Weekly Roundup: Work and Play

Aaron Brethorst, March 29, 2014

Did you know that Apple doesn't offer a tablet OS "that lets you work and play"? Yeah, I wasn't aware of that, either. Fortunately, our long nightmare of not being able to work and play on the iPad is finally over with this past week's release of Office for iPad. I can only assume that the release of Office for iPad was held up by the lack of a commensurate 'touch-first' version for Windows, but it seems like Satya Nadella has decided that it's time to just let go, accept the fact that the iPad is here to stay, and that Microsoft is only doing itself harm by delaying the release any further. That said, I think it's crazy that they're tying real use of Office on iPad to Office 365 instead of enabling people to access documents from Dropbox, Box, iCloud, OneDrive, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

Ultimately, the writing is on the wall for the PC. Like Steve Jobs said back in 2010, we are entering into a world where not everyone will need a PC. Gartner reports that the PC market will decline 7% in 2014, and tablet sales will go up another 39%. And, let's not forget about the mobile phone space. Reportedly, Apple has sold 500 million iPhones at this point.

Steve once said, "we have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." And he was absolutely right. Ironically, though, it looks like—whether or not Apple wins—Microsoft will lose, unless they can fully embrace where things are going.

Best,
Aaron


What We're Reading


Control of the Week

FXForms

FXForms

FXForms is an Objective-C library for easily creating table-based forms on iOS. It is ideal for settings pages, or user data entry tasks.

zlib licensed.

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Weekly Roundup

RHRefreshControl

RHRefreshControl

Abstract RefreshControl for freedom customization.

RHRefreshControl is just another simple custom RefreshControl which allow you to customize the appearance and behavior of RefreshControl for your app. With this simple library, you would save few hours to write code to implement with UIScrollView.

MIT licensed.

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AFPopupView

AFPopupView

A simple to use and functional popup view for iOS, as seen in Wunderlist iOS app.

MIT licensed.

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XHScrollMenu

XHScrollMenu

XHScrollMenu is a display column elements, base on NetEase News App.

MIT licensed.

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iLink

iLink

A handy class that create the links needed for your app page, developer profile or app rating page on iOS or Mac with zero pre-configuration. Would also prompt the user if there is a new version to update (configurable)

zlib licensed.

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CalendarStyle

CalendarStyle

Calendar component for iOS apps

MIT licensed.

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AwesomeChat

AwesomeChat

AwesomeChat is a full native iPhone app to create realtime, text based chatrooms with Facebook/Twitter login.

MIT licensed.

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LNWindowManager

LNWindowManager

A window manager that makes working with UIWindow objects easily using an API similar to the UIViewController modal presentation API.

MIT licensed.

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DNSSwipeableTableCell

DNSSwipeableTableCell

A table view cell that swipes to reveal a basement menu similar to iOS 7 Mail, but with tons of configuration options. Uses a delegate/data source construction method, and NSLayoutConstraints and spring damping animation instead of a UIScrollView to prevent gesture collision.

MIT licensed.

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MyCategories

MyCategories

UIView Categories for adding:

  • Shake Effect
  • Parallax Effect

MIT licensed.

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SSStackedView

SSStackedView

Inspired by PassBook App and Reminders App for iOS 7, this is designed to have a stacked page view that uses reusable pages for efficiency. Easily scroll through UIImageViews, UIViews or your custom View with this one do-it-all class.

SSStackedPageView uses a scroll view to manage through your large list of views. By either selecting or dragging the view up, you divide the stack and highlight that view. Each view is customized to the length of the SSStackedPageView. For efficiency, I make use of a reusable array of pages so that scrolling is fast and beautiful.

MIT licensed.

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DZNSegmentedControl

DZNSegmentedControl

A drop-in replacement for UISegmentedControl for showing counts, to be used typically on a user profile

MIT licensed.

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SMTabbedSplitViewController

SMTabbedSplitViewController

Tabbed Split View Controller for iPad is a custom split view controller, with vertical left tabbar control for navigation between master view controllers. Tabbar contains tabs for navigation between view controllers and actions buttons for some actions (for example, exit from application). Also it can be used without tabbar control as customizable alternative UISplitViewController.

MIT licensed.

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ADLivelyCollectionView

ADLivelyCollectionView

ADLivelyCollectionView brings custom animations to UICollectionView.

The library comes with pre-defined animations. They are here mainly for demo purposes and we encourage you design your own, in order to produce more subtle visual effects. It’s less than ten lines of code to write!

ADLivelyCollectionView was designed as a subclass of UICollectionView, making its integration as simple as adding two files to your project and turning your instances of UICollectionView into instances of ADLivelyCollectionView.

BSD licensed.

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MWViewsContainer

MWViewsContainer

Lightweight Views container with top bar with customizable options

pod 'MWViewsContainer'

MIT licensed.

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UIView+draggable

UIView+draggable

UIView category that adds dragging capabilities

MIT licensed.

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MBKeyboardTracker

MBKeyboardTracker

Get the system wide keyboard and track its origin.

License unspecified.

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ANBlurredTableView

ANBlurredTableView

Animated blur and tint background on UITableView scroll.

  • Customizable tint.
  • Animate between two different alphas for a darken or lighten effect.
  • Works in the background and animates in when ready.

License unspecified.

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StickyHeaderView

StickyHeaderView

Example of how to create a UITableView HeaderView which sticks to the top and stretches when pulled down. Kind of like the Tinder app does.

MIT licensed.

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BFNavigationBarDrawer

BFNavigationBarDrawer

A UIToolbar subclass that can easily be displayed below a UINavigationBar, similarly to the playlist view in the Music app.

BSD licensed.

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GTTranslationAPI

GTTranslationAPI

GoogleTranslationAPI is an Objective-C wrapper for calling the Google Translate API v2.

BSD licensed.

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ZKPulseView

ZKPulseView

Simple iOS UIView Category to create a Pulse (Breathing light) Effect on your needs

pod 'ZKPulseView', '~> 0.0.1'

MIT licensed.

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MaryPopin

MaryPopin

MaryPopin is a category to present view controllers in a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious way. More precisely, it allows you to present modal-like view controllers with a custom size and a larger choice of transitions. On iOS 7, it can use motion effects and UIKit Dynamics for even better looking popins.

MIT licensed.

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NXVLogFormatter

NXVLogFormatter

Simple custom CocoaLumberjack log

MIT licensed.

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RestKit-InExtensions

RestKit-InExtensions

Helpers to use RestKit with less code, just a simple plist file.

MIT licensed.

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TBMInspectorView

TBMInspectorView

TBMInspectorView is a copy of the Xcode 5's inspector view. It is pretty easy to setup and should be set as the documentView of a NSScrollView.

MIT licensed.

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SimpleChat

SimpleChat

An easy to use bubble chat UI as an alternative to the traditional iOS talk bubbles.

MPL licensed.

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SHModelObject

SHModelObject

Base modal object which uses objective-c runtime to populate the instance variables (ivars and properties) of User created Modal from NSDictionary objects.

MIT licensed.

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MGConferenceDatePicker

MGConferenceDatePicker

MGConferenceDatePicker is an object wich extend a UIView furnishing a very nice type of data picker.

MIT licensed.

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YLGIFImage

YLGIFImage

Async GIF image decoder and Image viewer supporting play GIF images. It just use very less memory.

MIT licensed.

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CocoaPodUI

CocoaPodUI

XCode plugin that implements CocoaPods GUI.

MIT licensed.

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FBShimmeringView

FBShimmeringView

An easy way to add a simple shimmering effect to any view in an iOS app, which is particularly useful as an unobtrusive loading indicator.

BSD licensed.

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