That’s what makes a good QA person. The best are macabre figures who delight in torturing developers, but then make up for it with the succinctness and precision of their bug reports.
I’m sure I’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating.
And what of the entertainment industry and its “piracy” problem? Well, back in 1939, the science fiction writer Robert A Heinlein published his first story, “Life-Line,” that contained his truest prediction:
“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”
Drinktrack 1.2 was approved by Apple last night and is now live on the app store. I’m really pleased with this release: it includes everything I originally intended to include in Drinktrack. The highlights are:
- **Weekly target limit**: you can now set a target for the maximum units each week.
- **Graphs**: these are really helpful in seeing how well you're doing in hitting your target. I think they look pretty good too.
- **Icon badge**: showing the number of units this week on the icon badge allows you to keep track without opening the app.
For my use of Drinktrack, these features have a benefit greater than the sum of their parts. And, of course, they can be turned off if you don’t need them.
I’m playing with adding an app badge to DrinkTrack showing this week’s units. This means the DrinkTrack icon in your home screen shows the number of units you’ve drunk this week, like the Mail app shows the number of unread mails you have.
This is perhaps a quintessential example of a feature itself being simple and the supporting infrastructure dwarfing the effort required. Adding the badge is two lines of code. Adding the obligatory settings screen will be dozens of lines of code along with a bunch of work in XCode’s UI creation tool, Interface Builder.
It doesn’t look like I mentioned here that Drinktrack was approved by Apple a couple of weeks ago. Head over to drinktrackapp.com to pick up a copy.
I’ve been using the app for just over a month now. I think it hits the sweet spot I was aiming for in the compromise between exactitude and painless drink logging. 1.1 is going through Apple’s review process, with a couple of small but nice updates.