Lori M Olson #OPED—Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
This past Sunday, I organized and hosted a party at a local restaurant for my Dad’s 90th birthday. When I finally managed to extract a list of friends that my parents wanted to invite, I knew I had to start organizing, to keep track of who was invited, how to contact them, and who had RSVP’d.
I pulled up Numbers, thinking I’d just start a blank spreadsheet, and lo and behold, I found the “Party Planner” template. It was great. Not only was I able to track all the invitees, but after I got all the per-head $$ from the restaurant, I was able to keep track, as each person responded, of how much it was all going to cost.
It made me think again about App Templates. These templates exist for a reason. If you have an immediate need for an app that falls into a category for which you can use a template…why the hell wouldn’t you? Sure, you can craft your own special artisanal design, but that’s mostly just hubris. You’ll spend time and money creating a custom thing, when using a template would cost you a fraction of the $$, and would probably halve your development time to create something that is probably better looking than you could come up with on your own anyway. Think carefully next time you start a project. Is there a template that would work? — WNDXlori
#GOTW — Gem of the Week
It occurred to us not everyone will have noticed we have a new RubyMotion Community Github organization, and we are moving some of the popular gems into it. This will save us from that scary feeling when a community member, who owns a bunch of gems, suddenly decides to trek to the South Pole.
#COMM — Community
A couple of items of interest this week:
First, ever had a software update’s reputation proceed it and decide you can live without it? Paul Haddad felt that way about Safari 13.0.1. Jeff Johnson came up with a neat, one line fix. An honourable mention to Phillip Upton for his contribution to the thread. Thanks, Paul and Phillip.
In other news, Brent Simmons had his own #TWIL moment when he figured out the super easy way of determining if the System Integrity Protection (SIP) is running. Thanks, Brent.
#AHOTW — App Highlight of the Week
YAR* you have a chance to expose your app—or an app you really like—to the countless multitude that is the #RMW audience. Just hit replay and let us know the link and we’ll feature it in a future issue.
*yet another reminder
#DRGTK — DragonRuby Game Toolkit
In answering a question on itch.io, we see how far Sprites have evolved since the initial DRGTK release. Wow!
#DRSH — Dragon Riders Slack Highlights
Here’s official word from Amir that RubyMotion 6.3 was released this week. Be the first kid on the block to have it. The only thing left to say is if you haven’t joined the Dragon Riders Slack yet, you’re really missing out. Seriously.
#ANDROID — Nothin’ but…
We just love a good example implementation…to wit, Google has produced some beautiful app design case studies in Material Design. What we still needed, though, was an actual implementation in code for one of these. Lin Min Phyo answers the bell with Rally, an absolutely gorgeous personal finance app. When was the last time you heard gorgeous and personal finance app in the same sentence? (unrelated side note: where did you get all that Lego?)
#TWIL — This Week I Learned
And finally…bet you didn’t know that there is a built-in screen recorder on your iPhone. Our thanks to Robin Heinze for this really handy Pro-Tip.
That’s a Wrap!
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Until next time…go forth and (con)template.
STOP THE PRESSES!
Late breaking news from our friends over at DragonRuby: they have a new partner/CTO to add to the triumvirate (quadrumvirate doesn’t quite trip off the tongue, does it?) and have other changes to announce. Sounds like an interesting development!