deeje.com/musings

tappr.tv in Bridge 6DoF Mixed Reality

One of the great benefits of moving to SceneKit in version 10 was the ability to support emerging virtual reality technologies. As of v10.2, tappr.tv supports both Google Cardboard for 3DoF viewing, as well as Occipital Bridge for 6DoF

What are DoF? It stands for "degrees of freedom" and means, how can you move within a space

3DoF means you can look around in a virtual space: look left/right, up/down, and tilt side to side. Google Cardboard VR headsets and viewers are basically relying on the gyroscope in your smartphone to calculate how you turn your head, and adjust the 3D display accordingly.

6DoF means that you can look and move in all three dimensions: move left/right, up/down, and forward/back. Occipital Bridge does this by combining sensor data from the iPhone's gyroscope and camera with its own laser depth sensor to calculate, in realtime, how you head turns and moves within a scanned space.

Here's a teaser of what tappr.tv looks like inside a Bridge MR headset

Automaton

Here is the latest example of a great dance in tappr.tv!

Jagged Flurry

tappr.tv screenshots 2017

Here are some screenshots of the latest version of tappr.tv

Differentiating Apple Music

 

This post will review the history of music APIs in iOS, and discuss some of its advantages for developer+affiliate opportunities, as they relate to competing “Music as a Service” (MaaS) providers and their developer “Terms of Service” (TOS).

And at the end, I have a simple ask.

Scaling tappr.tv from 3.5" to 12.9"

Of all the new devices Apple has released this year, I’m most excited about the iPad Pro. Its as close to a self-contained cinematic experience as Apple can create. And I've been preparing tappr.tv for it for almost 3 years now.

The habits of note taking

The inside story of how $1 billion Evernote went from Silicon Valley darling to deep trouble

"Evernote may be quickly drifting away from the glorified "unicorn" status."

There is much to ponder here.

tappr.tv Roadmap, 2015

Intro

Over the last 5 years, I've released 9 major versions of tappr.tv, with each release having a specific theme:

1. Wands = basic input-output architecture
2. Loops = recording and playback
3. Dances = recording and playing back in time with a song
4. Community L1 = publish dances and subscribe to favorite artists
5. Effects and Inputs = symmetry mode, audio in, TouchOSC
6. Live = dynamic BPM-based loops, network IO for real-time multi-device input
7. Remix = enable members to remix a dance, adding tracks, and changing effects and wands
8. Parallax = modernize the UI for iOS 7 and enhance the dynamic rendering of dance tracks thru parallax effects.
9. Community L2 = subscribe to other members, receive push notifications of significant events

And as always, I've got a roadmap in mind for the future of tappr.tv:

• 3D
• Apple TV
• Web
• Playlists
• Wands
• OSC

But, in order to keep marching forward, I have to address continuously evolving platform requirements. Specifically, Apple has mandated that all iOS apps be 64-bit compatible. At this point, I can't submit new builds until this compatibility is met.

Fortunately, I think I can knock off two birds with one stone…

iOS 8, Mail, Sound and Vibration Settings

I've been using iOS 8 for months now, and love it overall. But I noticed something strange recently: even though I *thought* I had disabled sounds for mail notifications, my new iPhone 6 was still vibrating on every new message.

Turns out, Apple has separated sound and vibration as two distinct settings for Mail, and setting the sound to None does NOT set the vibration to None.

Here's a step by step showing you how and where to make these choices.

tappr.tv - a stumble and 2 key learnings

I'd like to share with you a hard-earned lesson in app release strategy.

I've been working on tappr.tv for over 3 years now, and I've collected a ton of data along the way. One of the fundamental metrics, of course, is downloads, which is the top of any revenue-generating funnel. Over the years, I've noticed some interesting dynamics around the holidays, and I've been able to increase my download rate 4x year over year.

But with the recent v8 update, something went wrong… very wrong.