Last fall, we were in the crunch-time week for a client’s app before the iOS 5.0 submission deadline. I was profiling it in Instruments, trying to find where we could improve its launch-time performance, when I found a noticeable amount of time was spent in Address Book queries by a third-party video tracking library.

Not only was this behavior slowing down our launch, it was unexpected and–since it was a binary library without source code provided–we had no idea what it was doing with that information. A red flag was raised, and to my surprise the client even expressed willingness to cut the functionality until the questions could be answered.

As explained, the usage was almost clever: By adding a defined contact to your address book, you would unlock additional debug logging and reporting options for their SDK. They claimed that there were numerous applications already approved with this SDK, and I don’t feel the need to question their veracity. Most importantly, they offered a build without that functionality, provided it quickly, and that’s what shipped.

So it disappoints me that after my own personal experience of trying to keep code out of the Address Book, there are developers out there who apparently don’t think twice about slurping all of your contacts and sending them to their servers without your express permission.

This has happened before with Aurora Feint. It forever tainted my opinion of Open Feint, which came out of that. I had been under the impression that Apple was much more strict about this type of behavior–”chance of rejection” was one of the main reasons I brought attention to the library’s unexpected access. So I’m disappointed in Apple, too.

There have been calls for Apple to add required guards and notifications to the API’s access, similar to how Location Services is handled. That would probably be good, but at a certain point all the notifications just become “Grant Access?” alerts that users don’t think about. I think there’s a simpler way to do it, at least for a first attempt:

1. When submitting an app to iTunes Connect, ask “Do you access and transmit Address Book data?” similar to the existing question about using encryption.
2. Answering “yes” is a flag to the review team to verify that the developers have implemented their own reasonable opt-in mechanism, and maybe even a bit more scrutiny of their network traffic.
3. If an app is found to be violating this, terminate the developer’s account.

Yes, I feel that violating this expectation after making it clear that you are expected to be transparent about using this kind of information is worthy of booting you out of the App Store.

Most of the complaints about the patent system being “broken” come down to a few points:

1. The patent is not novel; it’s an obvious method to anyone spending any mental effort on the problem space.
2. The patent is too broad; It could cover any number of possible techniques without taking a stand on one (or a handful). This usually seems to be done to get around the requirement of sharing the information, keeping aspects proprietary. One might also consider this related to “not novel.”
3. The inventor (or, usually, reassigned rights holder commonly referred to as “patent troll”) has done nothing with their rights to the patent on their own. On its own, there is nothing wrong with this–it would be perfectly legitimate to have a sole licensee. When combined with items 1 or 2, though, most people agree that it’s is predatory and stifles innovation rather than encouraging it.

My Proposal: Within a defined grace period after patent status is granted (I’m envisioning 5 years, maybe 7), the patent holder must show measurable revenue due to a concrete implementation of the patent, or that it is a recognizable part of another product which generates recognizable revenue. This revenue may be recognized directly by the inventor, or by licensees of the patent. If such evidence is not given within the grace period, the patent is considered fallow and control rights are revoked.

A patent that does not result in a concrete implementation within a reasonable period of time is hard to consider as “benefitting society” and thus unworthy of the rights exclusivity granted by the society in exchange.

2010 was one heck of a slingshot year for me and Corporation Unknown. I started the year unemployed and thin on contract work, and finished it with Corporation Unknown’s highest revenue in its 3-year history and a job offer I can’t refuse.

Bankruptcy

After starting out looking promising, 2009 was rough. The latter half was my first try at full-time independent contracting. I spent time working on project proposals where the client apparently went with someone willing to work for $25/hour; I did work on a decent project (iPhone client for the web site they were developing) that then went “on hold” once the company I was subcontracting for realized that their client was behind on payments to the tune of six digits. (They paid me in full, I don’t know if they ever got the same.)

At the beginning of 2010, my wife and I filed for personal bankruptcy. This isn’t something I’m proud of, but I refuse to hide it as a personal shame. I debated even mentioning this here, except for two points I hope might be able to help others approaching a similar situation:

1. Start looking into bankruptcy before dipping into retirement savings. Most likely, those funds are protected from the proceedings and you won’t have to start over.
2. The idea of paying a lawyer $3k to file for bankruptcy seems wrong, doesn’t it? It was completely worth it. Under our attorney’s advice, we knew exactly what to expect with no surprises. Sometimes when trying to restart parts of your life, it’s refreshing to just chuck it all and walk away, consequences be damned–this is not one of those times.

Contracting

Independent contracting in 2010 was hot and cold. More accurately, cold then hot, and feast or famine. I’d go without prospects for a while, then have a few come all at once that I actually had to choose from. Managing a client pipeline is not easy as a solo contractor.

In the spring, I had the opportunity to work with local friends Black Pixel on a small part of a fairly large project for iPad–before its release. It’s hard to believe the iPad hasn’t been out a full year yet; recalling having to code for iPad without a test device feels like reminiscing about the punchcard days.

I had a good time working on that project, even though it was all too brief. The team was wonderful, and even though it feels unfair, I have to single out the experience of working with Chris Clark. It was the first time I’d had the opportunity to work on an iOS project with a dedicated designer–one who listens, takes feedback, and respectfully tells you you’re either wrong, or he just prefers his design anyway–and I loved that.

At that time, I was also working on a project with a existing client. They had an iPhone app that I had cleaned up somewhat, and the announcement of iPad seemed an ideal fit for their product. Unfortunately, in the early days of the iPad, I still needed a lot of experimenting to get a feel for what “worked” and what didn’t. In their desire to get in to the field as quick as possible, they felt that the project was taking too long and ended up opting out of the contract.

Then in May, I had the opportunity to do some subcontracting work for fellow locals RogueSheep. The project was for a component of an iPad app that, once I got past the “why would you want to do that?” aspect, provided some interesting challenges in designing custom controls and animations, and I loved that.

RogueSheep is another great team, and another great designer in Brad Ellis (even if he has since moved on to Square). Brad has the same positive qualities as Chris, with the addition of slightly crazier ideas that push you to create something you wouldn’t have imagined on your own.

Thankfully, the Sheep have continued to have a project pipeline for me to work on: I wrote another bit of code that I’m not even sure has made it onto the store yet for the same client; I wrote some UI code for RogueSheep’s own TouchUp for iPad application as they were readying it for release, and I’m in the process of finishing off another pretty major iPhone project for another of their clients. They even let me touch their Apple Design Award.

Thanks in large part to RogueSheep, in its first full year of full-time effort, Corporation Unknown has recorded its highest annual revenue:

Onward

This year already has some promising challenges ahead:

1. Beginning in March, I will be teaching “Developing with the iPhone SDK,” the middle course of the iPhone and Cocoa Development certification from the University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education.
2. I have accepted an offer to return to Black Pixel full-time beginning in February. It’s been tough feeling like I’m choosing between two great companies and teams, but I am really excited to be rejoining Black Pixel’s now-expanded team and continuing to kick some iOS butt.
3. On top of all that, our second child is due at the end of July.

2011 is going to be a busy year!

Want: iPod on iPad able to browse desktop iTunes à la Home Sharing. Watching WWDC videos on iPad w/o having to sync first–yum.

I received a few recommendations for Air Video and StreamToMe. I’d forgotten that I’d downloaded Air Video but hadn’t set up the server; I’d also forgotten about StreamToMe even though I subscribe to Matt Gallagher’s blog.

I fired up the Air Video Server and started it serving the iTunes U playlist. Connecting and browsing from the iPad client was simple and straightforward. Trying to stream a WWDC video paused to buffer annoyingly often–which I blame less on the software than the 2GHz Mini it was running on, which probably also had the misfortune to have Time Machine kick in at the same time. But it doesn’t seem to have a functionality I implied by the “Home Sharing” reference: Copy the video to the iPad to watch elsewhere later. StreamToMe looks to have similar features (and lack thereof) to Air Video, so I didn’t test it.

I appreciate the recommendations, I really do. But neither of these can get past the one requirement I didn’t specify: I don’t want a third-party solution. My tweet was really a passive-aggressive desire to have Apple implement this.

I have fully committed to iTunes being my central media repository. It serves 157GB of my music, 148GB of movies, 100GB of TV shows, 144GB of iTunes U videos (primarily WWDC videos) and a variable amount of audio and video podcasts. As a result, I don’t have many files in formats foreign to iTunes, which both these applications seem focused on solving and I expect they handle admirably.

Both of my AppleTVs can access any file in the desktop’s iTunes library, even though with 40GB and 160GB drives they obviously can’t hold copies of everything. (True, I can’t instruct an AppleTV to copy files to itself, but I don’t feel the desire to pick it up and take it elsewhere, either.)

My iPad cannot access all the files.

My laptop can browse any file on the desktop’s iTunes library; thanks to Home Sharing it can copy any file just by dragging it to the local library. It can even browse other libraries that are shared on the network.

My iPad cannot copy files to its local library, or browse other shared libraries.

The “digital plumbing” is there in DAAP and Home Sharing to make this happen, but third party developers are left to write their own servers to support their clients. I have no reason to distrust InMethod or Matt Gallagher–and I’m pretty sure that either of them can write a better server than I ever could–but each additional server increases the likelihood of conflicts and security problems, so I don’t want to install and maintain additional, practically redundant servers.

I want a digital hub; one machine serving the same media in different ways is not a hub.

During the iPad announcement, Steve Jobs positioned the iPad as a third type of device “between a laptop and a smartphone.” In my experience, that’s an astute description. In regards to media handling, though, I feel the iPad still behaves much more like my iPhone than my MacBook Pro.

Phone and Laptop Prep

Earlier this week, I changed my phone from syncing with my desktop to syncing with the laptop. Last year I had an older laptop without much room on it for my music, so the iPhone was pretty much read-only during that time. Now I’ll be able to update any new podcasts as well as clear out those I’ve managed to listen to.

As long as I was losing all my application data by linking to a new library (I really wish there were a better transition available for that) I decided to finally bite the bullet and install the 3.0 OS. Beta 5 combined with a 1st Gen iPhone caused me quite a bit of grief to install, but I finally got it going and have been using it since.

I’ve trimmed my music playlist on the phone to make room for more videos to watch while traveling without having to pull out the laptop. My paper book for the week will be Cordwainer Smith’s “When the People Fell” which I’m already partway into, and I have Marcus Zarra’s “Core Data” epub in Stanza on my phone.

I’m somewhat paranoid of losing my phone in general, and the idea of leaving it behind in a swarm of almost identical phones at the conference only amplifies that fear. My normal desktop photo is my wife and daughter, but in a room of people who have just met me–and have never met my family–that won’t help. To improve chances of recovery, I have changed my desktop to my business card. It doesn’t fit perfectly, and I haven’t had the time to rearrange the graphics, but my name and email address are legible for anyone who might find my phone.

External Hard Drive

I installed the latest Snow Leopard developer release onto a portable drive, a Maxtor OneTouch Mini I’d bought a while ago. I haven’t been actively developing against Snow Leopard, so if/when we receive a new dev release at the conference, I will feel free to install over it.

Tip: If you are going to bring an external drive to run dev releases, reformat the drive in advance to use GUID Partition Table or it won’t boot your Intel Mac. That’s a really annoying thing to discover after you’ve gone through the OS install process.

Power

Hotel room outlets are a crap shoot. When you actually find outlets you can reach, they’re usually mostly occupied by appliances already. I always bring along my Monster Outlets-to-Go mini power strip. This thing is just one of those brilliant simple ideas, executed well.

During sessions, I don’t know that I’ll need much power. I’ve found that when it comes to note-taking, I’m more of a paper person than a laptop person. I’m not to the point of buying Moleskine notebooks, but I find writing easier and quicker to edit and annotate than a keyboard, and I focus more on the presentation itself. A paper notebook is also much less awkward to carry around and balance on your lap.

I am planning to carry a power adapter for my phone, though. Like Brent’s suggestion to stay hydrated, phone battery tends to be something you don’t think about until you’re critically low. Carrying a charger should allow me to grab a charge as needed.

Keep In Touch

I found Twitter to be invaluable last year for finding out about both sessions and social events. For those I follow in my closer social circle, I have their updates text message me; everyone else I can check as I wish. I just need to remember to disable the text messaging before I go to bed, then re-enable in the morning.

During the day next week, my Twitter stream will become somewhat cryptic: I tweet the session number and room I’m in (e.g. “101 Presidio”) when in a session; if you’re in the same session hall, you can then choose to look for (or avoid) me.

Feel free to follow me, but don’t be offended if I don’t follow you back. To limit the flow from Twitter, I have a general rule of trying to restrict myself to following people I have met in real life. Feel free to say “hi” and I’ll almost definitely follow you back.

I look forward to meeting as many fellow developers as possible this week, and wish you all a successful WWDC, however you define “successful.”

My wife and I have registered with the State of Washington as “Goracke Consulting, LLC” (the word “Corporation” is not allowed in an LLC name–who knew?) doing business under the name “Corporation Unknown.” It’s been an interesting process; not difficult, but filled with worry about not “doing it correctly” at each step. We made the final step of opening the business bank account on the last day of the year, and are ready to officially enter our first full year of business.

Since last year’s simple goals worked out pretty well, I think I’ll state my business goals for this year. In no particular order:

• WWDC
• C4
• Ship It!
• ?
• Profit!

(Hoo-boy, that joke never gets old.)

I have a couple dev-related posts I’ve been meaning to get out of my head which should be appearing soon. One of them will (if all goes as planned) include shared code I hope people will find useful.

Happy New Year!

Now, C4[2] opened registration and sold out while I was off on a weekend getaway. I hadn’t attended the previous two years, but was hoping to make it happen this year. There’s not much I can do about that except say “bummer” and look on the bright side: I had been very close to booking a flight and room when the dates were first announced, and I haven’t had to spend the day canceling reservations now.

What is the next Mac dev conference this year, and where should I set up my tent for the line?

Most significant is the new logo done by our friends at SkyCubeMedia. Thanks to Sky (and my wife’s initial sketch), I now have a site identity I can carry around (in the form of business cards) to WWDC.

Corporation Unknown will serve to track the course of my progress to an intended career as an independent Mac software developer. No, I don’t hate my job (even though it’s not Mac development), but I do feel that this is the long-term path to my career happiness and further success. We will track milestones on the way to launch, and share insights gained along the way–both in business and code.

Obviously, there is a product planned; it’s not Web 2.0, and it’s not going to change the world as you know it (in version 1.0, at least). It will be easier to use than what’s out there, yet more powerful at the same time–and I already have plans for more powerful future versions.

Let us begin…