Issue 17

27 March 2019

by Lori M Olson

#OPED

Perfection is the enemy of shipped.

I seriously wish that I could roll back time to when I first started working on my first iOS app, WIMBY, and somehow know all the things that I now know about mobile application development. Of course, some of the best practices of today weren’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye back then. But still…I would have done SO many things differently.

First and foremost…instead of just picking a random project that interested me, I would have spent some time thinking about the people who would use my app. And why they would use my app. What would their motivation have been? What problem would they be trying to solve?

If I had spent that time, I would have created a different app. Sure, I might eventually have ended up with the app I have today, but my first release, my minimum lovable product, would have been a far simpler app. And I would have finished it sooner. Lots sooner. YEARS sooner.

Argh. Hindsight IS 20/20. I know better now. Don’t try for perfection. Make an app with ONE useful feature. Ship it. Repeat. That’s the recipe for success. — wndxlori

#FITS: Featured in the School

We can’t believe it’s less than two weeks before the next session of 6 Pack Apps starts: we launch that on April 9th, to be precise. For the time being, here’s the next of the most commonly asked questions from last fall’s session.

“What if I launch on The App Store and no one downloads my app?”

That’s an understandable concern but whatever you do, don’t let it prevent you from launching your dream app on the App Store. The 6 Pack Apps curriculum is ‘full cycle’: your instructor wndxlori has been through it all and can help you avoid a misfire in the first place, or can recommend corrective strategies in the event things don’t go according to plan.

Sound interesting? Consider attending the free, one hour webinar coming up on April 2nd at 11.00 am MDT (17.00 UTC). It introduces the 6 Pack Apps curriculum and philosophy. Spots are limited so reserve yours today and avoid wondering, when you’re 85, “if only…”.

#MSH: Motioneers Slack Highlights

This week’s highlight was triggered by a question from Andy Stechishin regarding the problems he was having setting the autoresizingMask on a CALayer with constants. Our own wndxlori was able to provide a solution: turns out that in cases like this you have to add the Core Animation framework to your project. Unfortunately, the actual name of the framework containing Core Animation is QuartzCore! For more details check out the whole conversation on the Motioneers Slack.

And yes, we just gave you another good reason for joining the Motioneers if you’re not already a member!

#GOTW: Gem of the Week

There are a lot of fans of BubbleWrap’s easy syntax. So much so, there are those like Gant Laborde who make a “sedulous”* effort to have the syntax of his PackingPeanut gem compatible with it. The headline here is that Gant’s gem makes BubbleWrap’s super handy App::Persistence available to Android. For saving basic application settings, this is all you need!

*Yep, we had to look it up, too: “showing dedication and diligence”. You’ll want to keep that one on file when you’re eventually looking for something to rhyme with “incredulous” in your snappy new limerick

#COMM: Community

From an article in the Zeplin Gazette: “With the release of macOS Mojave, Apple introduced a notary service to validate macOS apps that are not distributed through App Store. Although this process is currently optional…Apple announced that Gatekeeper will require software to be notarized in an upcoming release.”

If that sounds even vaguely scary, do not despair. It’s not. The rest of the Zeplin article describes in detail how the process works and how to ‘notarize’ your macOS app so it plays nicely with Gatekeeper. Although it is not RubyMotion specific, it is a series of commandline tools which should be compatible with RubyMotion apps.

Worth a read before that beautiful, pearly white hammer comes down from you-know-who. Begins with an ‘A’.

Also from the #COMM this week, a tweet to Amir about AppsGoneFree. AppsGoneFree, from dubbalubagis, is a Twitter-based service which helps boost your app, but only when it’s—you guessed it—free. Seems like a cool idea. How well does it work, Amir?

#AHOTW: App Highlight of the Week

Last week in #AHOTW we featured Mega Field Trips from Elliott Draper and we’re happy to return to Elliott’s fertile imagination this week.

This time around it’s Jukely which Elliott describes as “an app that makes it easy to go and see great shows, discovering fresh new artists along the way! It combines music discovery and recommendations with being able to purchase tickets directly from the app.”

It currently has a rating of 4.5 stars and 274 ratings on the App Store which we think is pretty impressive.

#TWIL: This Week I Learned

Who knew you could make use of the Trash from the command line? We certainly didn’t. This, from Jason Lengstorf on Twitter: brew install trash ; alias rm=trash. Who knew, indeed.

That’s a Wrap

That’s it for another week. Do you want to be absolutely sure you never miss a future issue of #RMW? You can subscribe here. Also, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for other Newsletter-worthy content between now and then.

‘Til next week…may all your hammers be pearly white.

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