Hi everyone - There's been a lot of talk this past week about future hardware, on both Apple and Google's parts. Mac Rumors, for what it's worth, posted an article about a rumored new app, Healthbook, coming to iOS 8 that will feature very tight integration with the rumored iWatch. It would seem entirely sensible to tie a forthcoming new product line launch to existing blockbuster product lines, meaning that a Fall release of the iWatch was always likely, but rumors of tight integration into new iOS 8-only features certainly serves to clarify timing. Although I find the idea of a 'Healthbook' app intriguing, I'm not entirely convinced that Apple will sell millions of these devices on the sole strength of that. Similarly, getting device notifications on your wrist does not a killer product make, either. But, Apple's pretty good at these things (i.e. making devices everyone wants), so I'll happily give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Meanwhile, the big news out of Google-land this past week was the sale of Google's Motorola unit to Lenovo at a loss of somewhere between $1 - $2 billion. I have to give Google credit for recognizing they made a mistake, and course correcting with both the acquisition of Nest and the sale of Motorola. In contrast, Microsoft—had they bought Motorola—would have probably folded the division after another few years of flailing[1].
Much like with Google's Android acquisition years ago, the key challenge Google will face is with retaining key employees. Of course, Andy Rubin is still at Google 9 years later, and—if Google can keep Tony Fadell around for a commensurate period of time—I think the Nest acquisition will prove to be incredibly valuable to them. Relatedly, I expect Google's relationship with Samsung to continue to deteriorate.
Until next time,
Aaron
[1] See: aQuantive, Danger, WebTV, etc.
What We're Reading
- Rumored 'Healthbook' App for iOS 8 Suggests Significant Health Component to iWatch
- TechCrunch: Nest Team Will Become Google's Core Hardware Group
- Here's what happens when Apple features your app in the App Store
- Improving Dropbox Performance: Retrieving Thumbnails
- Stewardship
Control of the Week
RMScannerView
Weekly Roundup
iCloudDocumentSync
KBComposeSocial
AXRatingView
Star mark rating view for a review scene.
MIT licensed. |
STHTTP
HTTP library for iOS 5+ and Mac OS X 10.7+, based on NSURLConnection BSD licensed. |
ButtonPeoplePicker
Button-style contact picker to select multiple people from the iPhone Address Book, with type-ahead and auto-completion. Apache 2.0 licensed. |
NBUImagePicker
DHSmartScreenshot
UITableView Category to get really easy, smart and instant screenshot images like no other library out there for iOS 5+ devices. MIT licensed. |
WCFastCell
A drop-in replacement for UITableViewCell and UICollectionViewCell which draws contents using CoreGraphics. Seamless integration with nibs provided. MIT licensed. |
UIImage+Dummy
GHWalkThrough
A UICollectionView backed drop-in component for introduction views MIT licensed. |
Disqus
This open-source library allows you to integrate Disqus into your iOS apps. Learn more about Disqus API (http://disqus.com/api/docs/). The project has been created by Moqod team to help many developers searching for this solution on Stackoverflow and elsewhere. Special thanks to Disqus for answering support questions promptly! Feel free to get in touch with us in regards to any questions or cooperation requests via email [email protected]. MIT licensed. |
AMTagListView
UIScrollView subclass that allows to add a list of highly customizable tags. MIT licensed. |
LRScrollingSidebarController
UIImageView-AnimationCompletionBlock
A category that adds a completion block to UIImageView letting you know when the UIImageView's animation is complete. MIT licensed. |
FLStatusManager
Provide a dictionary of UIDs, names, and images to the manager, and when the user types an '@' reply into the text view, auto complete options will appear underneath. Public Domain licensed. |
FLPostLabel
SFRoundProgressCounterView
NetworkActivityIndicator
More easily interface with the network activity indicator in the status bar.UIApplication category and demo app. MIT licensed. |
UIForLumberjack
iOS UI library to display CocoaLumberjack logs on iOS devices. MIT licensed. |
SFGaugeView
A gauge control. MIT licensed. |
VENVersionTracker
iOS Version Tracking Library to update betas, let users know about new versions in production and enforce deprecated versions of your app. MIT licensed. |
PMParentalGate
Since the introduction of special 'Kids' category in the App Store, Apple has enforced developers to perform a good practice - guarding anything that's not targeted for the kids by the 'Parental Gate'. This means that any links to other apps, or to App Store ratings or any In-App purchases should be guarded from the kid's access. One of the ways to perform this task is to ask the user to perform some kind of operation that, in general, the kid can not do (we're talking about quite small kids here) - like triple-tapping the button instead of a single tap, or solving a simple math equation... This control allows for a simple, one-line "equation" gate. This is released as-is under the terms of MIT License. MIT licensed. |
Simple Bar Chart
MZRSlideInMenu
This is a simple slide-in menu. When the button tapped, the menu slides in from left or right. You can use this like UIAlertView. MIT licensed. |
Smerk
Smerk is designed to make implementing either Face Detection or QR Code/Bar Code/Machine Readable Code detection incredibly simple. MIT licensed. |