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James Dempsey of James Dempsey and the Breakpoints joins us today to talk about his history working at Apple, his transition to life as an indie contractor and trainer and, oh yeah, his new hit album Backtrace. Backtrace is the #1 comedy album on iTunes and just hit #5 on the Billboard comedy charts, and James has been gracious enough to let us share a few of his songs while he tells the story of how he got started in music and how his shows became an annual tradition at WWDC.
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With stories of declining iPad sales in the headlines, Apple last week announced its refreshed iPad line-up as well as some other new hardware. Today we discuss this event, the absence of a coherent iPad use story from Apple, and the future of iPad software.
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Every year, just like clockwork, Apple releases new features for iOS. And every year, just like clockwork, developers have their apps rejected from the App Store for using these new features in ways that Apple didn’t anticipate. So today, we discuss the trouble that developers can run into when their creativity gets ahead of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines. We use the experience of Greg Gardner of Cromulent Labs and David Smith of Developing Perspective as case studies of what can go right, what can go wrong, and how we can avoid problems when playing on the bleeding edge.
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Today we look at the new iPhones, our reaction to them now that we’ve actually held them, and how we think the new display sizes will affect what and how we develop. We consider the nature of the iPhone 6 Plus, our predicted demise of separate iPhone and iPad versions of apps, our frustration with scaling interfaces on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and designing differently for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. We also talk about strategies for testing when you don’t own every device class, the problem of understanding iPhone 6 Plus design idioms without owning one, and how using these larger devices have changed our plans for the future.
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Today we talk to Matthew Bischoff about his iOS studio, Lickability, and its founders’ goal of building Lickability into a full-time job. Along the way, Matthew shares the story of Lickability’s start on Broadway, reflects on balancing client work with product work, and considers the importance of having the right mix of talents in a group of co-founders. He also fills us in on his time at The New York Times and his current work at Tumblr.
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