ObjectiveSee | Justin Williams | developer of ios, mac, objective c, GTD, apple, interview, iphone

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Justin Williams. I'm the crew chief at Second Gear. We make Elements for iOS and Today for Mac OSX.

What is your computer and workspace setup while developing?

This year I transitioned back to a dual Mac setup again. My daily driver is a 27” i7 iMac with a 256GB SSD, 2TB spinning disc and 16GB of RAM. There is absolutely no reason for me to have 16GB of RAM other than to brag about the fact that I have such a ridiculous amount of memory.

I pair the iMac with a 13” i7 powered MacBook Air. The Air is probably my favourite of the two machines because I am much more comfortable typing and manipulating a trackpad on a laptop than I am a bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad. And I can use it on my couch.

What are your favourite Apple iOS API's to use within apps you develop?

I'm becoming a big fan of Core Animation as I use it more and more. I'm a bit late to the party in terms of all you can do with it, but now that I'm diving deeper, it's awesome. Core Data is also pretty great in terms of how quickly it lets me rig up an app with persistence.

What is some software that you use outside of Xcode for development?

I have a giant list of EVERYTHING I use on my personal site. I update it each year and keep track of how my workflow changes year-to-year.

What do you do to stay up to date on new iOS features, frameworks and SDK's?

The “State of the Union” sessions at WWDC are great for getting a high level overview of what Apple wants us to care about in each new release. From there I just dive into videos and documentation for each new topic as I need them.

What are your hopes for the next major iOS update?

iOS 5 was a fill-in-the gap release. There were quite a few new features in it, but most weren't what I would describe as sexy. Hopefully iOS 6 is where Apple will start to make some daring and radical changes with the iOS experience. Android and Windows Phone are starting to do some interesting things with mobile user experience. I'd like to see Apple take some more risks in that department as well.

Finally, what is your favourite app?

I'm really into Instagram. I'm not much of a photographer, but I love sharing photos on the service and seeing what my friends are posting as well. It's such a simple idea, but they did an exceptionally good job at executing it.