21.58
ipod touch review
If you've got an App in the App Store, or are planning to sell an app there, it might be a good idea to learn from somebody else's mista...
Sabtu, 31 Oktober 2009
SmartPhone Comparison
I found this comparison of the current generation of smart phones to be interesting. Droid is shaping up to be a heck of a phone. I don't think it's going to pull a lot of people away from the iPhone, but I think it will do well and will probably be the biggest boost for the Android platform to date.Are there really 10,000 applications on the Android Market now? I'm somewhat surprised that it's that high. I think even if that number's true (Googling finds me a lot of people regurgitating this same estimate from an unofficial source, but I can't find an authoritative source for the actual number of apps in the store), that comparison doesn't really represent the true differential between the App Store and the Android Market. Not even 1% of the applications in the Android Market have been downloaded...
iPhone Tech Talk Hamburg
I've heard from a handful of people that the Hamburg Tech Talk acceptance e-mails have started. Good luck to everyone who appli...
Jumat, 30 Oktober 2009
More iPhone 3 Development Mini-Update
Our original belief that a chapter on supporting online play with GameKit would be long turned out to be accurate. The first draft of the online play chapter just knocked the last Core Data chapter off of its pedestal. Clocking in at 56 pages, this chapter goes through the process of creating re-usable objects to listen for network connections and to exchange information with other devices using streams. We also show you how to use Bonjour to find and connect to peers on your local network.It's been a bear to write, but I think it's good addition to the book. I could be wrong, but I think this will be the most comprehensive step-by-step guide to adding online play to a GameKit application that's available and, frankly, most of the hard work was in writing the two reusable classes that you'll...
Tech Talk London
Sounds like the London Tech Talk World Tour acceptances have started to seep out of Cupertino. That's almost a month before NYC, so it may be a few weeks before the NYC ones start escaping from One Infinite Loop. That's a long time to keep fingers cross...
Kamis, 29 Oktober 2009
On Private APIs
I'm hearing from a couple of different sources that Apple's App Store reviewers now have some way to scan submitted applications to detect the use of private APIs. I've never been an advocate of using Private APIs, and Dave and I strictly avoid them for the book examples, but I always thought it strange that Apple left to the honor system any use of private APIs that couldn't be easily discerned.Looks like you need to step more carefully now if you have used any private framework APIs.I know this step will annoy some developers, but in the long run, it's for the best. Private APIs add fragility to an application, and they also discourage people from submitting enhancement requests, which are how Apple gauges whether a currently private API should be made publ...
Derek Jeter Real Baseball
iTunes Link Derek Jeter Real Baseball is a baseball game by Gameloft. $0.99[A modified post from TheAppEra]This game is the latest in Gameloft's Real Sports series, this time featuring one of the best known baseballer's today, Derek Jeter. Having a big name like Jeter on their game, I was hoping for actual MLB teams and players Sadly, they haven't been able to get the rights to the names (MLB World Series 2009 is the only game to date with the rights to the teams, no players). Go Yankees? Or does this game tank? With no MLB teams to convince you to buy this game what does Gameloft put on the plate to convince you to buy the game exactly? What...
Rabu, 28 Oktober 2009
Unity Indie Now Free
The 3D game-making toolset called Unity is now available for free to independent developers who gross less than $100k on products made with the tools. This is an interesting move on the part of Unity3D. I haven't used the tool myself, but I've heard mostly good things about it. Now that it's free for indie use, there's no excuse for not checking it o...
DevDays
If you want to see some interesting chatter, take a look at the Dev Days backchannel on Twitter. It's very amusing. There's lots of ignorant hyperbole, including claims that Apple is the most evil thing on the planet because they chose to use Objective-C along with the typical complaints that it's not what they're used to, so it's bad, or ugly.There's also a fair amount of positive chatter as well. It's interesting to see just how different people's opinions can be.Most of the negative comments are just people expressing their honest (though sometimes ignorant or ill-informed) opinions, but some are just downright snarky as well as being ignorant. I know most of my readers know this, but Objective-C has a garbage collector. A really, really good garbage collector. Apple chose not to use...
Droid Looks Nice
Here's a breif article on Droid with some nice pictures. The keyboard doesn't appeal to me, but to people who want a physical keyboard, this should have a lot of appeal, since they've put a decent-size keyboard on a phone that's almost as thin as the iPhone. I'd really like to check one of these out. I honestly do not think it's an iPhone Killer. To be that, the Android 2.0 OS would have to take a quantum leap forward in usability. It wouldn't be enough to become as-good or even a little better than the iPhone. To become an iPhone killer, a phone has to be significantly better than the iPhone. On the hardware side, though, there's some stuff that looks great on paper. The screen has a much higher resolution than existing iPhones at 854x480 pixels. I'm curious about this item, though. It's...
More iPhone 3 Development Update
The writing of More iPhone 3 Development is starting to move faster now, at least in terms of the number of pages we're churning out. It's not going as fast as we'd like, and nowhere near as fast as Apress would like, unfortunately, but it is going faster. The good news is that we're really happy with what we've written so far. More iPhone 3 Development is not just more of what was in Beginning iPhone 3 Development. We have a much greater focus in this book on application design and on writing code for maximum reuse. Many of the objects we write can be used unmodified in your own applications. We assume that the reader has done some development...
Preview: Cliffed!
The second of IUGO's Triple Threat is a game called Cliffed, which I thought was a sequel to Shaky Summit but it's a totally new concept. Check it out below!Challenge your friends to the most addictive race to the bottom! IUGO presents its latest sensation in casual gaming with this frantic 2D scrolling racer. WARNING: This game will get your heart and fingers racing! Features: • 10 unique and playful characters to choose from • Pick up and play! Great for all ages • Endless game play • Online multiplayer! Race up to 8 players in real time over 3G and wireless networks • Local and global leaderboards...
Preview: Implode!
And the last game of IUGO's Triple Threat is a physics based game that reminds me of iBlast Moki. Looks like fun and a great challenge. Check it out below!This game is a blast! You are tasked to carefully plant limited dynamite bundles in order to demo obsolete structures. Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG! Implode! is a classic “easy to learn, hard to master” casual game that will pull you in and won’t let go. Features include:Features:• 60 dynamite levels • Reactive UI, touch and drag control options • Fun chalkboard theme and clean graphics • Two different types of bombs (traditional bombs and blast bombs) •...
Preview: Zombie Attack- Second Wave
Boom! IUGO has come with some juicy information about a Triple Threat of Games (I suppose a foursome if you included A.D.D) that are all pending review with Apple. Check out what they have in store for the coming weeks. Starting with a SCARE!Just when you thought it was safe…ZA! is back! Lovers of zombies and tower defense-style games combined have a second chance to tear into more zombies with more weapons and in more locations than ever before. IUGO built upon what you loved best about the original Zombie Attack! game making it bigger, better and bloodier! Your mission: play as a survivor from the ultimate Zombie Apocalypse, protect your...
Senin, 26 Oktober 2009
Two More iPhone Boot Camp Workshops
I'll be teaching the iPhone Boot Camp in New York City again on December 5-7. Like last time, I'll be teaching one half of a six-day workshop, with Steve Kochan doing the other half, so the full dates are December 2-7, and it's downtown, about two blocks from Penn Station, so it's easy to get there. Steve will be doing three days in Objective-C, and I'll follow with three days of iPhone development, and you can choose to take either class separately or both together.We're also going to do the same format in Chicago on December 11-16, with the iPhone portion of the workshop that I'll be teaching happening on December 14, 15, and 16.I'll post links to the signup page once I've received them from the iPhone Boot Camp fol...
Jumat, 23 Oktober 2009
NYC Tech Talk Update
If, like me, you've signed up for the New York City Tech Talk, do not fret if you haven't received confirmation yet. According to Apple's Graphics Technologies Evangelist, Allan Schaffer, they haven't processed the NYC ones y...
Meet Me, NYC, Nov. 5th
On November 5th, I'll be speaking at the Apple Store SoHo in New York City. I'll be speaking at the MetroMac meeting. The meeting is from 6:00 to 9:00, but I won't be speaking for the entire meeting. I believe I've been given roughly between ninety minutes and two hours, though, which is probably longer than anyone should have to listen to me. I've been given fairly free reign in terms of what I speak about, as long as it's relevant to the audience (iPhone, Mac, etc), however be aware that MetroMac is not a developer group and the audience will run the gamut from consumer to total gearhead. As a result, the talk will not be particularly technical (at least not hardcore developer-type technical). I'll be leaving about twenty minutes to a half hour for questions, and will be happy to answer...
Marble Madness?
The developer of Stone Loops, a marble game that used to be available in the App Store, has a very discouraging tale to tell in his blog today. Obviously, this is only one side of the story, but it does seem very suspicious to me that MumboJumbo only made these hefty claims of improper and illegal activity to Apple and not in any other forum (like, say, legal proceedings) nor have they leveled the same complaint about the multitude of previously existing platform version of Stone Loops. If Code Minions had really stolen code (among the things alleged from MumboJumbo), it seems like they would be taking more serious action than just complaining to Apple, that is, unless they don't have sufficient evidence to meet the standard of proof anywhere else, but if that's the case, then Apple shouldn't...
SQLitePersistentObjects Lives. It LIVES!
I know that some people were understandably upset and annoyed when I decided to stop new development on SQLitePersistentObjects. Although it's a project that I really enjoyed working on, I just couldn't justify spending more time on it in light of Apple's release of the far more mature Core Data in the iPhone SDK 3.0. Although I like certain things about the approach I took in SQLitePersistentObjects better than Core Data (like not having a data model file separate from the data model classes), it would have taken literally hundreds of hours (at least, maybe thousands) to get it to the point where the performance and feature set were comparable to what Core Data already has. Even if we got the performance and features to a comparable point, there's just not enough compelling advantages over...
Kamis, 22 Oktober 2009
Tech Talk World Tour
I didn't blog about this year's iPhone Tech Talk World Tour when it was announced. Many of the locations filled up so fast, it seemed like it would be just a tease to tell people about it when it was too late to actually do anything about it.If you did sign up, I've gotten word from a handful of people that acceptance e-mails have started to trickle out of Cupertino. I signed up for the NYC Tech Talk, but haven't received word either way yet. Fingers cross...
Nice One, Microsoft
Microsoft opened their first Apple Store today. Wait, no. What I mean to say is that Microsoft opened their first Microsoft Store. That's the ticket. And it's very unique. I can't even imagine where they got the idea for the layout, decor, uniforms or grand opening welcome line. I also can't fathom where they got their inspiration for opening a boutique-style retail store in the first place.Hey, Redmond? Need a new tagline? How about?If it's blatant, it's Microsoft. or, maybeWe do shameless better.I think either of those would work well, and both would be accurate and honest. Although, in Microsoft's defense, Apple grand openings never have guys in suits at the end of the welcome line golf clapping. That's origin...
Patent Lawsuits: the Last Resort of the Mediocre
Nokia today announced they are suing Apple . Right in the press release, Nokia states that they are suing over patents that cover implementations of standards (GSM, WCDMA, WLAN, UMTS).WTF? That kind of misses the point of having an open standard in the first place. There's only so much difference between different implementations of the same protocol or standard. Jeebus! The problem with these cases, though, is that the judges are experts in law, but not in technology, so they rarely have the knowledge and/or cojones to issue summary judgment even in cases with no merits. Like this one. So, Nokia will, at very least, cause Apple to spend millions of dollars to defend themselve.Apple's release of the iPhone pretty much meant I'd never buy another Nokia phone again for myself, but now I will...
Rock Band
iTunes LinkRock Band is a music game by Electronic Arts. $9.99[This is a modified post from TheAppEra]ROCK BAND is the latest phenomenon to grace the AppStore. We have had many music tapping games in our time, but nothing this HUGE has landed on our palms previously. $9.99 for 22 songs (around $0.45 per track plus DLC)... is this the complete package we have been waiting for? I think I can safely say that I have enough experience to review this title, with this being the 13th music tapping game I have on this device. What I was expecting in this game was what I expected from all the other games I have played. That is either notes that coincide...
Selasa, 20 Oktober 2009
Wil Shipley on Internationalization and Localization
Words of wisdom and free code from the Godfather of Cocoa, Wil Shipley. Go read now. Nuff sa...
Good Day for Android, Bad Day for Pre
The Palm Pre lost a high profile developer today (Jamie Zawinski, a notable contributor to many open source projects include Mozilla and XEmacs). He took some pretty harsh parting shots on his way out the door.Having an App Store that's more open than Apple's is one way to compete, but it's not enough. If consumers don't have a good experience with your phone, developers are not going to want to develop for ...
The Nook
For whatever reason, Amazon's Kindle has never really appealed to me. Though I read a fair amount, and am not opposed to the idea of an e-reader, I've just never had any techno-lust for it. It's not because of the DRM, though I'd rather they didn't have it. It's just that it's not that exciting. It's basically a one-trick pony. No matter how thin they make it, or how many books it can hold, it will only every serve the very limited purposes of reading books and doing some light web browsing. Boring. I can do both of those things on my phone, albeit on less than an ideal screen size, or on my laptop.Today, Barnes & Noble announced their competitor, the Nook. The Nook is based on Android. Now, people who read this blog know that my opinion of Android is that it's not as good as the iPhone...
Senin, 19 Oktober 2009
Oh, My. Fiscal Results.
Today, Apple announced their Fiscal 2009 Q4 and boy, what a quarter it was. Funny, it's been a while since I heard someone predict the death of Apple. It's hard to believe just how common a practice that was among pundits only a decade ago.Apple sold more iPhones and more Macs last quarter than in any previous quarter in history, and they have the largest percentage of the market share they've had since 1994. That's true whether you take the lower Gartner number of 8.8% market share, or the higher IDC number of 9....
Shrek Kart
iTunes LinkShrek Kart is a racing game by Gameloft. $4.99[A Modified post from TheAppEra]Electronic Arts can flaunt its realistic racing games, and Gameloft can whip up trailers of their upcoming racing games. But what we really needed on this platform was a racing game that had something like… Ogres and talking Donkey’s in it. Funny enough that’s exactly what Shrek Kart is! Shrek Kart is what I expected from a kart racer from the start, and fills up the gaps I found in Krazy Kart and Crash Bandicoot. I believe the graphics are better than the other games and the gameplay has been set out to have a much longer lasting appeal than the other...
Jumat, 16 Oktober 2009
Accessorizer 1.5
I've posted about Accessorizer before. It's just been updated to version 1.5, incorporating a new feature that sprang out of a feature request that was made by yours truly. Actually, it was more of an off-hand comment then a feature request, but Kevin Callahan, the brains behind Accessorizer liked the request and jumped on it with gusto.The new feature? Accessorizer now has the ability to auto-detect classes that are commonly used as outlets and, if you want it to, will add the IBOutlet keyword automatically to the generated property statements. I've been beta testing this new functionality, and works pretty darn well.If you do any significant amount of Objective-C programming and haven't tried Accessorizer, I'd really suggest giving it a try. In the application I wrote today for More iPhone...
Device Detection Redux
A while back, I posted some code by Max Horáth to detect the device your program was running on. That script dates from the pre-3Gs days, so won't identify that model. I'm not sure if Max has updated his script, but I found this class on Stack Overflow by Jason Goldberg. In addition to adding the more recent hardware, it uses a really efficient approach implemented in relatively few lines of code. I like that a lot.The one thing I don't like is the way the class is implemented. There's no reason to use instance methods like this and incur the overhead of object creation to. The object has no state, just behavior, so either of these methods could have been written either as C functions or as class methods, thus avoiding the need to create an object and manage its memory. At very least, this...
