Episode 5: Dringend With Josh Garnham

Name: Goodpods
Rating: 4.8 (3721 reviews)

04/24/14 • 27 min

Josh Garnham joins me to talk about his app Dringend. Dringend is an iOS development environment for the iPad, the lets you create, edit, build and run Xcode Projects right on your iPad.

Josh started out as a Mac developer, but eventually found he preferred developing for iOS.

Josh started to learn how to make Mac apps about 5 years ago from a simple book he quickly outgrew. He then continued by rolling up his sleeves and jumping right into the code, using StackOverflow as his go to place for questions along the way. After a few years developing for the Mac he decided to try out the iOS side of things. Josh told me he soon preferred developing for iOS and has continued to do so since. In his free time, he also enjoys the odd episode of Star Trek and Mythbusters as well as spending some time on a Flight Simulator.

Write code, build it, and test run it right from the comfort of your favorite armchair, all on your iPad.

Dringend is an app development environment for the iPad. You can create and edit complete Xcode projects and source files right on your iPad. Dringend offers all the same project templates, color themes, and source code syntax highlights available in Xcode. Lastly, as if this wasn't already cool enough, Dringend uses Dropbox and a Mac on your network running the free companion app, The Constructor, to actually compile and test run the app right on the same iPad, using your developer account credentials.

Josh's App Story talks about how he was inspired to simply be able to make quick revisions to existing code, that grew to be so much more.

Josh told me Dringend began life simply as a code editor using Core Text at it’s roots, but over the time of development this changed to use TextKit (as of iOS 7). The ability to import and navigate Xcode projects was added along the way with all the other key features we see today including remote building (which in itself had many incarnations).

Contact Links:

Support Josh & the show by using this link to get Dringend on the App Store

Dringend on the App Store

Additional links:

If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.

If you are enjoying App Story, please consider reviewing/rating it in iTunes. I'd also love to hear your feedback and to know how you found the show. Please feel free to use the twitter links and let me know!

Thanks so much for your support!

Josh Garnham joins me to talk about his app Dringend. Dringend is an iOS development environment for the iPad, the lets you create, edit, build and run Xcode Projects right on your iPad.

Josh started out as a Mac developer, but eventually found he preferred developing for iOS.

Write code, build it, and test run it right from the comfort of your favorite armchair, all on your iPad.

Josh's App Story talks about how he was inspired to simply be able to make quick revisions to existing code, that grew to be so much more.

Contact Links:

Support Josh & the show by using this link to get Dringend on the App Store

Dringend on the App Store

Additional links:

If you're an indie developer and you'd like to tell your app's story on the show, click here.

Thanks so much for your support!

Previous Episode

Episode 4: Unread With Jared Sinclair

Jared Sinclair Joins me to discuss his wildly popular RSS client Unread. Unread is one of my favorite apps and having Jared on the show was a real pleasure.

Jared Sinclair started learning app development while working as an ICU nurse.

Jared is an independent iOS app designer and developer. He's made several apps, including RSS reader Unread, and popular App.net client Riposte. He started developing as a hobby while working as an ICU nurse, and made his first app called Pill Boxie, a medication reminder. He was lucky enough to get noticed and featured by Apple and good things began to happen for him. Later during a family relocation he took the opportunity to try his hand at going indie and developing full time, which has been very successful for him. He currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and son.

Unread makes reading your feeds delightful again.

Unread is a beautiful Post Google Reader RSS client. It offers support for many popular feed syncing services. Jared has sweated lots of details to come up with a beautifully designed, well performing reader app. With a goal of changing the way he used RSS from a simple triage for a read later list he never revisited, he created an app that makes reading a carefully curated list of feed articles right inside the app delightful again.

Jared's App Story details some of the challenges he overcame to present RSS in a modern way.

In his app story he tells us all about his clever efforts to get the main article list to display correctly and perform as the user would expect. He goes into great detail to explain some of the pitfalls and the clever solutions he came up with overcome them. He also goes into detail about his unique blend using both Core Data and SQLite to manage the data set for Unread. Leveraging each where applicable he was able to use them each where their strengths lie, and avoid the weaknesses they have that would have adverse performance impacts. He finishes by telling us how he abstracted the different sync services so adding and removing them as needed will be no sweat in the future.

Contact Links:

Support Jared & the show by using these links to get his apps on the App Store

Additional links:

App Story is now a proud member of Fiat Lux.

Find more great shows like this at FiatLux.fm

Next Episode

Episode 6: Simple In/Out With Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald

Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald, two of the original founders of Simply Made Apps, join me to talk about creating Simple In/Out, and launching their company from it.

Bill & Brandon became friends on the golf course and discovered they had complimentary skill sets and a shared idea.

Bill is a self taught iOS developer. He started toying with iOS development around the launch of iOS 3, and got serious with it when they had an idea for a service they wanted to create. Brandon comes from long established a web development background in a variety of languages. Since discovering Ruby On Rails, he is now primarily focused on Ruby. They met and became friends on the golf course. After playing several weekend games, they realized they had some complimentary skill sets. Together with another friend who was interested in Android development, they began looking for ideas they could work on together. Today when they are not discussing business plans with their laptops over beers they still enjoy golfing in their spare time.

Simple In/Out provides an excellent In/Out service with no manual action required by the users. The smart phones people already carry with them do all the checking in & out for them.

Simple In/Out is a digital in/out board platform, on the web, with client applications for the major smart phone platforms. By utilizing geofences, and now also iBeacons on iOS 7, these client apps take care of all the checking in and out automatically. By utilizing the apps on smart phones and doing the checking in and out automatically the system is free from the common pitfalls and inaccuracies of most physical in/out boards. Simple In/Out is now deployed and used in a wide variety of profesional, non profit, and personal environments. If you have a need to track who is in and out of a given location at any given time, there is simply no better system. Checking in and out is just the tip of the iceberg with Simple In/Out. They also offer advanced reporting and even full screen web interfaces perfect for big screen integration to your office. They also have the Front Desk iPad app designed to sit in on a front desk or accessible area so users can quickly check themselves in or out as they come and go, as well as see who is in and out. It can even be configured as an iBeacon for the service.

Bill & Brandon's App Story tells how a few guys with an idea, and $100 each, built a set of apps, a service, an API enabled platform, and eventually a small business capable of providing a few jobs.

Feeling frustration with the limitations of magnetic In/Out Boards, a system commonly used to track employees in and out of the office, and the then current software implementations, led them to decide to try and make the Simple In/Out service. Three guys each threw in $100 to launch the company and over a beer fueled weekend they put their noses to the grind stone to build their first prototype of the app and backing web service. The Simple In/Out app was born and Simply Made Apps grew with it. They stay on top of the changing tech landscape, and with tips and suggestions from a great user base, they continue to add new features when they fit the platform, while still maintaining it's core simplicity. They eventually became successful enough, that now they even provide a few jobs to their community in Fargo North Dakota. They grew all this from the original $300 personal investment with no external funding.

Contact Links:

Support Simply Made Apps & the show by using this link to get Simple In/Out on the App Store: