Happy new year, everyone! As 2013 draws to a close, I just want to thank you all again for your support. Cocoa Controls would be nothing without its community, which means you. Without your apps, or your open source controls the site wouldn't be worth much.
2013 was also a big year for Apple and iOS, with Apple releasing the most significant set of changes to the operating system since its original release in 2007, a much-needed overhaul of the Mac Pro, somehow managing to shove both a top of the line CPU and display into the iPad mini, and managing to continue to prove that slow and steady does indeed win the race. John Gruber talks about this more in one of the links today in What We're Reading, but I feel like this is a topic worth touching on here as well.
If you look back at the evolution of the iPhone and iOS over the past six years, you'll find that only rarely does Apple take a big leap forward in terms of how their devices look or work. Obvious exceptions include the iPhone 4 and iOS 7, but these seem like exceptions that prove the rule. Even though the iPhone 4 represented a huge leap forward in terms of display quality and industrial design, it was otherwise not that different from the iPhone 3GS. iOS 7 represented a huge shift in terms of user experience, but beyond that it isn't really all that different from iOS 6.
Ignoring the rare punctuated event, it's only when you look at Apple's hardware and software from a longer term perspective that you see truly "revolutionary" change. Other companies—Microsoft comes to mind—seem compelled to regularly change everything purely for the sake of change: 'look, it's new and different, buy it!' To their credit, this does give them a lot of press when they announce new products, but it also results in a regular need to backtrack and rip out their most egregious change-for-the-sake-of-change changes. Windows 8 is the most obvious recent example, with the generally loathed Metro experience and removal of the Start button.
Every year brings another iOS announcement and iPhone hardware announcement, and these almost always include the inevitable tech press lamentations about how Apple simply isn't revolutionary anymore, whatever that means. Clearly, I disagree with the tech press' conclusions. Not because I think that Apple makes revolutionary changes every year (they don't), but because I don't think that would be a good or desirable outcome. I'd rather Apple keep pressing ahead on making spectacular products with one or two meaningful, large improvements every year, and leave the creation of dead-end, "all sizzle, no steak" products to others. (On a related note, what on earth was Samsung thinking with the release of their Galaxy Gear watch in the first place, or that profoundly awful ad for it recently?)
According to Tim Cook, Apple's working on some cool stuff for 2014. I have confidence in the company that if and when they do release a watch, for instance, that it'll actually be a useful product.
Until next year,
Aaron
What We're Reading
- Apple Tech Talk videos are now online
- Unprofessionalism
- Switch to Freemium - Lessons learned from changing iOctocat's price model
- The Year in Apple and Technology
Control of the Week
EZAudio
Weekly Roundup
SATextMenuView
iOS7 like Menu UI. MIT licensed. |
DBCustomAd
UIReferenceLibraryViewController Simple Dictionary Example
Dictionary app with UIReferenceLibraryViewController for iOS7 Public Domain licensed. |
AAPullToRefresh
A pull to refresh library that lets you pull from any of your screen's four sides. MIT licensed. |
LanguagesManager
Easily provide manual control over the language of your app. MIT licensed. |
FakeLocations
RFPasswordStrength
RFLoader
RSTransitionEffect
Re-implement mayuur's MJTransitionEffect and provide default data binding for UITableViewCell and detail view controller and solve the white screen problem. All images, data source are taken from mayuur's MJTransitionEffect. My implementation introduces source frames and target frames for RSTransitionEffectViewController, provide basic data item and data item -> view binding and frame calucations.
In storyboard, create a detail view controller which subclassing RSTransitionEffectViewController, and link predefined IBOutlets to current views then in UITableViewDelegate, instantiate the view controller defined in storyboard and pass sourceFrames and current list item to it:
and that's all, the new detail view controller will display with beautiful transition effect. MIT licensed. |
XHShockHUD
An easy-to-use and customize HUD view with four built-in styles. 重用性好、使用简单、可任意定制HUD样式(用的人去定制),默认有四种定制好的方式,你想随意的提示嘛?进来吧!总有你要的 MIT licensed. |
VENSnowOverlayView
iOS implementation of UIView with snowflakes overlayed. A perfect Christmas easter egg! MIT licensed. |
RFScreenshot
GRProgressIndicator
Reimplementation of NSProgressIndicator with some customization support BSD licensed. |
LWF - Lightweight SWF
LWF (Lightweight SWF) is an open-source framework for importing Adobe Flash animations into iOS UIKit, HTML5, Cocos2d-x, Unity, and more. It means that LWF allows you to make animation using Adobe Flash for your iOS UIKit Application. An example of LWF for iOS UIKit: https://github.com/splhack/Hello-LWF-UIKit A screenshot of the example http://gree.github.io/lwf-loader/images/lwfloader-sample3.png How to install LWF into your project Use CocoaPods with Podfile as the following. pod 'LWF/UIKit' zlib licensed. |
MDBrowser
RFRotate
Drop in rotations for your iOS project. Support for blocks. MIT licensed. |
Mobile-Canberra
Mobile Canberra is an initiative by the ACT Government and the NICTA eGOV Cluster. It is a powerful platform for showing points of interest and services on a map. MIT licensed. |
UIViewController-Modal
Determine whether UIViewController is presented as modal. MIT licensed. |
UIImage-ImageWithColor
Creates an image using a color. MIT licensed. |
NZCircularImageView
Performs async download image and leaves with rounded edge, used for presenting pictures of user profiles. MIT licensed. |
NZGoogleAnalytics
Facilitates the use of Google Analytics API for iOS. MIT licensed. |
UIDevice-Helpers
UIDevice category. Easy access to device information. MIT licensed. |
NZBundle
Changes the information present in the Info.plist project file at runtime, as version name. MIT licensed. |
JWBlurView
LINQ4Obj-C
Provides fluent interface of LINQ-style query to Objective-C. MIT licensed. |
NZLabel
UILabel with multiple fonts and colors. MIT licensed. |
ImageFlipGrid
Image grid animation using single UIImage as input. License unspecified. |