@_DavidSmith

Independent iOS developer. Independent in general. Maker of Widgetsmith, Pedometer++, Sleep++ and Watchsmith.

 šŸ‡¬šŸ‡§
david-smith.org
Joined June 2009
  • Tweets11K
  • Following298
  • Followers27.7K
1.3KMedia
I just got back from a 3 day, 61 mile hiking trip in the Scottish Highlands testing the ļ£æWatch Ultra. Overall I was very impressed. It retains what makes the regular Apple Watch so good, while pushing out the edges of what it can handle. Review/Video: david-smith.org/blog/2022/09ā€¦
36
33
3
413
The best place right now to follow what Iā€™m working on and what Iā€™m learning is my blog (david-smith.org/) where Iā€™m writing a daily diary of my design and development process (just posted my 7th entry). Iā€™m also now on Mastodon, just in case. mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith

David Smith (@[email protected])

2.18K Posts, 327 Following, 17.7K Followers Ā· Independent app developer. Independent in general. Maker of Widgetsmith, Pedometer++, Sleep++ and Watchsmith.

mastodon.social
3
3
58
Design Notes diary #6 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12ā€¦ Better graph scrolling, adding colored confetti in SwiftUI and an unexpected difference between iOS 16.1 and 16.2.
2
6
28
Design Notes Diary #5 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12ā€¦ My process for capturing issues with my apps in development and designing a better system for scaling my step count graphs.
5
1
21
Design Notes Diary #4 david-smith.org/blog/2022/12ā€¦ Doing some design work on my Live Activitiesā€¦and pondering the question. To Notch or not To Notch.
7
1
19
Design Notes Diary #1 david-smith.org/blog/2022/11ā€¦ More experiments with the Workout Screen.
2
1
25
Design Notes Diary #1 david-smith.org/blog/2022/11ā€¦ Iā€™m trying a new approach to sharing my development process in a way that takes more ownership of the content, lessens my dependence on Twitter and hopefully increases the depth of the insight. A daily design/development diary.
5
3
56
Joking, not joking. My philosophy for navigating the delicious Thanksgiving/Christmas season comes from this clip of the Whoop podcast. Iā€™m not overeating. Iā€™m ā€œputting my body into a great state for building muscleā€. Turning pumpkin pie into šŸ’ŖšŸ». šŸ¤£ overcast.fm/+PsPA5HivE
2
3
18
The only little block of code Iā€™m especially proud of writing was this little hack to prevent the badge on Pedometer++ from getting truncated. I worked out that if there were at least two ā€œ1ā€s digits in the number it was narrow enough to fully display. david-smith.org/blog/2017/07ā€¦
11
10
2
262
It looks like the Apple Watch Ultra is selling very well. Essentially keeping pace with the 45mm Series 8, and actually outselling the 41mm amongst Pedometer++ users. [For context the most used model right now is 44mm Series 6 at 11%, followed by 38mm Series 3 at 10%]
1
3
39
I had the idea for a ā€œfuturisticā€ analog watch face. Something that would look at home on a star shipā€™s navigational display. The red is hours, blue is minutes, yellow is seconds.
7
31
5
490
If you are curious what building something like this looks like, here is a 50x sped up recording of the 47 minutes it took to create.
1
7
2
134
Reading about the FTX collapse, and I just canā€™t get this line from Henry IV out of my mind: ā€œā€¦commit the oldest sins in the newest kind of waysā€¦ā€ Henry IV Part 2, ACT IV, Scene V.
2
30
Is there a more productive way to spend my morning than digging out my old high school physics equations to build a SwiftUI rain drop simulator so that the droplets can accurately bounce off the clock hands? Almost Certainly. Is there a more fun way to spend my morning? Nope! šŸ˜
30
51
6
978
And as is so often the case with explorations like this, some of the ā€œfailuresā€ actually end up being super interesting and fun. One of them ended up turning the rain drops into bubbles that popped when they hit the hands.
5
3
95
Now that the new Apple Weather app is on the Mac, iPad and Lock Screen, why not bring it to the Apple Watch? I think its graphical approach of showing the conditions with animated backgrounds would make for a delightful watch face. & of course I had to try and prototype it šŸ˜‡
34
102
28
1,354
Those videos were made by adapting the truly excellent tutorial @twostraws did on Hacking with Swift+. If you arenā€™t a subscriber, then I canā€™t commend it to you highly enough. Iā€™ve learned like 70% of my practical, foundational SwiftUI knowledge from him hackingwithswift.com/plus/reā€¦

Hacking with Swift+

Subscribe to Hacking with Swift+ and get advanced Swift tutorials to help take your career to the next level.

hackingwithswift.com
2
7
73
You know I just realized that the Studio Display & XDR have automatic rotation detection, so Apple could probably include a little utility for leveling your monitor. A virtual bubble level that pops up when it detects you are rotating it back and forth.
4
1
1
59
Whenever I share my ideas/builds of watch faces, Iā€™m asked where you can get them. Sadly the App Review Guidelines specifically forbid shipping anything that vaguely approximates a watch face. Which since they canā€™t be installed as actual faces is really quite reasonable[cont]
5
3
1
30
So why do I share them, you ask? Well, it is the one small thing I can do to sustain interest in the idea and hopefully gently nudge Apple towards one day being adding them as a fully supported 3rd Party opportunity. And when/if that day comes, boy will I be ready.
3
2
68
I just realized this Topographic watch face actually looks way better if I use the ā€œLegible Digitā€ option of San Francisco. Gives it a much more outdoorsy look. (This image is if you were standing on the top of Scafell Pike, the tallest mountain in England)
David Smith@_DavidSmith7 Nov 2022
I was looking at a Nomad watch strap and noticed their display uses a nifty topographic wallpaperā€¦so of course I had to try building it for real. This face dynamically displays the terrain contours of your current location, which can lead to some very fun, ever-changing designs.
6
3
43
Load more