Matt Gemmell

Every so often I come across a simple, elegant site. Since I bitch about the others, some kudos: Matt Gemmell, from aa few years back: https://mattgemmell.com/staying-creative/ Matthew Graybosch https://www.matthewgraybosch.com/starbreaker/ Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5 is a classic. http://diveinto.html5doctor.com Outline is a lifesaver: https://outline.com (Especially for browsers/platforms w/o Reader Mode.) I've also got an entry in the motherlovin' website contest.

Matt Gemmell was quite the prolific developer before he transitioned out of tech into writing: https://mattgemmell.com

Yuck, BTDTBTTS. Satellite latency is eye-stabbing, almost as bad as the utterly worthless Mountain View's Google Wi-Fi. Local internet elsewhere, in random countries, GFL... bring your own or start a service (yeah, a friend made some serious cash putting up a service on some Greek island). Anyone on OSX can feel some pain just by enabling Network Link Conditioner prefpane by creating a profile as follows: Download Bandwidth: 256 Kbps Downlink Packets Dropped: 90% Downlink Delay: 1000 ms Uplink Bandwidth: 256 Kbps Uplink Packets Dropped: 90% Uplink Delay: 1000 ms DNS Delay: 2000 ms Setup instructions: http://mattgemmell.com/network-link-conditioner-in-lion/

This is a great resource. Feels like the next step after Matt Gemmell's post "API Design" (http://mattgemmell.com/2012/05/24/api-design/) where he called APIs "UX for developers".

Here is a list of some: http://speirs.org http://mattgemmell.com http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/ http://nshipster.com http://www.objectivesee.com http://www.fruitstandsoftware.com/blog/ http://ashfurrow.com/blog/ http://www.cimgf.com/ http://www.cocoawithlove.com/ All of them extracted from here: http://ashfurrow.com/blog/blog-resources And some more: http://objectivesea.tumblr.com/ http://soff.es/ And finally, this is not a blog, but a series of videos, and not all the videos are free ($9/month subscription), but I think it's a great resource: http://nsscreencast.com/ Edit: added some urls

I would strongly advice against using these. While these type of toggle switches work great on mobile, they can we really confusing on desktop/mobile web: where does one click to change state, which state is active etc. Matt Gemmell wrote a good post about toggle switches some time ago: http://mattgemmell.com/2011/11/01/on-off-switches/

Matt Gemmel has earned himself a place among the great Apple apologists, too. http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/23/closed-for-business/

I think Matt Gemmell put it really well: http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/ "Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them." I personally think that you need to give it a shot and try to monetize your product but if after some time you find out that this is a harder and thougher nut to crack than you thought - you better rally some bigger force behind you, pivot, sell or just give up. The guy at sparrow decided to sell and this is a very legitimate exit strategy.

Meta: Don't, for the love of human decency, put 45 degree pinstripes behind light-weight text. I sat there waiting for several seconds thinking that some background image would load to spare my bleeding eyes. It never did. Meanwhile: "I didn’t have the heart to ask him what blind person he knew that could sufficiently use a web browser on a touchscreen smartphone." http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html I mean, I don't care how jaded and cynical you are, iOS's accessibility support is amazing for the blind. http://mattgemmell.com/2010/12/19/accessibility-for-iphone-and-ipad-ap…

I am surprised that no one linked the What Have You Tried article by Matt Gemmell. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/ This is how I almost never got my SO topics closed. I state beforehand what I have tried, how certain SO questions may look related but are still not giving me enough knowledge to solve my problem. I do my best to make a convincing argument that I need help and can't make it on my own. A few days later and I get my answer :) (and sometimes I figure it out myself which takes a while) I agree with the HNers that say that someone needs to struggle a bit first. It's necessary to develop the emotional coping skills, because programming can have very frustrating moments. And they can answer "what have you tried?" Beginners need to understand: why would I put more time into solving someone else's problems than the person asking me the question? I notice that a lot of friction comes from that place. Sometimes beginners don't realize it, but I've seen some lazy people as well. When I am on the beginning side I really try to take this into account and value the time of the expert.

My blog and podcast feeds go around these few main interests of mine: software, art, design, music and Apple. Podcasts: Varieties, science, design. * This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ * Radiolab. http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/ * Planet Money. http://www.npr.org/planetmoney * Stuff You Should Know. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ * The Infinite Monkey Cage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w * The Weekly Briefly (Shawn Blanc). http://feedpress.me/weeklybriefly * Actuality (from Quartz). http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/actuality-marketplace-and-quar… * Anticast (for Portuguese speakers out there - the best Brazilian podcast I know). http://www.brainstorm9.com.br/anticast/ * 99% Invisible. http://99percentinvisible.prx.org/ Technology, programming, Apple, etc. * Debug. http://www.imore.com/debug/ * Mac Power Users. http://www.relay.fm/mpu * Accidental Tech Podcast. http://atp.fm/ * Overtired. http://www.esn.fm/overtired/ * The Vergecast. http://www.theverge.com/verge/verge_archives/show?mode=EntryGroup&… * What's Tech (also from The Verge, fun show). http://www.theverge.com/whatstech * Pragmatic. http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic * Iterate. http://www.imore.com/iterate * The Changelog. http://5by5.tv/changelog * Build Podcast (each post is actually a screencast about some technology). http://build-podcast.com/ * The Talk Show With John Gruber. http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow *…

To play devils advocate for a bit: Perhaps it was a "basic" question, but it's also pretty terse. More importantly, you have not given me any reason why I should want to help you. You don't provide any information about what you are trying to do, what problem you are trying to solve, attempts that you have made to solve your own problem. You tell me no story, nor prove that you are a "peer" -- someone who has put the same effort into that craft as a potential person who may have the answer will have. Ultimately you haven't answered the "What have you tried?" question. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/ You are asking someone to help you; a little more humility couldn't hurt. I don't get paid to help you solve your problem -- other than worthless internet points -- so just give me a reason to want to help you solve your problem. I want to help, but not if you are going to be a jerk.

Here are some great resources for learning iOS: [1] Online courses: http://www.hackrocket.com http://teamtreehouse.com/ http://www.lynda.com/iOS-tutorials/iOS-SDK-Essential-Training/92179-2C… http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-development/i… http://codelesson.com/courses/tag/Mobile [2] Blogs/tutorials: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/GettingStarte… http://www.raywenderlich.com/ http://cocoawithlove.com/ http://mattgemmell.com/ http://mobile.tutsplus.com [3] Books: Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide iPhone Programming : The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Cocoa Design Patterns iPhone App Development : The Missing Manual The iOS Developer's Cookbook Cocoa Design Patterns Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK [4] Forums/Q&A http://stackoverflow.com http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/ [5] Videos http://www.youtube.com/user/MilmersXcode?ob=0&feature=results_main [6] Email newsletters http://tinyletter.com/hackrocket http://iosdevweekly.com/ http://iosdesign.co/

Here are some links that are useful: 1. https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md 2. https://cloud.google.com/apis/design/ 3. https://mattgemmell.com/api-design/ 4. Video from Jim Webber - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVSzMV8DWc

Hasn’t the original author of “What Have You Tried?” themselves discouraged blind application of that prompt? http://mattgemmell.com/hindsight

Why not get an N64 controller and a USB connector: http://mattgemmell.com/playing-nintendo-games-on-a-mac/ I bought the GC/XB360/PS connector and the SNES connector, and it's been a blast playing games with them! For the SNES games I even got two controllers so I can play Bust-a-Move and whatnot with friends.

Why this trend of using large font size on blogs? (1.225em from http://mattgemmell.com/stylesheets/screen.css). This is ridiculous, especially when this is done on mobile too. I have to scroll to be able to even read the first word of the first paragraph on my phone!

Sloppy[1] is a really old tool that does this. For iOS development specifically, I've been told of Network Link Conditioner[2], and supposedly, Fiddler[3] and Charles[4] both includes some of this functionality. 1. http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/ 2. http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner-in-lion/ 3. http://fiddler2.com/ 4. http://www.charlesproxy.com/

This guy seems like a douche. If anyone dares to complain that their mail app is being discontinued (http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/) they get criticised, but making copies and circumventing copy protection on Gamecube and Wii disks is fine.

If you have a recent (>=10.7) version, pf [0] is installed. pf is a more capable firewall than ipfw, and can shape upstream connections in a number of ways. As an example of what it can do, the Network Link Conditioner [1] is built using pf. The version in OS X is not the most recent version in OpenBSD, but that FAQ is a good start, and the man page [2] can fill in the details. 0: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/ 1: http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner-in-lion/ 2: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference…

> pretty straightforward for developers to implement Although true, many developers don't even take the time out to do it[1]. This video demonstrates that the creators of Instagram did take the time out to do it, even though a lot of interaction their application is based on vision. [1] http://mattgemmell.com/2012/10/26/ios-accessibility-heroes-and-villain…

OS X has a handy GUI tool called the Network Link Conditioner, which lets you easily set up simulated network conditions. The inbuilt profiles are a bit optimistic, I find, but it's easy to add more. It's just tc or the BSD equivalent under the hood, but it's point and click and easy to turn off. More details at: http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner-in-lion/

Why It Doesn't Matter If You Pay for Software, Sparrow Edition http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/

This came up a few weeks ago: http://mattgemmell.com/2012/05/24/api-design/

Paper from FiftyThree[1] is very good. Omnigraffle is a useful tool to, but pricey. Photoshop for ipad looks promising too. Matt Gemmell recently wrote a blog post about using the iPad from a UX designers point of view[2]. [1]http://www.fiftythree.com/paper [2]http://mattgemmell.com/2012/05/02/ipad-productivity-apps/

You can render PDFs as UIImages[1], there are categories around that make this easy[2]. However, this is never ever going to be as cheap as loading a converted PNG (which Apple's modified pngcrush converts for you). I think a lot of devs have the draw/vector vs. precomposed bitmap tradeoff the wrong way round. Drawing all of your gradated UIButtons with CoreGraphics methods is a false economy compared to just loading a stretchable PNG. Almost all of Apple's UI system imagery is bitmap based, and for a good reason. [1] http://mattgemmell.com/2012/02/10/using-pdf-images-in-ios-apps/ [2]https://github.com/mindbrix/UIImage-PDF

Spaces most certainly is still there, only it's not called "Spaces" anymore. (see http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/27/using-spaces-on-os-x-lion) If you've been using Lion all this time thinking spaces no longer work then this is your lucky day!

Another approach to vector art in iOS using PDF files http://mattgemmell.com/2012/02/10/using-pdf-images-in-ios-apps/

Umm... Lion does this out of the box w/ XCode: http://mattgemmell.com/2011/07/25/network-link-conditioner-in-lion/ It's called the "network conditioner" and it does lag, packet loss, latency, bandwidth limiting, and more. And it's free.

Regarding side-by-side portrait-orientation split views on the iPad, wouldn't such a layout require the message view to be too small? I'd rather that the message list appear in the top half of the screen, with the message view below it, but this isn't quite typical on the iPad (notable exception provided by Matt Gemmell's open-source MGSplitViewController [1]). [1] http://mattgemmell.com/2010/07/31/mgsplitviewcontroller-for-ipad