Year: 2016

Making Sense of Color Management

Making Sense of Color Management Book Cover

After over two years of work, my book on color management is now available for purchase. People I know and respect are saying some really nice things about my writing. It makes me happy when doing hard things pays off.

Previously, I’ve written about how displays are changing and how color affects the things we build for these devices. Whether you build on the web, or with native apps, your work in the coming years will be affected. You can learn more about the book at the Iconfactory.

But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what Mike Krieger, Cofounder and CTO at Instagram, has to say about the book:

For years, engineers and designers have mostly stumbled through color management, understanding it ‘just enough’ to ship an asset to the web or an app. As devices move to wide color, a deeper and more practical understanding is vital, and Craig’s book provides exactly that. In fact, I’ve put his advice to use for Instagram.

As a developer, you might be interested in taking a look behind the curtains at the book’s mini-site. You’ll find additional articles, new markup for the web, and sample code for both iOS and macOS. The book provides essential background for these examples, but it will give you a taste of what you’ll be learning.

I also have some more advanced code examples for iOS in the works. If you work with raw pixels in bitmaps, process photos with Core Image, or do analysis with vImage, this will be right up your alley, so stay tuned!

Written on December 9th, 2016 for Design, Development

Apple’s Lenovo

To bring long-term value for clients, companies need to continually reinvent themselves.

This quote comes from an IBM announcement that it was selling its PC business in 2005.

IBM’s business was moving towards services, and it was less dependent on hardware sales. But it still needed hardware to provide services for its clients.

The deal let IBM focus on its future. Lenovo got the ThinkPad brand, engineering talent, and a sales channel. This was one of those rare win-win scenarios they teach in business school.

Apple is no stranger to reinventing itself. Thirty years ago, it was selling a $15,000 printer.

Laserwriter

It was a beautiful device that produced stunning output. It launched the desktop publishing revolution and established Adobe as a central figure in the software ecosystem.

And today you can’t buy a printer with an Apple logo.

Someday soon, we’ll look back wistfully at those beautiful displays Apple used to make. With the announcement of the new LG partnership and displays, we’re seeing another part of Apple’s business being outsourced.

Maybe it’s time that Apple does the same thing with the Mac Pro business described by Marco Arment.

Like IBM, Apple is in a bind. Its future and the bulk of its revenue depend on mobile devices. Yet we can’t make these products without the horsepower provided by the Mac.

Besides Apple’s own internal needs, there are many professionals creating content for mobile devices. These folks need fast and capable computers to create apps, music, and videos. We all need powerful Macs to enrich the mobile ecosystem.

John Gruber said it best, “It’s the heaviness of the Mac that allows iOS to remain light.” But will iOS pick up this heavy load by the end of this decade? I don’t see it happening with my own work.

Licensing just the operating system was a disaster for Apple. Professional customers don’t have the time to build and maintain their own Hackintoshes. Any partnership to build Mac hardware would need to be structured so that it benefits Apple, the partner, and customer alike.

Just like IBM and their clients have benefitted from Lenovo.

Written on November 5th, 2016 for Business, Observation

Leaving Last Betas

I just updated to macOS Sierra on one of my Macs and immediately encountered a problem: I was enrolled for beta downloads even though I had never enabled them on that machine. I’m guessing that there was an old download on that machine that somehow caused the App Store to enable the beta.

There’s a good reason why I don’t want the betas installed on that Mac: it’s the one that runs the version of macOS that most of my customers will be using. It’s also the machine that submits products to the App Store, and we all know how picky they can be about tool and OS versions.

There’s button in the App Store settings of System Preferences that lets you opt out of updates. The problem is that button doesn’t do anything if you’ve already checked for updates. This is very likely to happen since the first thing most people do after installing the new OS is open the App Store.

To turn off beta updates I first quit the App Store app and checked that there was a beta seed URL for Software Update using the Terminal:

$ sudo defaults read \
    /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL
https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.12seed-10.12-10.11-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

I then nuked it:

$ sudo defaults delete \
    /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

(Thanks Cliff!)

After getting off the beta, I then cleared the Software Update catalog with:

$ sudo softwareupdate --clear-catalog
Changed catalog to Apple production

(Thanks franz!)

As I did that the App Store settings in System Preferences immediately showed “No check for software updates has been done yet”. Launching the App Store refreshed the catalog and did not show the beta update.

Yay. Time for a drink!

Written on September 30th, 2016 for Development

Sticker Accessibility

The popularity of Stickers was no surprise to us. What did surprise us was that these graphical elements are a hit with customers who have vision difficulties.

In retrospect, it makes sense. You want to let friends know that poo is hitting the fan even if you can’t see well. As always, Apple has thought about making their products accessible from day one, and the new features in Messages are no exception.

But it doesn’t work like you’d expect for the default apps created by Xcode. Take Parakeet’s excellent Snacks collection as an example. What would you expect to hear VoiceOver say with this configuration?

Bacon

Congratulations if you said “Bacon P-N-G Accessibility Label”. Technically, that’s the “same” as the Bacon.png file that was dragged into the Asset catalog, but it’s not what you or your customer expects. When you add “Bacon” in the Accessibility field as well, it’s read correctly and everyone wins. As you know, you can’t have too much bacon.

As for our own Sticker packs, we implemented custom view controllers and don’t suffer from this particular problem. We have identified some other small accessibility issues throughout our work and will be issuing updates soon. Parakeet will also be updating their release with improved labels.

If you’ve released Stickers for iMessage without Accessibility labels, we suggest that you do the same.

Written on September 21st, 2016 for Advice, Design, Development

Tipping the Scales

If you’re an app developer, you’re already aware of how difficult it is to build a sustainable business. Yesterday, we tried something new.

The root of the problem is that frequent updates makes a better product and happy customers, but it also takes time and effort:

T5_Timeline

The code behind all those updates doesn’t come for free. And increasingly, our customers are realizing that the long-term viability of their favorite apps is at stake. The new tip jar in Twitterrific is the result of people asking how they can support our work.

The idea of patronage isn’t new. The success of this model depends on having a well established customer base who loves what you do. You also need to be careful about how you ask for people’s support: anything that’s annoying will do more harm than good.

If these prerequisites sound like they fit your app, I’d encourage you to give patronage a try. Don’t be afraid to ask for money from the people who value your work the most.

Written on June 2nd, 2016 for Advice, Business
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