Many older-but-new-to-me links this week. Enjoy!

iOS Dev

TestFlight + Burstly = TestFlight Live // Everybody’s favorite beta-testing solution got acquired. They also launched the first analytics service that rivals Gaug.es in gorgeousness. I regret not having included the TestFlight SDK in v1.0 of my iPhone app, Memento.

Why Objective-C is Hard to Learn (Ash Furrow) // “When learning Objective-C, it’s not just a language or a framework or a runtime or a compiler, it’s all of these things.”

What iOS Should Learn from Android and Windows 8 // Ole Begemann wishing for contracts and content sharing. And, in a similar vein, Lukas Mathis reflects on “documents” as an OS concept.

Fix Radar or GTFO // “As developers for Apple platforms, we encounter bugs or want features. As good developers we know we should file reports with Apple. Unfortunately this means we have to use the dreaded Radar, an awkward and painful experience. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Dangerous Cocoa Calls (Mike Ash, Friday Q&A) // From 2009 but worth re-visiting. As an example, I prefer NSTimer over -performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: because I find it describes my intention at a higher level of abstraction, but I have made both mistakes (dangling pointers and retain cycles) over the past two years.

Taking control of your reviews (July 2011) // Santiago Lema with sound advice on “getting more reviews, getting less bad reviews, getting useful feedback”. I might try it out for the upcoming version of Memento. (via Alex Curylo)

Inspiration

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability (TED, June 2010) // Inspiring talk about “wholehearted people”: Making yourself vulnerable by putting yourself out there is simply necessary.

Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity (TED, May 2011) // Improv Everywhere pranks bring joy and a sense of living into urban people’s lives for a few minutes.

A Christmas Message From America’s Rich (Rolling Stone, Dec 2011) // “What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.”

No Bitter Aftertaste From This Stock Offering (NY Times) // Hats off to the chuzpe of Jim Koch, who IPO’d his Boston Beer Company the way he believed was right: “He sold shares at two prices. Some went to his customers, who, in a startling reversal, got a better deal than Wall Street insiders … ‘I care about beer drinkers, not wine-drinking fund managers. You don’t really matter to me.’”