Selfie Band V1.1 Released

Selfie Band version 1.1 is now live in the AppStore. You can download it here: Selfie Band

This update fixes the crash that occurs when your band has no remaining space for new tiles and you try to install the Selfie Band tile.

Users with auto-update turned on should get the new version automatically but if not you can follow the link above to get the latest version.

For users impacted by the crash, you should now get an appropriate warning when you try to install onto the Band and there is no remaining space.

Incremental Change

Applying Incremental Changes to Our House

A key to success with programming is learning to experiment and make incremental changes. Testing those increments is critical to understanding if your change achieved your goals or made wider reaching impacts than expected.

From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.


David Suzuki

Like evolution, our code evolves slowing as we add features, we break things, we fix things, and push for the release line. Many commits are required to build the bedrock of the apps we ship and the features our users take for granted.

Sometimes in the rush to ship we miss testing some of these changes. Like evolution, these missed increments can explode when they reach our customers.

I hit my first shipping crash in one of my apps in the AppStore this past week. In this case it was with Selfie Band, my camera remote for the Microsoft Band. Selfie Band tries to install the camera remote tile (it's app view) on it's paired Microsoft Band.

It looks like one user had a very bad experience when they ran into the bug. They tried repeatedly to get past the problem but it looks like they crashed multiple times during this. I know this since I use Crashlytics crash reporting in my apps.

The bug manifested itself when the Microsoft Band had no remaining space for tiles and returned an error. I had incorrectly changed some error handling code and forgot to retest it.

So, being in Swift, my null point access crashed the app instead of silently failing as many of us Objective-C programmers are used to.

It was a silly mistake and I have fixed it and shipped the update to the AppStore. I just need to pass review and the fix will be live.

This bug reminded me to slow down and verify that incremental changes don't lead to a crash.

The competing priorities to ship and to create quality software can be hard as an indie when you have no teammates looking over your shoulder to review your code. The end user will feel the brunt of your mistakes and so will the impression you give your customers.

For me here is how I am addressing this as the sole programmer:

• Commit often to git
• Review my checkin like I would someone else's code
• Why did you do this?
• Was it tested?
• Are there loose ends?
• Should this be committed or reworked/retested?
• Using branches to switch between features that I want to revisit
• Reevaluating a change when it gets too large

Don't let your incremental changes lead to explosive releases.

Launched! Selfie Band for Microsoft Band

Well, I finally completed an app (again) for the iOS AppStore and launched it. The app is called Selfie Band, a camera app for the iPhone which allows you to use a Microsoft Band as a remote control. Check out more about the app at the NewThistle Blog: Announcing Selfie App

You can also checkout the Selfie Band HomePage.

My first app was launched in 2009. My second app (with a team of 6 Cocoaheads from the Ottawa Cocoaheads) was launched in 2010.

Then I went to work for BlackBerry for a little under 4 years where the employment agreement included a non-compete clause that meant no apps in competing AppStores. Hence, I was a Mac OS X/iOS dev at BlackBerry but could not ship my own apps.

I left BlackBerry at the end of 2013 and hence that restriction was lifted. At first, my biggest problem was what to write?

When I joined the Microsoft Band team (as a contractor) there were no restrictions on releasing my own apps. In fact I have been encouraged since I work on the Public SDK and help third party developers integrate their apps with the Microsoft Band on iOS.

Selfie Band has been several months in the making, though it might not look like that to some. In that time I took on maybe too many after-hours activities. A couple include:

• Prepping and presenting 2 talks about the Microsoft Band SDK.
• Writing 3 Band Apps "almost" ready to ship.
• Starting no less than 4 other Microsoft Band Apps.
• Helped a pre-investment startup get an early prototype setup for initial integration with their Web API.

So, as time dragged on and I had not shipped anything I knew it was time to concentrate on one app, cut features and ship it. There are many things I would love Selfie Band 1.0 to have but shipping was more important than adding features users might never want/need.

About 5 weeks ago I put the final touches on Selfie Band and prepped for AppStore submission. After a month in review including one rejection, Selfie Band came out of review last Friday and it was left to me to hit Launch.

So, last night, at NSCoder I put the final pieces in place and Launched!

It feels good to be back in the AppStore with something new that I designed and wrote myself.

If you have a Microsoft Band and an iPhone then check out Selfie Band so you can take photos from your iPhone with your Band.