tvOS

Sidebar: 2015. Year 0 of the streaming revolution

Posted on by manitobaninja

For many years now there has been an endless parade of articles talking about the end of cable and the “inevitable” shift to content delivery via the internet and streaming. Often people lauded their own cord cutting experiences as they dropped Shaw or Comcast or Rogers in favor of Netflix and Hulu. Every time a major television content provider hinted at a possible change towards streaming it was held up high as further proof.

But, with the possible exception of HBO actually offering a pure digital subscription option, this has not played out as people expected. Sure there are lots of apps now for CBS and NBC or other channels that let you stream their content on your computer or over your TV. But they still require a cable subscription. So it is value added, but hardly a radical change by any means. The well entrenched cable and television producers, and distributors, have by and large balked at making this transition and spent their time trying to protect the status quo instead of moving forward.

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tvOS: Is this is a good choice for beginners?

Posted on by manitobaninja

After my last post on tvOS I started thinking about it from a beginners perspective and decided to write a few words about it. Up until a few months someone learning Swift would have most likely been doing so in order to get into iOS development, with a small number of those people interested in OSX development. Now, there is another reason someone might have the desire and will to learn Swift! While tvOS is, in a manner of speaking, an extension of iOS, and though they do share many similarities, there are enough differences between the two that even for someone who is already experienced in Swift for iOS there will be a learning curve to it.

There is a short answer to the question of whether this is a good choice for beginners, and it is no. But, you could still very well make tvOS your starting point. If you are willing to accept that, relative to learning iOS, you will have additional obstacles along the way  then there is nothing stopping you. So if you are genuinely interested in developing for tvOS, or just curious about what some of those challenges might be then by all means keep reading and I will tell you.

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tvOS: Never stop thinking about the couch

Posted on by manitobaninja

Last night, after my brain had given up on coding for the day, I decided to spend the rest of the night brainstorming apps ideas for tvOS. This was in large part brought on by having been in Toronto earlier this week for Apple’s tvOS Tech Talks. With the various discussions I heard still very much on my mind I let my imagination take over and see what it could come up with.

I won’t bore you with all the ideas I came up with and the resulting thinking around them and instead go straight to the end result; I came up with no good ideas. I didn’t even come up with okay ideas. Every idea hit a roadblock, be it technical or experience related.

At this point you might be thinking “Yeah great story. You told us nothing and the end result was fauilure. Thanks buddy”. Well just hang in there because it leads to a key point that I want to make about designing an app for tvOS.

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