Episode 96: An Exhilarating Refresh

Manton and Daniel talk about the loss of RSS feeds for Twitter searches, the joys of starting on a new app, and sweating the details of all the non-programming indie software-business work.

Download (MP3, 31 minutes, 15 MB)

  • RSS Feeds For Twitter – Advice from Amit Agarwal on hacking together an RSS feed for Twitter search results.
  • Yahoo Pipes – Yahoo’s visual programming toolkit for web-based data.
  • T Command Line Tool – Ruby-based command-line interface to Twitter’s API.
  • NetNewsWire 4 Beta – Beta-release of the next version of the popular Mac-based news reader.
  • Ship Everything – Manton’s year-old blog post on the credo to only start projects you will finish.
  • iOS Text Editors – Brett Terpstra’s extensive catalog of iOS-based text editors.

Sponsored by Windows Azure: a scalable and secure backend for your iOS app.

July 10, 2013 at 4:47 pm.

Episode 94: You Just Messed With The Wrong Forstall

Manton and Daniel speculate about Scott Forstall’s future, talk more about WWDC, and discuss the pros and cons of Apple’s major iOS 7 changes.

Download (MP3, 36 minutes, 18 MB)

Sponsored by Tokens for Mac. App Store promo codes without the hassle.

June 27, 2013 at 10:09 am.

Episode 92: Find Other Nerds And Talk To Them

Manton and Daniel weigh the pros and cons of entering a popular app market, discuss finding a suitable acquirer for one’s product, and offer WWDC party-selection advice.

Download (MP3, 45 minutes, 22 MB)

  • WWDC 2013 – Apple’s upcoming developer conference.
  • Byword 2 – The popular minimalist text editor, now with blog publishing features.
  • Fantastical – Popular alternative Calendar app for Mac OS X
  • Cheddar – Example of a product whose acquisition price might be out of most indies’ reach.

Sponsored by Windows Azure: a scalable and secure backend for your iOS app.

June 7, 2013 at 2:21 pm.

Episode 91: Anyone Can Do Something Great

Daniel and Manton talk about Manton’s switch to Linode, the pragmatism and insanity of running your own server, and the old-timer/newbie mix at WWDC.

Download (MP3, 34 minutes, 16 MB)

  • Heroku – The cloud platform that Manton is moving away from.
  • Linode – The VPS hosting service Manton switched to.
  • Redis – Open-source key value storage system.
  • Heroku’s Ugly Secret – Criticism from James Somers of Heroku’s usage accounting tactics.
  • Rackspace – The VPS hosting service Daniel uses.
  • nginx – Alternative HTTP server to Apache.
  • Copland – Wikipedia page on Apple’s ill-fated Copland operating system.
  • Pay Attention – Mike Lee’s App.net post reminding folks to pay attention when people are speaking.
  • mur.mu.rs – Mike Lee’s blog.

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May 29, 2013 at 2:48 pm.

Episode 90: The Level To Which Your Laziness Will Rise

Manton and Daniel talk about Flickr’s redesign, Yahoo! as a potential strategic partner for Apple, and techniques for branching and refactoring older code.

Download (MP3, 38 minutes, 18 MB)

  • Dropbox Camera Upload – Instructions from Dropbox on enabling the automatic photo uploads Manton described.
  • Apple Photo Stream FAQ – Q&A from Apple about their Photo Stream feature.
  • One Momento – iOS app that allows customers to upload just one image — ever.
  • The One-Person Product – Marco Arment reminisces about the early days of Tumblr.
  • Yahoo Mail reset – Manton’s blog post from 2002 about deleted email (his temper has cooled in the intervening 11 years).
  • Mr. Wilhelm’s Flickr Photos – Story from 2011 about a Flickr user’s lost photos and — phew! — their ultimate recovery.
  • Clipstart – Manton’s movie-management app for the Mac.
  • A Successful Git Branching Model – Description of branching approach that is referred to often as “Git Flow.”
  • HG Flow – Mercurial adaptation of the branching approach described by Git Flow.

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May 23, 2013 at 12:52 pm.

Episode 89: Quietly Scrambling To Fix The Problem

Manton and Daniel talk about CocoaConf Alt’s cancellation, WWDC’s protracted sell-out, and making time for indie projects with a busy life schedule.

Download (MP3, 39 minutes, 19 MB)

Sponsored by Crashlytics: The most powerful and lightweight crash reporting service.

May 14, 2013 at 6:57 pm.

Episode 88: Bundling A Thousand Features Into It

Manton and Daniel talk about adopting new technologies, choosing system requirements, version numbering (again!) and Adobe’s shift to all-subscription sales for Creative Suite.

Download (MP3, 38 minutes, 18 MB)

  • FMDB – An Objective-C wrapper around SQLite, by Gus Mueller.
  • Tweet Library 2.3 – Manton updates his archival Twitter client.
  • Instacast 3 – Example of a major update that focused more on fit and finish and less on bold new features.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud – Announcement from Adobe that “new product innovation” will be exclusively through cloud subscriptions.
  • NSConference Videos – $149 pack of all the videos from NSConference 5, including Manton’s and Daniel’s.
  • Dead Man’s Switch – Concept mentioned by Daniel in context of guaranteeing product functionality after abandonment.
  • TextMate – The venerable Mac OS X text editor that still works in spite of halted development.
  • Upcoming.org – Wikipedia page about the site Yahoo! summarily dispensed with weeks ago.
  • Save Upcoming – Upcoming founder Andy Baio rallying support for a rogue archival effort for the site’s content.
  • Archive Team – “A loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage.”

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May 7, 2013 at 12:19 pm.

Episode 87: Just Kidding, You Do Have A Ticket

Daniel and Manton talk about WWDC ticket sales, alternative conferences ticketless attendees, and the vibrancy of the Mac software market.

Download (MP3, 46 minutes, 22 MB)

  • WWDC – Apple’s annual developer conference.
  • altWWDC – Free, alternative conference to WWDC during the week of the show.
  • CocoaConf Alt – A paid, single-track alternative to WWDC during the week of the show.
  • App.net Hackathon – Hacking marathon for App.net developers, on the eve of WWDC.
  • Acorn – Light-weight image editing application from Flying Meat.
  • Briefs – iOS-focused app UI-prototyping software from the folks at MartianCraft.
  • Software Indie – New podcast from Scotty of iDeveloper fame, focused on empowering indies.

Sponsored by Windows Azure: a scalable and secure backend for your iOS app.

May 2, 2013 at 5:33 pm.

Episode 86: If They Can’t Make It, Who Am I To Try?

Manton and Daniel talk about WWDC ticket sales, Ambrosia Software’s major layoff, and Google Glass terms of services.

Download (MP3, 42 minutes, 20 MB)

  • WWDC June 10 – News release from Apple about the dates and ticket-sale strategy for WWDC 2013.
  • WWDC 2013 – Detailed information about the conference from Apple.
  • AltWWDC – Alternative gathering for the week of WWDC, put on by folks from Appsterdam.
  • Ambrosia Software – The stalwart Mac software maker that recently issued mass layoffs.
  • Ambrosia Still Alive – Piece by Jeff Garnet of the Mac Observer about Ambrosia’s prospects.
  • Panic – Another Mac software company that seems to be around for the long haul.
  • Google Glass API – Terms of service for the Google Glass API.
  • App.net Developer Incentive Terms – A contrasting API terms agreement.

Sponsored by Crashlytics: The most powerful and lightweight crash reporting service.

April 24, 2013 at 10:02 am.

Episode 85: A Literally In Your Face Technology

Daniel and Manton talk about Boston, Panic’s Status Board, Google’s Glass UI guidelines, and Google Fiber.

Download (MP3, 35 minutes, 16 MB)

  • Panic Status Board – New iPad app from Panic for customizable passive data displays.
  • Panic’s examples of plugins – Blog post from Panic highlighting many custom 3rd party panels.
  • Dashcode User Guide – Apple’s documentation for their widget-devleopment IDE.
  • Glass UI guidelines – Google’s user interface guidelines for their glasses-based devices.
  • Google Fiber Austin – Announcement page for Google’s initiative to bring super-high-speed internet to Manton’s home town.
  • AT&T Fiber in Austin – Announcement from AT&T that it plans to build gigabit fiber in Austin, as well.
  • Verizon FiOS – Fiber internet service from Verizon that is decidedly slower than gigabit.

Sponsored by Windows Azure: a scalable and secure backend for your iOS app. Also mentioned in the show: Josh Twist’s blog post on in-app purchase.

April 16, 2013 at 12:51 pm.