Mobile Couch

Creating great apps for Apple’s mobile devices.

This podcast is no longer in production.

46: Flipping the Boolean

Published 8 December 2014 Hosted by Ben Trengrove, Daniel “Jelly” Farrelly and Jake MacMullin

Jelly’s done his homework, so the couch explores his solution to getting a scrollview to page with peeking content. They also weigh in on Watchkit, discussing the way it works and what the future implications might be.

Like all the cool shows, this one starts with the intro, or at least it tries, as Jake leads everyone off track into discussion of podcasts (specifically Chat 10 Looks 3, Serial and Start Up), as well as their style and sound quality.

Finally getting themselves into gear, Jelly starts the discussion with the results of the bet about getting a scrollview to “page” with content that peeks on either side of the frame. Jake explains the problem he had, and then Jelly explains how he tackled the issue, as well as what he did with his results.

More follow-up about Swift brings discussion of a listener-submitted Swift style guide, and the oddities about the optional language syntax. This leads to Jake admitting that maybe he’s still not clear about a few things, like how type inference works… or how arrays work, for that matter.

Jelly brings up the topic of Watchkit, which has been out for a few weeks now. Even though none of the three have actually done anything with the framework, they decide to weigh in with their first impressions. This inevitably becomes a discussion about the potential of WatchKit, and how the iPhone’s ecosystem was moved forward by “misuse” of API features.

Ben asks Jelly, as a hold-out on Storyboards, what he thinks about the fact that Watchkit apps are storyboard only. This, of course, leads Jake to get all excited and start explaining how he implemented IB_DESIGNABLE with a class and has fallen in love with it.

Taking all of this back to Watchkit, Jelly points out that the “storyboards only” approach — which he’s totally cool with, by the way — might be suggestive of where Apple is trying to go with app development overall.

Show Notes