Gus Mueller:
What the heck can indie devs use as a persistent server connection, so that their syncing implementations can receive fast updates? I’m not going to host a server for this purpose-that really isn’t a core competency of mine, and I know it isn’t for many other indie devs either. And as a customer, I wouldn’t want to rely on a 3rd party server for this.
[…]
I have one big unanswered question about iCloud. Are developers allowed to use it if their app is not sold via the App Store? I asked this to multiple people at WWDC, and got conflicting answers. My educated guess is “No,” but I’d be happy if someone could point me to documentation which confirms it either way.
If the answer is indeed “No,” that would make dropping iDisk even more of a loss of functionality. I suppose that will just send more people to Dropbox.
Dan Moren:
Last month, video-streaming provider Hulu updated its Hulu Plus iOS app, dropping a link that allowed users to visit the company’s website to sign up for a paid subscription. Others, such as Netflix, have exploited a loophole: The login screen for the video-streaming app tells users to “Visit netflix.com to sign up” but does not provide a tappable link.
Via Jim Dovey, who doesn’t think untappable links will be allowed, either.
Fabrice Bellard (via Hacker News):
My goal was to write the smallest C compiler which is able to compile itself. I choose a subset of C which was general enough to write a small C compiler. Then I extended the C subset until I reached the maximum size authorized by the contest: 2048 bytes of C source excluding the ';', '{', '}' and space characters.
LaunchBar 5.1 adds some nice new features:
Browsing & Search now works for all file types that can be converted into plain text (.txt, .rtf, .rtfd, .html, .h, .m, .doc, .webarchive, etc.)
The Search File Contents action can now be triggered more conveniently with Command-F. Alternatively, it can still be triggered with Option-Space or Control-Space.
Property List Browsing (Developers, you will love this!): Select a *.plist file and press Right Arrow to browse the plist hierarchy. Works also with a number of other filetypes such as .strings, .dict, .pbxproj or .ini and more.
There’s also a new “Run Shell Command” action that avoids the clutter of opening a Terminal window, but unlike the Terminal commands in the File menu it does not receive the current file/folder as input.
Glenn Fleishman:
You’ll be able to upgrade all your ripped files that aren’t up to snuff — avoiding replacing, say, your lossless FLAC versions — with the best Apple and the labels have to offer, for what is essentially a one-time $25 fee. This is the right way to do it, and it’s an awfully nice gift for those of us, like yours truly, who ripped their CDs at lower quality many years ago.
It sure makes me happy to have bought CDs, rather than paying extra for DRM-encumbered 128-Kbps iTunes music, then 30 cents more per track to upgrade them to iTunes Plus.
