Hello all,

This is one of those weeks where I have little or nothing to say. I don’t have a tutorial of the week nor do I even have a post ready for publication. I have spent the last week trying desperately to get the Practical Autolayout book ready for publication. (more on that later) so let me talk a little bit about Time and Resistance.

Time was not on my side this week. Large chunks of it were cut out due to the distraction of the World Series. Living in Chicago, distraction is a serious understatement.  There are also some family issues that came up I’ve needed to address. Neither I have control over. I didn’t last week and I don’t next week. I’d like to say that they are Resistance I can just barrel through, But they are not that easy.

Weekends Ive been catching up on my sleep from my only solution to all this; get up at 3:00 to get things done.  I’m going to get through the current Resistance. As Stephen Pressfield notes Resistance is always greatest when you are close to the goal. I’m getting very close to the goal. This is all Resistance. I need to find more ways around it.

No rest for the weary, I guess.

In book news, I have good news and bad news. The draft of the new edition is complete. I was hoping to take care of the editing and have this out early this week. Unfortunately Apple ruined those plans with some major changes to Autolayout in Xcode 8.1 There’s two that I know of. There is a new resolver button for updating frames which I haven’t a clue how to use. The second is the problem one for me — they changed the names of some of the size classes. I Have a lot of rework to do changing anything that has 6s to 7 and 6s Plus to 7 plus.  I’m pushing up the release date for the book to November 3. Even if I get no sleep at all between now and then it will be out.

I also want to give you a warning about the new edition. I will be increasing the price to $12.99. This due to production costs for the Amazon Kindle version. Amazon charges me for your download by the megabyte. I can take another month optimizng images for the Kindle to make more money or I can change the pricing structure so there is no download charge, but I get less royalty. I’m upping the price of the book to compensate for the loss of profit. As part of the publishing contract I have with Apple and Amazon. The e-book has to be the same price on both platforms.

I didn’t say this in the podcast, and I’ll repeat it next week. I’m also going to update the Swift Swift View controllers book incrementally. What that means is the book ill spend some time in both iOS 10 and iOS 9. Some chapters will not be up to date and others will. Currently, that will mean a update of the book starting next week up to chapter 2 section 2 where I left off in August. I’ll update frequently with new material until the full book is up to date. This is not ideal, I know, but it gets out material on a more timely basis than waiting till January for me to do the full book.

We have no tutorial post this week. I’ve been too busy with the tiny amount of time I’ve had just working on the book. Next week will be a very different week I hope.

Talk to you next week and keep coding

Steve.

Hello All,

Welcome once again to a Slice of App Pie.

Tips of the Week

A mini-tip this week before my main tip, since I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails about it. The Size class previews in Xcode 8 are representative of several devices with the same aspect ratio and size. The iPhone SE represents the SE, the 5 and the 5S. The iPad Pro 9.7” represents the iPad mini, the iPad and iPad Air. The iPhone 6s is the 6 and the 7 and so on. From the standpoint of size class and layout, these devices are identical.

This week’s tip of the week themes with the post of the week. I’m a big believer in play in education, but in structured play. Before play you need to set a few constraints on play and give a introduction to what you are playing with. My tip is to use both of these when teaching someone to use your app. You’ll see Apple’s ultimate version of this idea in the Swift playgrounds i”ll review this week on the website. You should use it too. Give your user a safe place to play, with some instruction on how to play. Sometimes your app is by nature safe. By safe I mean that doing any action does not harm your user physically or by an expense in time, emotional energy, or money. A calculator is an always safe app. The loser loses little if the application fails or the calculation is wrong while they are learning it. An accounting system, on the other hand can cause legal and financial damage to a company when playing with the system. For the accounting system, a sandbox to play in and try out features in the system in a safe way is a great idea. There’s a lot of middle ground. Some games will make the first level super easy with instruction so users get the idea of the game. That’s what I mean by combining play with constraint.

This Week’s Post

I discuss the learning theory behind play a lot more in this week’s post. It is a review of Swift playgrounds for iPad. I’ve been wanting to write one for a while, but a lot got in the way. A lot is still in the way, but I wanted it done, so you have it this week. From a point of professional development, it is a tool you should be using. I’ve been keeping it open next to my Mac so I can prototype ideas and play with many of the commands I’m trying to write about in my posts. On a plane, an iPad is a lot easier to use than any laptop, and I’ve often coded models and a few view controllers on just my ipad. For a business system user group confrence I attended few weeks ago, I modeled an accounting feature missing from the system in Swift easily on the plane down to Miami. Playgrounds are something to check out.

Publishing News

On to book news. I want Pratical Autolayout to be done. I am looking for a November 1 publication date. There is a lot of work yet to do, but I did find that Kindle may not be as bad as I thought. I have four more chapters to write. I removed another chapter since there are better ways of doing the same thing. That should speed me up. I will be burning the midnight oil a lot here.

The cause of the delays is of course the video courses. I am full under way with the video courses. I’m doing a lot of work on all of them, but I have no definite information about them yet. I have one still in post production, with no date for release. Four more courses I’ve started to write. I’m juggling a lot in the air right now.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be talking to you next week,

Keep Coding.

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I’d like to once again start this week with thank you for those of you who already subscribed to the new newsletter. I’m hoping you are enjoying the new look.

The clock is ticking down until November 7 when, I’m dropping the old version for the new one. If you want to continue your subscription after November 7 click the link here I also have an updated link on the makeapppie website. Please subscribe to the new improved newsletter. I really think it will be worth it.

This week I’ll start with the tip of the week then a bit more about what is going on around here. This is somewhere between a tip and a rant this time. I want to talk about professional writing and conversation on the internet. Due to an experience in the last few weeks, I’ve come to a decision to drop a conversation under two circumstances: The writer uses profanity or the writer uses leading questions. I’d expect that the first of these is obvious. It simply is not professional to use profanity when conversing. IF you want to turn off your audience, drop an F-bomb. If you want to lose your audience in a professional setting use them every sentence. There is no reason to use such words. ZERO. I’ve heard excuses about passionate oratory and cultural norms. Both are not excuses in a professional setting.

The second thing that will make me drop an on-line conversation is a leading question. Leading questions force the person answering to answer in a certain way. Often the answer validates the quenstioner. Questions that begin with “Don’t you agree that..” or “You dont believe in..” are leading questions. They are traps. Why I drop a conversation is that the questioner has already has made up thier mind. They just want people to agree with them, not get differing opinions. If they have made up thier mind, then I have no chance to say anything instructive to the contrary: my opinion doesn’t count. To disagree is to get into a time wasting argument, and I just don’t have the time or energy to waste.

I can’t speak for you, but I suspect that most of us don;t want to waste our time in fruitless, angry conversations that sap our energy. The leading question is my red flag that things will go badly shortly. I for one am not going to play that game.

On to books…

Well the draft for Practical Autolayout got to chapter 8. That’s actually chapter 9 in the Xcode 7 version: I dropped a chapter on the assistant editor preview modes since it is very buggy in Xcode 8 and redundant as well. I hope to finish this week.

This will probably be the last Kindle edition. As I explained last week, much of the editing I have to do and the way I have to do it is because of the Kindle. While I get exposure, I’m making less in royalties on Amazon than iBooks. Unless thing go really wrong when I upload it this month, I will be doing some serious evaluation for the Xcode 9 version in 2017 if it is worth the work to make a new one. iBooks will continue without a doubt, and I’ll be continuing my policy of updated the book to the current edition.

This week’s post on makeapppie.com concludes the theme of table views with a tutorial of custom table view cells. I add four labels to the cell, and show two of them under certain conditions. I think more than a few of you who want more then the factory method table cells will find it very useful.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be talking to you next week

Keep Coding

Click the link for the new newsletter here.

Hello Everyone, this  is Steve and welcome back. My apologies for my cold, which has me not as upbeat as usual.

I’d like to start  this week with thank you for those of you who already subscribed to the new newsletter. I’m hoping you are enjoying the new look. I have more work to do, but it is beginning to take shape. I have a lot of identity things I’ll be changing, and updating a lot more on the sites.

For those of you who haven’t heard the news, I’m moving the newsletter.  There’s several reasons for it, most of all I want a better style than what I’ve been producing so far. I’m also trying to consolidate the podcast and the newsletter so I have only this and a lesson post to write every week.

Between now and November 7 I’ll be posting on this newsletter, the podcast and the new newsletter. After November 7, I’m dropping the old version for the new one. If you want to continue your subscription after November 7 click the link here. I also have an updated link on the makeapppie website.  Please subscribe to the new improved newsletter. I really think it will be worth it.

Book Progress

Let’s move on to the book progress. I know a lot of people want to know if I’m updating the books and when they will be ready. Starting this week, I’ll keep you updated on the book progress for the two titles out and the new one coming after that, probably January.

I’m sure most of you have heard me talk about this before, but for those that don’t know, let me explain a little about the eBook business and the problems of updating books. From my perspective there are two big publishing platforms: Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks. The advantage of a big platform compared to some of the more independent platforms are twofold: there is a larger access to an audience where a lot of the business transactions side I don’t have to deal with — VAT and such they do for me. They also have all the trade agreements in place to sell stuff — I don’t have to know anything about international trade laws or eBooks.  It’s why I have been reluctant to go with more indie platforms, since all that is left to me, and that is very time consuming.

The big two however have very different philosophies towards ebook production and updating though. As far as Amazon is concerned, an eBook is just like a printed book. Any revisions mean you have to republish as a new edition. This is of course a huge pain in the posterior and while I do make money every book, I don’t feel it is fair to my readers, since Apple will change everything every year.

Apple on the other hand treats books the same way they treat updating apps. Make your changes, submit them with explanations of the changes, go through approval and the book updates everywhere, usually automatically.  I like this from a loyalty perspective, though I don’t make as much on the same people buying multiple copies.

So that’s the background.  Now to the updates:

In something I have not seen in a very long time, a post written in the same month is the #1 viewed post for September. It’s still #1 in October with a whopping 30% of the views to the site. The Size classes for Xcode 8 post is just reeling them in.  I made the decision due to that and most of the e-mail I’m getting asking about Practical Autolayout to complete that first. I’m in chapter 5 of 15 now. Chapter 4 was one of the more brutal ones, since its the one I introduce the new size class toolbar. The rest will more likely than not be different screenshots from the Xcode 7 book, and new instructions about those size class settings. It’s just a lot of screenshots — over 400. Kindle in particular is a real pain in working with images, and that usually slows me down.

Hello All, Last week only some of you heard what was going on. I only had time between my Lynda.com and SAP B1 conference to get out the podcast, and didn’t get out the newsletter. I want to apologize for that. For those who didn’t hear about my Lynda.com experience, […]

After my first recording session at Lynda.com, I’m coming back with a lot. Here’s what I learned.

I’m so busy getting recording I forgot to do anything else.

In this week’s episode, I discuss my thoughts over the iPhone 7 earphone jack controversy. I’ll also link it to a medical condition I have.

I talk about my Creative Indie Hero Nathan Lowell and the issues about going from part time to full time creative indie.

I moved the podcast to the morning. I’ll also reveal a bit more about my mysterious big project, then discuss writing with “we” and “you”