Friday 23 November 2018

Expandability in Mobile App

Ok, your apps getting a huge success you want to update, expand your app. Let say going to version 2.0.

Meanwhile, you are developing the 2.0 version, think about whats for people using version 1.x.

First of all the important for the backend to support the legacy app gracefully, we want user to update to the latest app but not all people are yet to make move yet, so gracefully, do something nessecary to make sure previous user still be able to not having bad UX, such crashes. Tell user to update it.

On the backend side, we will use versioning to maintain old and new API. It looks like this https://myawesomeservice.com/api/v2/newCall. So the old app will use v1. This way to help to avoid regression to the old API.

Another thing push notifications. When we already have actual users on the market, we cannot do blasting to all users when testing the push notifications, we have to test it for tester only like ourselves. The new push notification handling also may be different from the old one, so bear in mind how to do it properly.

All in all, we want to make sure the old users understand they need to update the app to work properly as the business is growing.




Friday 2 November 2018

Hello November!

It's November, it's the month of my birthday!

So we are almost at the end of the year, let's reflect and predict what will be going to the future of mobile computing.

Apple released new incredible 2018 iPad Pro. It has the almost edge-to-edge display, no home button, all gesture based, and also using True Depth camera for Face ID authentication. All those stuff are inherited from last year iPhone X. And this year iPhone also updated for XR, XS, and XS Max.

We see the trend already, no home button is the future, and gesture will become more common in the user interface. Inside there 'fluidity' is an important factor for a wonderful gesture-based UI.

It's more into the software and how would the OS optimize the gesture.

The iPad now spotted a new USB-C, no longer uses Lightning cable. If you may, It almost becomes like a MacBook, without the keyboard. I know Surface have already done that.

But unlike Surface, iPad doesn't bring the baggage of legacy PC world. iPad comes fresh.

iPad software will become important as it can be ported easily soon in 2019 where Apple will open up a new framework that can share the UI element between iPad and Mac. People called it Marzipan project but let's assume it's called as UXKit. 

UIKit for AppKit become UXKit. 

Not only from iPad, but iPhone app can be ported to Mac app easier soon. And, the Mac is in the making for the next revolution. 

Mac-based on iOS. 

Is that possible? Will take significant time. But once it gets there Apple has a total control from silicon to the software just like iOS devices do.

But lets imaging future's MacOS based on iOS, I think it will be the next decade plan, where the iOS app is good enough to replace Mac app. Look at this, the architecture of mobile and Mac is different, the efficiency is different.

The way that the system based on mobile is really optimized and energy aware. And bring that to Mac level will unconsciously make the Mac better performance.

I am also thinking to build an iPad app, and later on to port to the Mac. Because Apple has it's own ecosystem that can be well played together.

Till then, always be happy.