TheFuture

Wouldn't it make more sense if the nearby items themselves were broadcasting iBeacons? I think this is what Apple intends to do with the protocol.

Because standalone iBeacons to trigger geofences is not what I believe Apple intends to use them for. This is what Estimote is selling.

Sure the geofence triggering is kinda cool, but I've yet to see a practical use of it. Seems like "interactive museum tour" is the thing everyone keeps coming back to. If this is what Apple wanted to do with iBeacons, they would be selling them for a couple bucks in Apple Stores. But iBeacons aren't a consumer device. I think much more likely to see "iBeacon ready" hardware sold by Apple and other 3rd parties.

I think iBeacon protocol will become part of other devices, as a way to add proximity detection for the iPhone/apps that could interact with that device.

How about a DSLR camera that I can pair with by touching my iPhone to it? Creating ad-hoc multi-peer networks between devices by being near them. Play a game on your phone on a nearby TV without connecting to same WiFi. Or wearables knowing which other wearables are nearby. This kind of natural, "magical" interaction is very Apple.

If you're sweating the cost of buying a Mac and the annual $100 developer fee, are you really planning to run a profitable business? Those costs should be the least of your concerns.

The market rate for investment bankers is more attractive than my job. Doesn't mean I can just be an investment banker tomorrow. Or a nurse.

If I live comfortably on my basic income doing whatever, how do I become qualified to work? Remember we have college grads who aren't qualified to work, and they've spent their entire lives being educated.

That's right, it's still Bush's fault.

We're in Obama's 2nd term, this is getting old.

Patriot act was overwhelming supported by Republicans AND Democrats when passed. Let's not rewrite history here.

The more we learn about the Obama admin, the worse it gets. This isn't a R vs D thing.

The big assumption that everyone tends to make when talking about public education is that the politicians, school boards, principals, and teachers are advocates for students.

Sure, some of them are, but the vast majority of them are looking out for themselves. (I don't blame then, the system pushes them to this) They're making decisions on what will be best for their situation, and they are not really held directly accountable to those they serve, the students.

If anyone has tried to fight the system (like the author), they quickly realize this. And the only effective way I've seen to balance the power is school choice vouchers. Otherwise you're condemned by your zipcode unless you're wealthy enough to afford private school tuition.

Having done this stuff for about 15 years now, it is amazing how much of your work is scrapped in 5 years or less.

If you're writing some deep enterprise level back-end stuff that is going to be integrated in a large, expensive system, obviously it really is worthwhile to do it right.

If you're cranking out another piece of shit marketing website, or even better, anything app or mobile related, no matter how much planning and testing and pride you put in to it, it is almost always completely worthless in a couple years.

Everything is changing so fast right now, the platform, device, language, database, etc, may not even exist in 5 years. 5 years! That's a hell of a depreciation schedule for a $200k project.

You can have multiple prices of subscription IAP. You just can't do an auto-renew IAP subscription. They only seem to allow magazines to do that.

There is a video from WWDC 2012 where they go through each kind of IAP. Worth watching for what you want to do.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2012/?id=308

"* Due to App Store's restrictions, only Freelancer is available for in app purchase"

Anyone know why that is?

Why can't we just build new, safer nuclear power like India, China, Japan, and basically everyone else are building right now? Whoops, the left has demonized nuclear power so much in this country that people fear it more than coal!

It always sounds great to be "investing" in infrastructure or energy or whatever. But pols don't invest, they cater to voting blocks. Politics can't solve these problems.

Reality is a sad place right now. People are so scared of it, they're willing to believe anything just to not have to think about what's going to happen when the music stops.

RIM bailout? That one I would believe.

Open government? Wow, I remember that one from 4 years ago.

Skilled immigration? They don't vote for Dems. Unskilled immigration is all he cares about.

Pour more money into failing "green" tech. Yes, let's build more Chevy Volts filled with toxic batteries.

Seriously, there is no tech agenda from this pres.

If you can't afford to just buy a real iPad mini, you're not really serious about developing and testing on the device.

Yeah, none of us are using Microsoft Word any more.

Ever print anything from Google Docs? Look at the typography. Look at the letter spacing and kerning. It's a joke.

And don't even get me started on javascript.

I like to use word processing as an example because it's probably been the #1 client app for 40 years with no web app competitor even close. I would argue 1992 WordPerfect is better than Google Docs in quality, features, and reliability.

The last decade of software development has been focused on web apps, and the promise that it's write-once-run-everywhere. So we've all been suffering by taking a huge step backwards in UI/UX by shoving everything in a browser.

It is just not there. So you can keep struggling with your ugly javascript hacks and unsupported CSS quirks. But the best stuff is being made on the client right now. It's cleaner, easier to maintain code, and the UI/UX is delighting users. User's don't care about cross-platform.

Bold? They're losing money like crazy. Advertisers haven't been paying the rates they need to survive for almost a decade.

It was bold to keep printing and mailing the thing for the last 5 years as it became absolutely clear that printing news on paper has no future at all.

I'm surprised that so many major daily newspapers are still being printed today. That shoe is going to drop any month now.

Actually, I've been considering how to do this for my next app.

Not split testing the sale price though, it will be free. (It's just too hard to get people to buy an app outright) I want to split test in-app purchases. I think this should be fairly straightforward to implement. The only downside is in the app store 2 different items would show as top in-app purchases with different prices. People might be upset about that, but I doubt anyone would notice.

My point was more how as programmers, the emotional toll of everything that we're making will be destroyed, usually in only a few years.

Yes, we're paid. But it's hard to have satisfying work when the result you produce becomes worthless. It would be like spending 12 months carving a beautiful piece of furniture out of wood, get paid $100k for your work, and then handing it to the owner who lights it on fire right in front of you.

So true. Just crushed me...

All the African nations have huge birthrates

http://populationpyramid.net/Niger/2020/

10-15yrs from now that is a big workforce.

I too am having lots of doubts on responsive design. I've yet to see an example of a significantly popular and non-trivial website implement responsive in a convincing way.

Anyone arguing that "they're just doing a bad responsive design" I think it missing the point. Responsive almost means it has to be bad in some way, because it is a compromise of design between 2 very different devices, not just in screen size but in use cases.

The "right" approach, is the same thing we've been taught for 50 years, separating code from presentation. Building a robust API for your backend data makes the front-end presentation much easier and cheaper, so you can afford to make front-ends tailored for whatever you need.

It's the glittering lure of write-once run-everywhere.

Devs still fall for it, even though we should know better.

I'm here, it is.

At least certain parts are. There's about a 4sqmi area that almost certainly someone will be murdered in this weekend. Maybe a few. Shootings almost every day. If they're even reported.

Is there a single Republican/conservative in any elected position in Milwaukee?

I realize that the city elections are technically non-partisan, but there are clearly no conservatives in positions of power here.

The only cities Milwaukee would be more conservative than (in WI) would be Madison and possibly Racine. All you have to do is look at the results from the recall election to see that Madison and Milwaukee are the 2 centers of liberal votes.

That said, you are absolutely correct, the division is segregation, not conservatism. The overt racism against whites (by blacks) has gotten violent in the last decade. There is a large Hispanic population here too, while it does have Mexican gang problems, that part of the city is far far safer than the black parts. Lots of Hispanic business in Milwaukee are thriving, plenty of white people as customers. You won't see many whites on the north side unless they're cops.

> small riot between blacks/whites after the state fair

Uh, that's one way to describe it.

A large group of black teenagers/20-somes started fighting with each other and then just started jumping white people, beating on them, then moving on to the next victim.

A similar scene took place after July 4th fireworks were several white people were beaten and a convenience store trashed.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/126828998.html

App Store profit for Apple is a rounding error on their balance sheet.

Selling phones (and tablets) that can do amazing and powerful tasks is what makes Apple money. That's why they have invested so much into creating the iOS SDK, to enable developers. It is a fantastic platform, elegant and powerful that leverages their hardware.

If Apple could have gotten that same quality of software with web apps, why wouldn't they have chosen that as the platform and immediately have had millions of web devs ready to build for their mobile OS?

What the HTML5 evangelists fail to admit, is that HTML5+JS+CSS is a damn mess. We've been hearing for 10+ years how web apps are the cross-platform silver bullet. It's not.

Same here. Well worth spending $20 on wrist braces just to try.

Every market is different, but there is a lot of housing supply in most of the US, prices are depressed and lending rates are the lowest they'll probably ever be in our lifetime.

I have a couple friends (from our generation) who are buying up duplexes. They can live upstairs and rent the lower and nearly cover their mortgage from the rent income. They are living for free and banking the savings for the down-payment on the next duplex.

Seems incredibly smart to me. You have a generation of people who've convinced themselves not to buy a house, driving up rents and driving down home prices. You can borrow money for next to free to buy those assets and rent them.

Even if you don't want to be a landlord, you can get a mortgage payment that is less than rent. Sure you have debt, but rent is just burning money every month. Even if your home declines in value, it probably won't lose as much value as you'd have paid in rent, so you're basically breaking even.

> I don't plan on ever giving up the pace and energy of the metropolis

Until you have kids, and you see how most urban school districts are run. This is the same reason our parents left the city and moved to the burbs. Things are not really as different now as we think.

Though now there is a huge opportunity to reduce the cost and drastically improve K12 education. If our generation can break the entrenched bureaucracy of public education, then I would say urbanization in the US could be more than a consequence of Gen Y being poor and delaying starting a family.

Also think about how much easier it is to buy used vehicles. All the car buying websites have changed the auto sales industry in the last 10 years. The used car market is much bigger now and more selection, meanwhile consumers are more informed as ever on the value of new cars.

Though as much as the article talks about cultural preferences of Gen Y, I think the "cheapness" is being driven solely by Gen Y having no money. Sure you can say you don't need your car as a status symbol, but if you were making 40% more in salary and didn't have $100k in student debt, you'd get a nicer car.

We all entered college as tuition skyrocketed and yet the real value of a degree is shrinking, and we all graduated into a decade of zero economic growth. We're masking our (relative) poverty by being content with all are parents old used stuff and calling it "cool".