Thursday, March 22, 2012

Prototyping with App Cooker

I recently started a new project that requires a considerable amount of form entry on the iPad. The notion of using IB to mock up the UI seemed daunting, so I decided to look for prototyping alternatives. After an hour of digging around on the net and reading reviews I settled on App Cooker.

First impressions are important. If I don't get comfortable with a tool in the first 30 minutes of use then I probably never will. App Cooker did not disappoint. In no time I felt like an old pro. Building mockups is easy and intuitive. App Cooker provides easy access to most of your iOS widgets and views. It's easy to chain pages together so users can step through your prototype and see how the app should flow. The demo mode is simple yet effective.

App Cooker provides a lot of functionality beyond just prototyping that I have not had a chance to use. But even without those features it's a great tool .. one that I can easily recommend.

Monday, March 19, 2012

What's new, iPad?

So I got the "new" iPad on Friday. It's pretty .. very pretty. And coming from a first gen iPad it also seems very, very fast. I've had the opportunity lately to do some iOS development at my day job, so I think it makes sense to immerse myself with iOS. First impressions have been good. At this point I still can't see myself dropping the MacBook entirely. After all, I can't run Xcode on my iPad. But for most day-to-day tasks it works surprisingly well.

Balance

Someone suggested I need to blog more. I agree. It's time to rebalance my priorities and find more time for the simple things .. like blogging. So, stay tuned for updates!