Bit Stadium introduces HockeySDK-Mac (via Andreas Linde). This is a huge amount of work to get around the fact that sandboxed applications are not allowed to read their own crash log files. Unfortunately, it sounds like the crashes are reported at the next launch, rather than at the time of the crash when the context would be clearer in the user’s mind.
Apple’s goal is clearly not to build a cross-platform syncing solution for others to build their businesses on top of. Their goal is to make their own platform better and easier to use. But those limitations are absolutely something developers have to think very hard about, because if their application could evolve into something greater than just an iOS or OS X application, they’re stuck if they choose the fork in the road labeled “iCloud.”
This deflation in software pricing isn’t inevitable. It simply needs two things. First, developers need to price their software realistically. Sure, they can run promotions from time to time, dropping their prices to $2 or so to get their apps noticed, but they need to maintain realistic prices that reflect the value of their work. Second, developers who sell Mac software at more than $5 or so simply must offer demo versions on their web sites. This is not just a courtesy, but should be an obligation. Expecting someone to drop $50 on an app they haven’t tried is simply foolish. Finally, Apple should offer a way for developers to provide demo versions of software from the Mac App Store.
Jonathan Zufi (via Mac|Life):
Our mission is to showcase the entire spectrum of products that Apple have sold to the public since 1976 – every product Apple Inc has ever produced, in the highest quality and definition possible. Every desktop, every laptop, every notebook, monitor, iPod, iPad, iPhone, mouse, keyboard, modem, cable, port, adapter, docking station, memory expansion card….and that’s just their hardware. Operating systems, productivity suites and all the great software titles that Apple have published will make an appearance too!
Great photos, and where else can you see the packaging for the GeoPort Telecom Adapter Kit?
Greg Sandoval (via John Gruber):
Some employees were stunned by how quickly and unemotionally DVD operations, the backbone of the business for a decade, was split off from the company. DVD Co. was moved out of Netflix’s offices to a space a few blocks away. Netflix’s leaders stopped discussing DVDs. Those Netflix executives who moved to DVD Co. stopped attending Netflix management meetings.
Mattt Thompson (via Hacker News):
AFIncrementalStore is an NSIncrementalStore subclass that uses AFNetworking to automatically request resources as properties and relationships are needed. I had noticed
NSIncrementalStorein the iOS 5 docs a while ago, but it was this article that got me to realize how unbelievably cool it was.
John Regehr (via Mike Ash):
I will send a small but nice prize to the person who posts a comment describing the most interesting, surprising, or just plain crazy object code emitted by a compiler as a consequence of undefined behavior.
David Chisnall (via Graham Lee):
One of the biggest changes that the Étoilé runtime made was the message-lookup mechanism. First it made it possible for each object to have its own message-lookup function. Second it made the lookup function return a slot structure, rather than a method. The point of the slot structure was to make safely caching lookups possible using a lockless algorithm.
