ObjectiveSee | Loren Brichter

Who are you and what do you do?

I'm Loren Brichter and I'm unemployed. I used to work for Apple. Then I started a company called atebits and made an app called Tweetie which Twitter acquired and transformed into Twitter for iPhone. Now I'm a free man once again, currently playing with some other ideas. You can follow me on Twitter at @atebits and @lorenb, I don't post much, but when I do, it's probably awesome.

What is your computer and workspace setup while developing?

My primary computer is a 3+ year old 17" MacBook Pro. I'm waiting for something along the lines of a 15" Macbook Air for my next upgrade. It's getting harder by the day, as using Xcode 4 without an SSD is pretty painful. Connected to the laptop is a 30" Cinema display. I also use an Apple wireless keyboard and a magic trackpad.

My desk is a pimped out Ikea Björkudden dining room table. The base is painted black, and the top is coated in dry-erase paint. I don't like things on my desk so my monitor is mounted to the wall with steel arm. I also created a massive hinged door on the underside of the table that contains all of my power strips, adapters (for the 30" display), device chargers, etc. Nearly all the wires are hidden, only a few come out a secret hole in the back to connect to the laptop and the wall outlet. No wires touch the floor. I hate that.

Behind me is a second small desk with some miscellaneous frankenstien'd electrical components for when I'm feeling mad-scientist-y. There's a Mac Pro in the closet with a Trolltouch-converted Cinema display touchscreen that I use to wirelessly share a crappy HP printer/scanner.

As for my virtual workspace: I live in Xcode and Terminal. I usually keep Mail and Twitter quit so I don't get distracted. I have a bunch of stuff mapped to localhost in /etc/hosts... it got to the point where half way through writing a line of code I would involuntarily Command-Space, S, Enter, R, Enter expecting reddit to flood my brain with some juicy dopamine. I had to quit cold turkey.

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

None are really iOS-specific, but: Blocks (+libdispatch) are fantastic. ARC is like an anti-API, but it's just so beautiful (GC always smelled clumsy to me). Recently I've been going back to my roots a bit, spending a lot of my time with OpenGL ES and some assembly programming. OpenGL has an API only a mother can love, but I love what you can do with it.

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

I'm pretty conservative when it comes to development. It took me a long time to upgrade my dev environment from pico+gcc. Day to day I use Twitter for Mac, Chrome, Quicksilver, TextMate, Terminal. Photoshop + Modo for design. Depending on what I'm doing I might write some of my own one-off tools.

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

I read every API diff and whatever new documentation there is. I think Apple's documentation is pretty good. There are some great nuggets in the WWDC videos, but you can't skim videos like you can words, so I usually just play them in the background while I work and wait for my subconscious to perk up when something interesting is said.

From a developers perspective, what are your hopes for the next major iOS update?

I'm really happy with the state of iOS. As a developer of course I'd love to see more ways to let third party apps do more interesting things. Particularly with each other. Maybe inter-application communication will come along with sharing updates to iCloud, with the cloud acting as the glue. I don't know exactly what it would look like, but something like that would be nifty.

I'd also really like a Dvorak software keyboard. I filed a Radar on that forever ago.

Finally, what is your favourite app?

The one I'm working on now.