Last nights IOS Development meetup in Belfast had two very interesting talks – totally different in character and delivery but both interesting in their subject matter. Hosted by Deloitte Digital in their nice dev space in the Gasworks on the Ormeau Road (Nice pizza – but go easy on the chillis – you could put someone’e eye out).
The first “Exploring the Possibilities with Apple Watch Apps” by “Whispering” Jack Spargo was an informed practical summary of life developing Watch apps with honest frank observations of when a Watch app is appropriate and the “do and donts” of how to approach a Watch app – either from your own perspective or when approached by a client who thinks “We need a watch app – how hard can it be?”.
The practical technicalities of starting a watch app development in Xcode – and his experience coming from “normal” IOS development and some of the misconceptions that developers bring to WatchOS development were covered. Specifically detailing what a watchOs can and can’t do (at this stage) was very useful and enlightening as I work my way through Maurice Kelly and Mark Goody’s book on WatchOs development .
Some examples of popular watch apps were shown as well as the code to get started and where various entry points are for the apps behaviour. A number of interesting practical questions about the development process were asked and answered before the “Call of the Pizzas” became too strong and a break was called. I personally could have listened to even more from Jack especially on some of the best practices on WatchOs development – but the Meetup only has a certain amount of time to run. Here’s hoping we get future talks from Jack !!
After a quick slice or two of hot (in multiple ways) pizza and a quick sip – we were treated to the second talk of the night on Realm. This talk – entitled “Can Realm replace Core Data?” was a rapid fire – to the point – firehose experience – direct injection of information (a la Matrix) about Kris Jone’s experience with the mobile platform and replacement for SQLite & Core Data. Covering the capabilities and strengths of Realm as an alternative to Core Data (which is a framework that you use to manage the model layer objects in your application and is provided by Apple for IOS development).
Among the main points were 1) the cross platform nature of the framework 2) the relative ease of use 3) the quality of documentation and 4) the fact that the platform is built from the ground up as a mobile platform and not general purpose.
Code abounded with examples of practical usage and the talk finished with a Q&A session with plenty of interesting questions from the developer audience. I also had a chance to grab a quick chat to discuss the practical implications of cloud persistence storage from apps using Realm and Core Data as well as some observations from Kris on what real developers do to provide server storage through nodeJS and databases like Postgres and others.
I found the talk very useful as I had come across references to Realm and its possible role in application development – after Kris’ talk I am far better informed. it was an enthusiastic, enjoyable and frank technical discussion of the options available to developers and I for one will certainly be taking a long hard long at Realm when developing.
On reflection a useful evening listening to two great speakers – heres hoping for more at future events – I can certainly think of several follow up subjects of interest from this meetup.