-finger access to what’s trending on Tumblr. (Some assembly required. It’s easy: 1. Swipe down from anywhere to open your widget screen; 2. Scroll down the bottom of the “Today” tab; 3. Tap “Edit,” then tap “Trending on Tumblr.” After that, you’re good. Good forever.)

More, more, more: Sticky search bar; Sticky avatars; Better iPad layout; Better GIF loading; Better errors, even. 

That’s not all, but that’s certainly enough for this space. Enjoy.

[ios]

Every Screen of Apple Watch Settings.app

This Flickr album doesn’t include screens not available in the demo units available at the Apple Store, (e.g. Bluetooth), but it’s interesting nonetheless. This one’s for all those folks out there (like me) who have to drive over an hour to get to an Apple Store.

[ios]

Riposte, the App.net App, Permanently Removed from Sale

As part of an agreement reached over an alleged trademark infringement, Riposte (the App.net app I made with Jamin Guy) will be removed from sale on the App Store. We’ll also be taking down the riposteapp.net homepage.1

Even though we haven’t updated it in a while2, it saddens me to see Riposte go away. It may not have been a successful business, but it was a success to us. We had a lot of fun making it, and are grateful to everyone who supported us along the way.

We will keep the push notification servers for Riposte and Whisper running as long as we can — not forever of course. So those of you who still have Riposte and/or Whisper on your devices should be able to continue using them for a long while.

We will take down the app and homepage for Whisper (the private messaging app we made for App.net) as well. ↩

Riposte was a labour of love, lasting as long as it did thanks to the generosity of the App.net Developer Incentive Program. Jamin and I each have children and full-time jobs. There’s just not enough time in a day to take on all the projects we want to do. ↩

[ios]

Apple Watch: the definitive review.

The Apple Watch is Apple’s first entirely-new product in five years. I’ve been wearing it non-stop for just over a week now trying to answer the question: is this worth buying?