Developing an iOS 7 Edge
Preface
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What is iOS 7?
Many of the features added to iOS 6 were incremental updates over iOS 5. This is not the case for iOS 7. Apple's release of iOS 7 brought substantial improvements for both applications and application developers. This book attempts to highlight the features that will be most widely applicable, including upgrading from iOS 6 to iOS 7, making apps more accessible, refreshing content in the background, using the new transition and physics-based animations, building on the new map APIs, and enhancing your development workflow with the new build and testing improvements. The introduction of iOS 7 is set to change the way users think about native applications as well as how developers think about building them.
Who is this book for?
This book is intended for current iOS developers who wish to learn what iOS 7 has to offer. It is not intended to be a beginner's tutorial on iOS development. In many cases, we contrast development for iOS 7 with developing equivalent functionality in iOS 6. As such, we assume the reader is familiar with basic iOS development concepts up to iOS 6. While it's not necessary for the reader to be an expert in any particular iOS 6 APIs, it certainly won't hurt. Similarly, this book is not intended as a reference manual for iOS 7. The online Apple documentation serves this purpose. Rather, we aim to provide an overview of the features as the reader might use them to build a working application. The examples given in this book are all part of a demo application called BepBop ("beep! bop!") which can be found online at https://github.com/iosedgeapp/iOSEdge.
Why develop with iOS 7?
There are several reasons to begin developing with iOS 7. The first is that iOS 7 allows developers to do things that were previously impossible, such as peer-to-peer wireless data transfer. Likewise, Apple learned more about how developers are writing their apps and streamlined many common—but challenging—activities, such as performing text-to-speech operations. If your application needs one of these new features, iOS 7 is an obvious must. The second is that it's possible to create a significantly better user experience in iOS 7 than in any other mobile operating system. It is now easy to adhere to user preferences regarding font size and type, share files with nearby devices, and refresh your app before the user launches it. The final reason is that, as users become more sophisticated, they come to expect more from their applications — and iOS 7 makes it easy for developers to deliver.
Why this book—what do we offer?
Many publishers will be taking their iOS 6 books and sprinkling in iOS 7 content. We started fresh with Developing an iOS 7 Edge by inviting six experts in the various aspects of iOS 7 development to collaborate. This result is a dense book focused solely on iOS 7 development and backed by the authors' real-world experience, as well as a working BepBop app which demonstrates how all the examples work in practice. The introduction of iOS 7 lays the foundation for developing new classes of applications. We hope to show you the way.
About the authors
Michael Ang is Co-Founder and CTO of Changemakrs, where he is responsible for the technical side of bringing inspiration to people on the go. He helped develop the Magic Window application for iPad and iPhone that was featured multiple times by Apple and became a Top 10 app. His technological artwork has been featured by MAKE Magazine and NASA. His previous gigs include the Internet Archive, Snibbe Interactive, Xoom and Netscape. An itinerant hacker, he hails from Canada but has called San Francisco, New York and now Berlin home. You can find code and contact information at https://github.com/mangtronix
Josh Brown is the Founder and CEO of Roadfire Software, a consultancy that builds iOS apps for businesses. He's been doing iOS development for almost four years - since the iOS 3 days, and has had the privilege of working on apps for companies of various sizes, from the Fortune 500 to small startups. He enjoys sharing what he's learning by speaking at user groups, mentoring one-on-one, teaching classes, and writing on his blog. He lives in the Indianapolis, Indiana area with his wonderful wife and two amazing kids. You should follow him on Twitter @jtbrown.
Doron Katz is an accomplished web and mobile developer, with extensive experience in the industry, as a subscriber of the methodology of Agile Project Management, as well as heavy involvement in various technical User Groups, such as CocoaheadsSydney (iOS) and Adobe User Group (Adobe technologies). Achievements include working on various web projects, using Coldfusion, Flash/Flex, as well as Android (Flex) and iOS (Objective-C) projects. Skilled in development, with a passion for precise agile management, he is currently re-skilling in Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) through Charles Sturt University, as part of a masters program. Also a part-time rugby journalist for SARugby, and part-time technical book reviewer, for O’Reilly publishing, as well as a guest blogger for AppDesignVault.
Engin Kurutepe is an iOS team lead at Txtr (www.txtr.com), where he is responsible for e-reader apps on iOS devices. Previously, Engin developed the Moped iOS app (www.moped.com) and was involved with various other iOS projects and startups, including the best selling e-book app in Turkey. In this spare time, he is developing GeoTagBee, an iPhone app which makes it easy to add geolocation information to photos from any digital camera. He used to conduct research and publish papers on the compression and streaming of multi-camera 3D video in a previous life, before he dropped out of PhD and started working on iOS full-time. He is originally from Istanbul, Turkey and has been calling Berlin, Germany home since 2006. He can be best reached via twitter @ekurutepe.
Cody A. Ray is a software engineer at BrightTag where he is part of a team that is revolutionizing the way data is collected and distributed on the web. Previously, Cody conducted research for a defense contractor where he focused on intelligent agent security, wireless network simulation and multicast security. Cody has held a number of leadership positions including launching a student-run technology incubator for sustainable building technologies. Cody is a LEED-certified engineer and is proficient in a wide range of languages and technologies including J2EE, Ruby/Sinatra, Node.js, iOS, Android, Redis, and Cassandra. Cody received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University, where he specialized in networking, controls, and intelligent systems. Cody can be reached by email at cody@codyaray.com.
Hiedi Utley is an iOS Engineer at Zappos.com. As part of the mobile team, she spends her time working on transforming the mobile shopping experience and finding creative ways to leverage new iOS features. Hiedi has a special interest in developing user-friendly and high quality iOS applications with a focus on unit testing and test automation. In a previous life, Hiedi was a Software Architect for Siemens Healthcare and has extensive experience in healthcare informaton systems as well as many varied skills including Objective-C, Java, and web based technologies. Hiedi has received a BS in Information Systems and Technology from Drexel University as well as an MBA from Villanova University. Hiedi currently lives in Las Vegas with her two pups and can be reached via LinkedIn.
Acknowledgements
Daniel Moix, for always telling me to RTFM. (Cody)
Joshua Michaels, for encouraging me to live the Indie Dev lifestyle, at least for awhile. (Mang)
Charles Perry, for teaching me everything I know about Accessibility on iOS and why I should care. (Josh)