Copyright (c) 2011 Doron Katz. All rights reserved. DoronKatz registered under ABN 68 954 062 611. Apple, the Apple logo, iPod, iPod touch, and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: Apple

Review of Essential iOS Build and Release

Essential iOS Build and Release by Ron Roche is another of those 'micro-books', a concise book with a scope solely focused on how to build for testing and publishing your iOS App, whether it's AdHoc, App Store or through Enterprise distributions. It takes you through the over-complex routes that would get a developer to get the App to have the appropriate provisioning profiles and certificates. It's standard information that you would probably find in almost any other iOS book, but the conciseness of this book makes it handy when you don't want to go through the hundreds of pages to find the relevant material.

This 116-page book is well written, with a very important chapter that is something not a lot of developers appreciate. Automating test builds, using open-source tools such as Hudson is something that is lacking in many development environments and not very-well documented generally, so it's impressive that it is included here. I generally find having a shelf of specialised books rather than a general iOS book to be more useful as you don't generally find the entire book relevant whereas specialised books are something you pick out because it's specifically more relevant to you and contains content that are generally either 'skimmed-over' or missed out completely by the more general books. 

I give mr Roche four thumbs up, and if I had a half a thumb I'd add that as well. I don't think there is much more that could have been added to the book, although i would have liked to have seen alternative integration tools such as Atlassian Bamboo referenced, but perhaps once again that may be left for another specialised book, dealing with iOS Testing.

Essential iOS Build and Release
A Comprehensive Guide to Building, Packaging, and Distribution
By Ron Roche
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Released: December 2011
Pages: 116

Susan Kare | An article from Apple Gazette

This is an interesting article I came across on the Apple Gazette that I thought worth sharing with you guys.

Presenting: the untold, little-known story of one of Apple’s earliest and most influential artists. Susan Kare’s place in history is among its most important and foundational, yet her body of work is comprised of something that most people take for granted and never give a second thought to.

I have to be honest: I’d never heard of Susan Kare before I picked up this book. And once I did, I flipped through its sparse, white pages with lots of empty white space thinking, Okay, so it’s icons. What’s the big deal? It turns out, it is a mighty big deal. You may not have heard of Susan Kare either, so let me give you a quick history lesson. Stay with me, it’s worth it — it ties directly into Apple history.

Susankareicons

Read the rest of this post »

Susan Kare | An article from Apple Gazette

This is an interesting article I came across on the Apple Gazette that I thought worth sharing with you guys.

Presenting: the untold, little-known story of one of Apple’s earliest and most influential artists. Susan Kare’s place in history is among its most important and foundational, yet her body of work is comprised of something that most people take for granted and never give a second thought to.

I have to be honest: I’d never heard of Susan Kare before I picked up this book. And once I did, I flipped through its sparse, white pages with lots of empty white space thinking, Okay, so it’s icons. What’s the big deal? It turns out, it is a mighty big deal. You may not have heard of Susan Kare either, so let me give you a quick history lesson. Stay with me, it’s worth it — it ties directly into Apple history.

In 1983, when Apple was designing the first commercial Mac, they hired Susan Kare to come on board and design various parts of their operating system’s user interface. Her first job was the creation of several of the Mac’s earliest fonts, including the classic typefaces Chicago, Geneva, and Monaco — fonts that had characters that were, for the first time ever, spaced according to the width of the character, instead of every character width being identical. But the work she is best known for is what came next: designing the sublime and inviting icons used in the Macintosh OS.

Read the rest of this post »