Haven't blogged in a while. Hi. Long, hot, crazy summer. Now that summer is cooling off, the next big thing coming up for me is the iPhone/iPad DevCon happening in San Diego on the 27^th of this month. I'm both looking forward to it and terrified of it, as I've volunteered to do two talks there. Seemed like a great idea 3 months ago, but now that it's just around the corner, … trying to get organized and make a good set of slides.

My talks will be aimed at people who are new to either subject. One is on blocks in Objective-C, and the other is on scientific programming, but it's going to be primarily aimed at introducing people to the Accelerate framework. These are both subjects that I wanted to get better at this summer, which was part of why I chose them. I'm going to be doing a mini talk on the Accelerate framework this Tuesday (Sep. 14^th) at the CAWUG meeting in downtown Chicago, if you're around and interested.

If you have ideas about what you'd be hoping to hear about on either topic if you were in the audience (and please come!), leave me a note in the comments and I'll see about working it in. [Read more…]

1500 new APIs. 1500. Huge changes, huge opportunities, presuming you can get heard above the noise on the App store. It's not going to be available until summer for 3^rd gen iPhone/iPod Touches, "many things" available for 2^nd gen devices, and not available at all for 1^st gen devices. The iPad gets it shortly thereafter. Dev beta out now.

Great to see Apple constantly firing on all cylinders. We're not always happy with all their decisions, but more often than not I'm quite happy with them, especially with what they provide developers. You can watch the keynote online. Nothing mentioned here wasn't mentioned in the keynote.

Here are some of the APIs that caught my eye that aren't getting much attention from elsewhere. [Read more…]

The ratings on the App Store have always been problematic, as all community-driven ratings systems on the internet are problematic. One very bad idea that Apple implemented was asking for ratings when a user deletes an app from their phone / touch. That this technique unduly skews ratings toward the 1-star side on lesser-used apps is evident when glancing thru the store. [Read more…]