Thunderbolt Audio Interfaces From Apogee and Universal Audio

Apogee Symphony 64 Thunderbolt:

The latest addition to the Symphony I/O module line-up, the 16x16 Analog I/O Module allows you to pack 32 channels of premium Apogee conversion into one Symphony I/O (two module spaces per chassis). No other audio interface delivers this much quality input and output or value in a single 2U rack space interface.

Apogee is well known in audio recording, so this is really exciting if you’re into that. Universal Audio also announced a new Thunderbolt audio interface called Apollo that looks awesome for project studios. Even if you have no interest in high-end audio gear, if you’re a Mac user, it’s exciting to see device makers of this caliber start using Thunderbolt.

(via The Loop)

xScope 3

I’ve used xScope whenever I’ve done user interface work for the past couple of years, and it’s indispensable. My favorite new part of xScope 3 is that it shows more of the info I want for iOS and Mac development (colors especially), without any conversion. The new iOS-centric templates in the Screens view look really useful also. If buy now you can get xScope on the Mac App Store for only $19.99.

Slender for Mac and iOS Developers

My friend Kyle Richter has released his new app, Slender. It’s a simple and attractive way for iOS and Mac developers to figure out things like which images in your app are unused, or are missing their 1x or 2x sized counterpart. It’s only $4.99 on the Mac App Store, and I can already tell I’m going to use it on every app I write in the future.

360|MacDev 2012

360|MacDev is in a few weeks, and if you write — or want to write — Mac software, you should be going. You may be more familiar with John’s other conference, 360iDev. These conferences are at the top of a short list of ones I never miss. John and Nicole work hard to get great speakers, make sure everything goes smoothly and create an amazing environment. I’m pretty sure they’re they’re the hardest working people in the conference business.

I’ll be giving a talk on making apps work better and be faster by using Core Data, GCD and using good app design. I’m also looking forward to the other talks: Brent Simmons is going to teach the secrets of creating successful Mac apps, Dave Wiskus will bring us inside the brain of a good designer, Kyle Richter will get all of the iOS developers up to speed and Mike Lee will once again do something amazing that I can never predict until it happens.

So join us in beautiful Denver Colorado, February 3rd & 4th — it’s a crazy amount of content for only $300. Register now if you haven’t already.

Why Brent is Trying Bing

It wasn’t the crap, it was losing trust:

Running a search at Google was starting to feel like walking through a minefield. I’ve trained myself to be careful where I click, because I might step on a +1 explosive or get blown to bits by surprise double-chevrons.

But I still used Google search, because I trusted the search. Now I don’t.

For any company, users trust is a hard thing to gain, and once lost nearly impossible to get back. I think if you’re a company who has it, you should do everything you can to keep it, and never assume your users have nowhere else to go.