dominik wagner
As announced indirectly via the new website I'm back at the helm at TheCodingMonkeys . The first public act in that role was to announce that we have to remove Carcassonne from sale beginning March 1st 2020 ( grab it while you can , it's awesome!), which is a very emotional good bye for me. On release in 2010, Carcassonne was a huge milestone for TheCodingMonkeys as a company: It was the first App…
John Gruber in The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 : As things stand today, I get a phone call from my mom once a month or so because she’s accidentally gotten Safari into split-screen mode when tapping links in Mail or Messages and can’t get out. Amen. Sadly the Apple platform departed from being an easy thing to recommend and give to anyone disregarding of computer experience. Instead it morphed into…
When I left TheCodingMonkeys for my journey at Apple, my last post on this blog was Slot Machines , bemoaning the shift to free to play games in the App Store. Although this was 4 years ago, nothing much has changed in that area since. In fact, it got worse. It is ironic to see that Apple was and is a very willing participant. As platform owner it has the full power to change the rules, which is…
The new version 5 of SubEthaEdit , the Apple Design Award winning text editor for macOS, is now available free of charge in the App Store and as direct download . The complete source code with history going back 15 years is also available under the MIT License. This release fills me with great pride and joy. SubEthaEdit always has a special place in my heart. It is where my journey as a developer…
I had the great fortune to work alongside Ken for a short while, and he is one of the few people who really have a tight grasp on what Apple and its products are all about. I'm not through the book yet, but even just after the first chapter it is a clear recommendation if you want some insights on how product decisions came to fruition back then. Ken is a fantastic inspiring public speaker and as…
Last week marked a big milestone for the fantastic people at Serif - the release of Affinity Designer for iPad . I immediatly put it for a spin, and it is really fantastic. I have been using the desktop version for a while to produce nice app icons for my own prototype projects. So of course I wanted to try if this works nicely on the iPad as well. My test subjects were the following 3 icons: In…
During my life as a software engineer there only have been a few occasions where the design and principles of a language struck me as inherently beautiful and consequently inspired me to work with them. Lua for its simplicity, modularity and clear design goals that are followed through. Objective‑C / Cocoa for its very simple object oriented extension to C, with a great tradeoff of being a…
In essence, the current free 2 play model equals a slot machine in a bar. It preys on the poor people who get hooked, tries to hook them as quickly as it can, and in pure business logic, tries to get as much out of them as possible. Where insult comes to injury is if you look at the App Store revenue numbers. No matter when you look at the top grossing lists, the first 3-10 titles are free 2 play…
@jessamynsmith : To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. If arguments heat up, it is always worth thinking about if the current discussion warrants the intensity. If it doesn't, then looking into exactly what is causing the discomfort in you usually turns out to be insightful. ⚓
Drew Crawford writing about Garbage Collection: What this chart says is “As long as you have about 6 times as much memory as you really need, you’re fine. But woe betide you if you have less than 4x the required memory. ” Really long article, greatly done. A must read for anyone in the mobile field. (via daringfireball.net ) ⚓
I had a simple thought today, and since I haven't read anywhere about it. Remember that slide in the iOS 7 announcement talking about car integration? What if that external display and controlling technology has its inception for the rumored iWatch device, and the Car integration is just a second use case for it? After having that out of the way, let me just get the different use cases I can…
David X. Cohen on reddit: As usual, I am unemployed due to cancellation so I have lots of free time. reddit - ask me anything! ⚓
Michael Heilemann on iOS 7's design issues (via daringfireball ): You could chalk it up to experimentation, as some do, but it's like experimenting with triangular tires. We know it doesn't work, there's no need for us to repeat that particular experiment. ⚓