isaiah’s web log

Xcode, build numbers, and git. A simple solution in three steps.

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:50:00 -0500

Step 1: Add a Build phase Pre-action script.

Open up the scheme editor, expand the Build phase, and select the Pre-actions step. Add the following shell script. You’ll want to copy and paste this part to get all the quotes correct.


cd "${PROJECT_DIR}"
rm -f "${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/build_number"
echo "#define __GITBUILDNUMBER__ `git log --pretty=format:'' | wc -l | sed -e 's/ *//g'`" > "${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/build_number"

This will add a file to your built products folder whenever a build is about to run and it will have a simple C Preprocessor define with a build number extracted from the git log.

Step 2: Enable the Preprocessor

In your target build settings, enable the preprocessor for the Info.plist file.

Then set the preprocessor prefix file to build_number file.

Step 3: Add it to your Info.Plist file

In the Info.plist add the build number to the Bundle version line.

Some of my favorite things

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:05:32 -0500

I’ve been using iOS 6 since the announcement last June and an iPhone 5 for a few days. None of the changes have been drastic or revolutionary. But the sum total of both the new OS and the new phone is somehow more than the sum of its parts. Obviously, a lot of press has been given to the big new features, but less ink has been given to some of the smaller features. Some of these, for me at least, have been a big deal. These are my three favorite:

Panorama Taking a panorama is pretty cool. I’ve had a panorama app for quite a while, so it’s not foreign at all. But building it into the OS has made people start using it quite a bit more. So has foregoing 3D viewing apps for the basic super-wide picture. This means people post it to Twitter and Facebook and use it like any old picture. Panoramas are new or revolutionary, but making them easy to use and easy to share really is.
Screen colors The screen is taller and the image is closer to the surface of the glass — those are pretty cool things you notice right away. They also became the new normal for me after about 10 seconds. But the richness of having the full SRGB gamut means vivid colors look amazing. I added a lock screen from David Lanham. Every time I’ve turned on my phone I’ve blown away by the colors and contrast of the screen. Every time. It really is a vast improvement over prior generations.
Speed It’s really fast. No, seriously, I mean it. This was not a minor incremental change. It’s running some complex apps faster than laptops I own. This processor screams. And it’s made me rethink where the boundaries of mobile and desktop will lie in the next few years. What would it mean to have a processor like this in a notebook or desktop machine? Perhaps Xcode on iPad (or something like it) is not as far off as I thought it was yesterday.

It's just a small table.

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:30:00 -0500

Just for fun, I mapped the pixel dimensions of a MS Surface onto the screen of an a new iPad.

For the nerds out there: That’s the surfaces 1366x768 display size bordered in red, inside the iPad’s 2048x1536 display. And I’ve scaled the whole thing down so it more or less fits in a web browser.

Why my iPad is NOT my laptop.

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:48:56 -0500

I’ve read a number of articles recently about using your iPad as your only computer, about all the wonderful text editors for iPad, and all about all the work getting done on iPads.

The problem is that writing, posting to a blog, and reading blogs are some of the tasks that an iPad is perfectly suited to do. So there seems to be no end to the number of writers that can tell us about their iPad productivity. It’s a bit of a self selecting bunch, though.

These articles aren’t very useful to folks who need to do things the iPad is not very well suited to do. And while the iPad is indeed a magical thing, there are still many things it can’t do well.

So, this is my counterpoint to those articles.

Speaking personally, my job revolves around: writing and debugging software, manipulating production graphics design, and supporting customers. I’ve tried to do all of these tasks on an iPad, and while all are possible, at least in part. There isn’t any task that’s made easier by the iPad. And most are made much more difficult.

Editing Code

There are almost as many text editors as angry bird rip-offs on the App Store. But while many are great for editing Markdown prose, there are just a few that are descent code editors. And, let’s face it, comparing them to BBEdit or TextMate, none rise to that level.

After trying a couple, I changed tack and just went old-school. I used an ssh app to remote log-in to my Mac and used vim to edit code and compile on the command line. In theory, I can do just about everything short of submitting to the App Store from the command line.

I’m a force to be reckoned with when using vi and bash is my friend. Nonetheless, vi and bash are no match for the efficiencies of Xcode’s code-completion, header indexing, and many other Obj-C specific improvements. I love working in vi, but I have to face facts, I work much faster in Xcode. We all switched to IDEs for good reasons.

Graphics Design

While there are a number of good iOS tools for manipulating photos and a few for creating design from scratch, there is no rival to CS5 or CS6 on iOS. That may be a high hurdle to clear, but even if we give iOS a handicap and pose the question, “Is there any single design task that’s more efficient on iOS?” I think the answer is still no, but I’m optimistic that this is temporary.

Email Support

The last one is a bit more debatable. I suspect there are some that can do email support from an iPad. For me, the challenge is task-switching. My email support requires bouncing between an email app, several tabs in a web browser (support queue, customer database, paypal, etc.), and the customers file/app/screenshot/website. Even with iOS 5 4-finger gestures, and dropbox on my side, I find switching between more than a couple modal tasks in iOS to be painful at best. And when it also involves a few tabs in Mobile Safari, and it’s seeming random cache flushing behavior, my frustration reaches critical mass.

A MacBook Air may not have nearly the pixel count of an iPad 3, the battery will not last half as long, and there is no LTE. But what it lacks in hardware it makes up software that does far more and does it far more efficiently and the ability to multitask with grace and ease.

I don’t think this situation is permanent. For now, though, the iPad remains a very nice web browser, book reader, and doodle pad. That is, when I can pry it away from other family members, who think it’s a great portable Wii.

My LTE Chowder

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:12:00 -0500

Streaming data eats through data plan. News at 11.

The WSJ ran a story on how users are surprised that an LTE iPad can eat through their data plan quickly. Dalrymple poked fun at it, and Gruber chimed in, and the Mac community had a good laugh. I laughed too.

But, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the Mac community is dead wrong here. I know that Gruber and Dalrymple aren’t often wrong and I’ll probably have to eat my hat, but I’m going to bet that I’ll stay hungry.

Stupid n00bs need to learn

Laughing at LTE neophytes feels very familiar. I laughed when people clicked on spam emails because they were ignorant of spam. Then spam got tricky enough to trick me. I laughed when only n00bs got viruses because they were ignorant of how to stay away from them. Then viruses got good and I got infected. Laughing at ignorance is funny right up until things get complicated and you become the ignorant one. Then it’s not so funny anymore.

Abundance

Mobile wireless data services have, at least in recent years, provided an abundance of data. You buy a service capped at some large limit, 5GB per month here in the states, and that’s plenty for the vast majority of users. Even as a geek I’ve only come close to the 5GB limit a couple times. I’ve never gone over it. The reason is that 3G data is slow. Watching streaming services like Netflix and Hulu on 3G is painful at best. This isn’t to say that people don’t ever use up their 5GB. Some heavy users surely do. And many folks probably hit it once in a blue moon. But for the vast majority of users it’s always plenty.

Scarcity

Now with LTE, we suddenly have a big fat pipe to to empty our data plan quickly. And a beautiful iPad to view the data on, just in case we needed the extra motivation. Suddenly, that 5GB of pre-purchased data isn’t quite as limitless as it seemed last month. Worse, each extra 1GB of data is going to cost you about $10.

What’s the big deal

Is this wrong? No. RF bandwidth is costly and scarce. Carriers have to pay for that bandwidth and the equipment to use it. The carriers must charge us for using it or lose money. As much as I like to gripe about the carriers, I don’t want them to go out of business or stop innovating.

The big deal is that for the past 5 years wireless data has been marketed as practically unlimited. The LTE iPad changes that. LTE’s speed means that you can blow through your monthly allotment in an afternoon of YouTube videos or a road trip streaming kids videos to the back seat. It’s not just that you can use up your data plan, it’s that it’s become easy.

An analogy

For the past few years we’ve been driving a Smart car to run our few errands. The 5 gallons of gas we pre-paid for was plenty to get things done. Heck there was gas left in the tank on most months! Now, iPad 3 owners have traded in their Smart car for a Hummer. They can finally tow their boat while transporting most of the baseball team. It has so many more uses! But that 5 gallons of gas sure does go fast. And it doesn’t help that gas is $10 gallon and you can only buy it from one gas station. All of a sudden that Hummer isn’t so useful.

Claim chowder

Just so it’s clear, here’s my claim, all prepped and ready for chowder: I think a whole bunch of novice users are going to blow through their limits in the next two months. I think it’s going to be so many that either Apple or the carriers will have to respond in some public way shortly thereafter. I think this will take about two months to brew, another for people to get the bill and freak out, and bit more for the response. If it doesn’t happen by July, I’m wrong. I don’t think this will adversely affect iPad sales in any measurable way. I think the result of this will depend greatly on the response — but I’m not making any bets about what that might be.

Warning YMMV

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:24:24 -0500

I’ve tried the suggestion to treat warnings as errors, but I’ve never liked it. I have two reasons:

I like to use the #warning do something important here pragma when I’m doing the initial scaffolding for a bunch of new classes. It’s my in-code to do list, better than the old-and-busted FIXME comment because it shows up in every build.
If you can check-in code with warnings and still sleep at night, you might want to think about a new profession. And if you can ship code with warnings in it, then you seriously need to get your head checked.

In other words, it’s overly pedantic during the early stages of development, and completely superfluous during the final stages. Warnings are warnings, errors are errors, they’re different, and I’m OK with that.

The value of a tweet

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:13:30 -0500

I was walking around in downtown Austin today not far from SXSW. As I walked up 5th I noticed a bunch of people eating ice cream sandwiches. And oh how I love ice cream smashed between two cookies. I’m serious, resistance is futile.

So I finally make it up to 5th and Colorado. There’s a little trailer parked in a side lot and a big line of people are there buying ice cream. Obviously I have to go investigate.

As I get closer I’m approached by a young woman who informs me that the ice cream is free if I only tweet about their new social-media-movie-music-service-startup-thing. I was polite and told her that I really wasn’t down with that. Thanks anyway, turn the other way. She asks again, so I say that I don’t feel like accosting my friends with an ad, but thanks anyway, turn around and look at my phone. She persists and now I’m starting to get a bit miffed, so I firmly decline and tell her that the cost of alienating a bunch of my friends isn’t even close to the price of an ice cream. Anyway, I’ve got a fiver burning a hole in my pocket, but thanks anyway, step away from the crazy woman.

By this time I’ve made it to the front of the line, I select my sandwich and ask how much. The guy inside the trailer say, “we’re not taking money today, just tweets.”

I’m not sure what I said then, I think I just kind of blacked out from the craziness of it all and wandered off mumbling profanities to myself. Or maybe I yelled at the dude, I seriously don’t know.

What I do know is that I am so jonesing for an ice cream sandwich right now.

O Captain! my Captain!

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:54:59 -0600

Usually the day before an Apple keynote I’d be excitedly reading the rumor sites and trading tweets with other Apple geeks about what might be coming, the inevitable line to buy it, and placing my bet on whether there will be one more thing this time. But today, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that Steve won’t be here to deliver the news. How ironic, now that Apple is finally at the top of its game.

Walt Whitman’s poem, originally written about Lincoln I believe, seems apropos today.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

— Walt Whitman

Writing iOS code is like walking on the moon. It seems like it should be about the same as what...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:57:13 -0600

Writing iOS code is like walking on the moon. It seems like it should be about the same as what you’re used to, but when you get to actually doing it you realize that barely any part of the process is familiar. And there’s a lot of hopping and flailing around.

Different. Just like me.

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:16:36 -0600

When I was a kid, I liked to sort my candy by color. I’m not OCD or anything, but I’m using “like” in a strong way here, as in: “I like to eat every day.”

I know this is pretty weird, but I’m over 40 now and I don’t show any sings of changing. I’m OK with weird now. When I was growing up I didn’t know anyone else who did this: no family members, no friends, no one. I was just different.

Then along come my two boys and without me ever introducing them to the many and varied joys of well sorted candy (I try to keep my weird as hidden as I can), they just spontaneously started doing it too.

Now I don’t feel so weird anymore. There are always these two other awesome people who are different exactly like I am.

Brains!

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:15:14 -0600

Core Animation is a lot like a zombie. I keep thinking I’ve beat it, that I’ve won. That maybe this time I’ve hacked off enough limbs and chopped it up enough that it’ll stay down.

Then it gets up, puts itself together and comes back for more of my brains.

An honest question.

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:23:04 -0600

Kiwi

Fireballed: Yes!
New York Times: Yes!
Website traffic: OMG YES!
Sales: Not so much.

Stacks

Fireballed: No way.
New York Times: For a plugin? Are you kidding?
Website traffic: Not bad.
Sales: Great!

I know that Web Design and Social Networking are very different markets with different sorts of users, but I’m still amazed by how stark the contrast is.

What is the magic at work here?

Cooked Bird

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:06:01 -0600

Path and Instagram have shown that the social app war is far from over. The blind spot of the successful social web platforms like Twitter and Facebook appears their late to the game, lackluster iOS experience. Even with the iPad 3 due out in a few months the iOS Facebook UI has only recently become tolerable.

The just released, new-new-new Twitter, with the delivered-upon promise of consistency, is a good indication of how blind they are to iOS. Gruber nails it, as usual with a scathing review of their iOS app.

I have no doubt that a well designed, well executed, iOS only social network that implemented the original Twitter social model (one-way connection as apposed to two-way) could be successful in spite of Twitter’s dominance. I don’t think these upstarts will unseat the giants immediately, but they have shown that there’s more room at the social app dinning table. I hope someone pulls up a chair soon, Twitter seems a bit overdone now.

Stacks of Stacks: Stacks 2 Public Beta

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:05:05 -0600

Stacks of Stacks: Stacks 2 Public Beta:

yourhead-stacks:

Today we’re releasing the Stacks 2 Public Beta. And there’s so much great new stuff, I hardly know which things I should tell you about first.

Over a year in the making, this new version of Stacks has all the simple, easy-to-use layout control that you love and supports all those great…

One to one.

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:27:52 -0600

Way back in the 80s, right after Apple had introduced the world to the graphical user interface all of the other PC companies scrambled to add windows and mice to their machines. For years when you sat down at an early Windows machine you saw this: you move the mouse and a bit later the pointer on the screen moved. As machines got faster the lag went away, until eventually it was gone.

But the magic thing about the Mac was that they had practically zero latency on lesser hardware from day 1. And when I say practically zero I mean that there was no perception that you were controlling a mouse on your desk. It was a one to one, hand to pointer, as if the pointer was directly connected to your hand. It was magic.

Apple put the human interaction first. The mouse and its movement were built into the hardware and software at the lowest levels. The Apple guys knew that if the mouse seemed to lag behind the user’s actions, even for just a split second, the magic was broken.

Fast forward to today. The Kindle fire reviews are pouring in and it looks like a great little device. Amazon certainly has a clear answer to the iTunes Store/App Store. But in watching the videos its clear that it’s still Android underneath. Scrolling around in the browser looks more like a gesture than a one to one interaction. The user swipes, and a moment later the content moves. Just like those Windows 1 machines, you feel as though you’re interacting with the device, rather than interacting with the content on the screen. There’s no one to one, and no magic.

Sandboxing in Practice

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:04:00 -0500

Lots is being written about Apple’s new sandboxing requirements: Is it secure? Is it the best way? Is it too soon? All good questions. It’s good that someone’s thinking about that stuff. A bit theoretical for my needs, though.

I just need to know the constraints, so I can build the best app possible within them. That sounds easy enough, right?

Sandboxing makes each app work in a safe restricted space. Safe because nothing dangerous is allowed, except what you specifically request that your app will do. And even then only very limited things.

To help ease the transition, many unsafe things are still possible by requesting “temporary entitlements”. This will allow unsafe things to continue working, but as the name suggests, temporary entitlements will end someday, probably someday soon.

The odd thing is that lots of simple stuff that we expect our Macs to do is only possible with temporary entitlements. What happens when these entitlements are removed? Will they be replaced by something else? If so, what?

OK, we’re getting too theoretical again, let’s reel it in a bit.

What does this mean for YourHead Software? We make Stacks, a plugin for RapidWeaver, which will be sandboxed since it’s in the app store. That means we’ll be running in RapidWeaver’s sandbox.

When you drag a giant image into Stacks it would be nice to store a link to the image rather than copying it into the RapidWeaver file. In the past we’ve done this with a path; or better, a file-URL; or better still, a file reference (called a Bookmark File URL in Cocoa). This is a fast and efficient way to connect with things like your iPhoto library without copying 50MB images around the file system. Obviously, this is something we’d love to keep doing.

The problem is that this is only possible with a temporary entitlement that allows read access to all files. Lucky for me RapidWeaver will probably need this entitlement too, so I’m all set — for a bit.

But then what?

At some point the temporary entitlement will go away. The folks in charge of sandboxing know being able to read all files is dangerous. I guess that makes sense. But really, that’s not what Stacks needs to do. Stacks just needs to read files the user specified a while ago, when they last used Stacks. That doesn’t sound very dangerous to me. It seems like that should be allowed, but will it be? No one is saying.

There are hints from some at Apple that this is being working on. But there are other hints that suggest that some things deemed too dangerous simply won’t be possible, and that’ll just be tough luck for the apps that currently do them: cut the feature or get out.

This feature plays a more prominent role in Stacks 2, which is nearing completion. Should I play it safe and cut it out of Stacks 2? Should I risk it, perhaps enraging users when I have to cut it later? Or is there some other way I should be building this so that it’s inline with the Apple’s goals? What are Apple’s goals?

Practically speaking, there are a lot more questions than answers.

Answers to obvious questions: Yes, I’ve submitted radars about this. Yes I’ve talked with Apple engineers directly about this, even in person. Yes, the engineers working on sandboxing. Great guys, but muzzled by NDA, so not as helpful as I’m sure they’d like to be.

Also: Just wanted to say thanks to the RealMacSoftware guys who do build RapidWeaver. We’ve been figuring this out together since June. Those guys are awesome.

Daily Kos: A Voice From the 1%

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:17:28 -0500

Daily Kos: A Voice From the 1%:

Many of the 53% crowd seem quite proud of their Christian faith. I am not religious myself, but I am reasonably certain that Jesus would not respond to the poor and unemployed with shouts of “Get a job!” I vividly remember what it was like to be poor. To be concise, it sucked, and my heartfelt sympathies automatically go out to anyone who has to experience it, especially children who are blameless for their circumstances. Whenever I meet someone who has not been as lucky as I have been, I recognize how easily our roles could have been reversed by the random forces of fate. And despite my lack of religion, I instinctively think “There but for the grace of God go I.” If only those who actually believe in God would think the same thing more often they might not be so eager to cut my taxes.

How to test an HD TV

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:36:00 -0500

Management: We’re going to need a test for these HD TVs.

Engineering: Sure. No problem. We can do that.

Management: What’ll you need?

Engineering: A poodle, of course.

Management: Check. A poodle. Got it. What else?

Engineering: About 10,000 watts of florescent rainbow lighting. And bubbles. A lot of bubbles. Foam bubbles, a bubble shooter, giant bubbles, all kinds of bubbles.

Management: Check. OK. And?

Engineering: A supercharged, day-glow orange, 1969 Ford Mustang.

Management: No can do. We can only do half the car. Budget cuts, you know.

Engineering: It’ll have to do.

Results: 1080p Test via Laughing Squid

This isn't going to be easy.

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:22:00 -0500

When John and George died I had to stop listening to the Beatles for while each time. Not forever, but for a little while.

The same goes for Kermit, Mr. Rogers, and a handful of other greats. It’s just too painful to think that those childhood fixtures are no longer here making the world a better place.

After a while, it’s OK. And I’m OK. The strong emotions fade to memories. I listen to the Beatles all the time now.

But I have to use this damn computer every day. There’s just no getting around it. This isn’t going to be easy.

Just an upgrade. Just a phone.

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:03:00 -0500

People asked if things would be different when Steve left. It’s finally clear that they are, just not in the way that people would have predicted.

The new gadgets are still amazing, fast, and magical. They’re still miles ahead of their competition. And lots of people like me will still buy them. But for some reason, this time, that’s not enough.

The rest of the world looked on and saw just another solid upgrade to another phone that looked just like the one they already have. Just an upgrade. Just a phone. Just another new gadget they don’t really need.

It’s clear that one thing has changed: Steve took the Reality Distortion Field with him when he left. I’d be upset, but he needs it more than we do, so I guess we’ll all have to make do.