The need and desire for automation in our daily lives is constantly growing, and IFTTT is one of the main services you can use to link many different actions together. It’s probably the automation service for the web.

The only problem with things like this, is that it takes a while to get used to how it works, and also how to get the best out of it.

Luckily, Katie Floyd has written a great article explaining the fundamentals of IFTTT :

IFTTT, which is short for If This Then That, is a web-based service that allows users to create simple recipes to control web-connected devices and services. I’ve talked about IFTTT quite a bit on my podcast, but one of the comments I receive regularly is that people just don’t quite not how to get started, or aren’t sure how IFTTT can fit in their life. To help, I thought I’d give some basic examples of how I’m using IFTTT.

She covers linking home devices, getting notifications with certain triggers, and a few other examples.

Another really great app has come to the iPad, one which really enforces the reasoning that you can actually do real work on an iPad.

Continuous is a fully fledged .NET IDE for the iPad, made by Frank A. Krueger, which lets you program in C# 6 and F# 4. It has support for things like code highlighting, code completion, and even live code execution. It’s really feature packed.

It’s even more than just an IDE:

But it’s not “just an IDE”. I didn’t want it to simply be sufficient – I wanted it to be great. I also thought it was a nice time to push the state of the art in .NET IDEs a tad.

For ages compiled languages like C# and F# have forced a sequential development loop on programmers: the Code-Compile-Run-Test loop. We code something up, wait for it to compile, then wait for it to deploy and run, then we get to test it.

I hate waiting for compilation and deployment so I designed Continuous to minimize those steps. It does this by eagerly compiling your code – never waiting for you to tell it when to start. It runs your code as soon as those compiles complete successfully and displays the results of that execution right next to your code. Now you can focus on the code and the results of that code instead of being distracted by all the silly machinery of a compiler and IDE. – praeclarum.org

I won’t be using it myself, as I don’t use these languages. But I can totally see that this is a great app for other programmers, and also another big step for the iOS platform as a whole.

You can read more about Continuous, the reasoning behind the app, and also some more geeky details over at praeclarum.org.

If you want to check the app out, then you can buy it from the App Store for just £7.99! That’s really spectacular pricing for an app of this calibre.

There’s been a long time since I last thought about, or even heard about a Hackintosh. But according to Mike Rundle, they’re a lot easier to build, and his results were very impressive.

Here’s his reasoning:

A few weeks back, I was at a baseball game with a bunch of my wife’s coworkers when I started talking to a developer named Ian who said he just got done building a Hackintosh and it was amazing. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about the Hackintosh community in years, I actually forgot it was still a thing. Ian said the community was now organized around a website called TonyMacx86.com and it had hardware guides, build tutorials, forums, lots of updates, and had been extremely lively in the past 18 months or so as it’s now easier than ever to build a Hackintosh. When he told me how fast his custom Mac was (faster than any iMac and most Mac Pros), and how little it cost (around $1,200–1,300) it struck me as impossible. I know that Apple hasn’t updated their MacBook Pros or Mac Pros in a long time, and I know there’s an “Apple Tax” you pay when parts like RAM or a processor are included in an Apple-designed computer, but the more we talked about his build the more excited I became. It was as if someone told me, yeah, duh, of course there are flying cars, check out my flying car over in the parking lot. You want a flying car, too?

He goes into extreme detail about the process, what exact hardware he used (powerful stuff!), and also a few pointers. If you’re interesting in building a Hackintosh, or just curious what it’s like, then his post "Building My $1,200 Hackintosh" is a whopping 11 minute read.

Chris Evans has announced he is leaving his role as a presenter on Top Gear after one series.

It’s not at all surprising, and I’m not too bothered about it either.

Nilay Patel was the special guest on John Gruber’s The Talk Show podcast this week, and it’s by far my most favourite episode, ever.

Special guest Nilay Patel joins the show. Topics include The Verge and Recode (and the state of the media industry at large), what’s going on with the lack of updates to professional Mac hardware, and, of course, Apple’s purported removal of the headphone jack on the upcoming new iPhones. – The Talk Show

I always thought John and Nilay were way different people, probably because of the big difference between Daring Fireball and The Verge. But they killed it this episode.

There was loads of cool discussion on Apple and what could be going on regarding the upcoming announcements, talk on the headphone debacle, and also some other nerd stuff.

I always thought of The Talk Show as the really long podcast, that I only enjoy around 60% of the time. But this was amazing.

If you haven’t ever listed to The Talk Show, then I’d recommend starting with this episode – "Ep. 160 FRESH OUT OF PRISON"

9To5Mac have shared a few 3D renders of what a potential iPhone 7 would look like in Space Black. This comes after the previous rumours about a Deep Blue colour being added, but the same source has since reported that it was mistaken for a darker grey/black option.

The renders show an iPhone 7 in a dark, Space Black colour option. The antenna lines have also been redesigned in the renders, as has been rumoured will happen, while the camera module is also larger.

I absolutely love the idea of having at least a near-black iPhone again, Space Grey just isn’t dark enough for me. It also adds more reason for a dark theme in iOS!

I also wish that this Space Black colour (if it would be called that), be added to their range of MacBooks, as I’m a strong admirer of the BlackBook.

The renders were done by Martin Hajek, and you can find loads more on his blog.

I was asked by David Sparks recently if I would like to do a Home Screen feature for MacSparky, and I couldn’t turn it down!

This week’s home screen features Christopher Hannah (Website) (Twitter). Christopher developed my favorite Wikipedia app for the Mac, Qwiki. Qwiki puts Wikipedia in my search bar and I use it all the time. You should check it out. So Christopher, show us your home screen.

Check it out on MacSparky!

A few days ago Spotify claimed to be discriminated against, this was because the latest version of the Spotify app was rejected by the App Review process.

They claimed all kinds of things (ReCode):

Spotify says Apple is “causing grave harm to Spotify and its customers” by rejecting an update to Spotify’s iOS app.

“It continues a troubling pattern of behavior by Apple to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music

Apple have since replied to Spotify with a lengthy letter, which you can read in full at BuzzFeed.

We have always believed that competition makes us all better. It drives the best products and services for our customers. We’ve invested i a tremendous amount so developers have the best ecosystem for creating and distributing apps. You know this because Spotify has profited greatly from your use of the App Store we developed.

Our investment in the App Store is not trivial – any great retailer will tell you there is an incredible amount of effort that goes into maintaining their store. However, if a customer chooses to sign up for a digital product outside of the App Store, the developer does not pay us anything, and their content will still work on Apple devices. To imply that Spotify should not have to pay to avail itself of the benefits of Apple’s hard work, just as every other developer does, would give you a tremendous advantage over other developers. It’s simply unfair and unreasonable.

I’m completely on Apple’s side for this one.

It’s the rules that every other developer has to follow, so why should Spotify be any different? Also if Spotify aren’t using the built-in subscriptions/in-app purchases to manage the subscriptions, then what are they providing Apple? They get to use the App Store infrastructure, but they don’t want to give anything back?

Well, I’m glad I’m an Apple Music subscriber.

I’m currently writing this post while traveling home from seeing the latest X-Men film^[1]. I’ve got an exam tomorrow, at 10am to be exact. But for some reason I’m not that interested in it.

That’s what I’ll be writing about today, my current lack of interest in my university qualification. It just isn’t interesting me anymore.

It started last year in my first year of university, because the lessons were easy, but it was my first year at university. So I put this down to the fact I had experience in programming before, and maybe it would get harder. Also because it was fun getting straight A grades with very little work.

Now as I’m finishing my second year, with just tomorrow’s exam left. I’ve found it more than boring. I’ve noticed that we’ve been learning parts of Computer Science that just isn’t needed. For example for the second half of my Advanced Programming module, we had to create a website using Java Web, along with JavaDB in the backend. That’s terrible. No one uses, or should use Java Web to create websites.

There’s also the fact that we’re also being taught the stupid parts of Networking, Not networking that could be useful or interesting. But one bit of coursework was for us to use a really old bit of software to simulate a network, that uses various messages between nodes. We didn’t get taught any of the knowledge needed to do this, so I’m still unaware what any of it meant. We were just given a tutorial for the software, and we just had to follow it. Then submit it. That’s not learning.

Software Engineering is potentially important to some people, maybe for future project managers, or people who generally want to manage other people. I want to just do work. Whether it’s developing an app, or working on a website, I don’t care what methodology my project is using. It’s pure semantics.

So as you can see after my second year of university, I’m just bored.

And even though the modules aren’t interesting, the lecturers could at least try to make it so. Or maybe even challenge us in a way that wants us to do well. Rather than simply reading out a PowerPoint presentation that we can simply access ourselves.

I don’t need even think that they know what they’re teaching half the time, as many students have asked questions based on lectures. They just point them towards someone else. One example that shocked me, was when we were learning some basic UNIX commands. They use a single Linux machine that we all log on to. I decided to use the wall command^[2], and some people found it a bit funny, while someone else thought their “terminal had been hacked”. The shocking bit was, when they informed the lecturer about it, they responded with “Hmm.. This seems very serious, we’re going to have to look into this”. Not once did they ask the class about it, for which I would of happily admitted it was me. And then probably laughed. Or did they notice that the message had been prepended with my University username.

It’s little things like that, that makes me less interested in getting a degree, and more on how I’m going to make a living afterwards. The degree isn’t worth anything really, apart from a massive amount of debt that I will have to pay back when I earn decent money.

But anyway, I have a lecture in about 9 hours, so I better be going to bed.

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1. It was X-Men Apocalypse, and it was pretty good! I’m not a die hard fan of X-Men, so maybe that worked in my favour. But overall it will be one of the best films that I see this year. ↩︎

2. You use it along with a string of text, which sends that message to all logged on users. In this example it was about 15 students. ↩︎

I’ve started working on a new app. It’s a Wikipedia search app for Mac, called Qwiki. At the minute it lets you search for an article, and quickly access that page in your browser.

It’s only been in development for a few days, so it’s nowhere near the end product.

I plan on adding loads more features, such as copying the link (including Markdown style), and the standard share sheet. I think I will also add in an option to view the content of the article directly in the app, but I’ve got to work out how I want to do that.

But even though it’s super early days for Qwiki, I’ve made the beta open to the public, so that I can get as much feedback as possible.

So if you’ve got a Mac and it runs OS X 10.10 or higher, then you can test out Qwiki!

You can give feedback through Hockey, or direct to me on Twitter at @chrishannah.