iPhoneDevelopmentBits

Gyroscope: The New Opportunity [U]

anup — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:01:51 +0000

While the entire world was giddily anticipating the start of World Cup soccer this year, it was nose to the grindstone here at Sourcebits developing new soccer madness updates of Funbooth for Mac and iPhone. Work notwithstanding, our development team had serious fun during production of these applications. Throughout the beta testing and QA we were constantly capturing images of ourselves in the props of the teams we support, and we made the most of the new social features with the on-the-fly uploading to Facebook and Twitter. And at the same time, our gaming wing guys at Wandake were busy putting the finishing touches on their now-huge hit Wake Up the Box! for iPhone and iPad. So it was a real party at times.

While all this was going on, of course there was some big news on June 7, when Steve Jobs introduced yet another Apple engineering marvel: iPhone 4. Bundled with new features like front-facing camera, superior rear camera, dual mikes for increased noise cancellation, eye-popping Retina Display, multitasking, 720p HD video recording and even a new kind of gyroscope technology, iPhone 4 is a huge evolutionary step in smartphone design. As the tag line says: “This changes everything. Again.” And, marketing hyperbole aside, as far as day-to-day use is concerned for sure this will change the way we use iPhone.

Before this year’s launch, several leaked – or mislaid – iPhone 4 models made the rounds of the major tech blogs, complete with gory dissections and the standard tsunami of specu-babble. But there was one stealth feature all the teardowns and pundits failed to even guess at: the gyroscope. And on our side, as veteran iPhone developers, when Steve Jobs announced this during WWDC we were all pretty excited. And while it still hasn’t gotten much attention in the press, this feature is a game changer in iPhone’s rivalry with Android and Symbian devices.

Apple’s been pioneering smartphone innovations since iPhone’s introduction in 2007 with many widely imitated micro-technologies, in particular the accelerometer. The accelerometer is a type of sensor that detects changes in a device’s orientation, vibration, rotation or fall by detecting linear acceleration along one of the three X, Y and Z axes – that is: up/down, right/left, and front/back.

3-axis accelerometers enable features we by now take for granted in smartphones (and lately, too, in non-Apple branded consumer digital cameras, music players, and gaming peripherals). For example, landscape/portrait orientation shifting, tilt for directional control in games and applications, and shake features for refreshing a webpage or shuffling a playlist. The 1st generation of accelerometer – pre iPhone 4 – could measure only linear motion; it couldn’t sense direction on a compass or twisting motions or rotation, nor had any notion of gravity.

Then last year Apple added a magnetometer to the iPhone 3Gs, enabling it to sense magnetized direction relative to the Earth’s poles. And now, with the introduction of the gyro in iPhone 4, Apple once more ups the ante in spatial detection / orientation with a new sensor for detecting 3-axis angular acceleration around the X,Y and Z axes, enabling far more precise virtualization of pitch, yaw and roll on iPhone.

While detection of change in velocity has been possible for some time thanks to conventional accelerometer calculations in terms of linear acceleration, the gyroscope has been designed to detect angular acceleration, which will detect change in both velocity and direction at the same time. iPhone 4’s gyroscope enables the sensing of even slight degrees of rotation while simultaneously rejecting linear movements and hand jitters – both still ably handled by accelerometer’s linear movement detection technology.

Combining the 3 axes of the gyroscope along with the 3 axes of the accelerometer now enables iPhone to recognize distance, speed and direction as it moves real-time through space. And thanks to the CoreMotion APIs in iOS, developers with the vision to make use of gyroscope data can access it freely, as some have already done.

Of course iPhone 4 already includes gyroscope support, but it’s a safe bet the gyro will be baked into future versions of iPod touch, and naturally, iPad. iPhone devs who can make use of this amazing new technology will find opportunities aplenty on the new platforms, especially games producers and developers.

—-

update: Death Star or iPhone gyroscope? iFixit has the goods.

The Promise of iPhone 4 & iOS 4

prasanna — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:29:32 +0000

The days following a WWDC never fail to turn the world of Apple enthusiasts upside down. Whether professional iPhone developers like us, or regular end users who just love Apple products, this year’s conference has been especially dramatic on the iPhone front. This go-around Apple’s put to bed some long-standing niggles – and dropped a few surprises – with a stunning new design and feature set for iPhone 4: a front-facing higher end camera, LED flash, new paper-like display, vastly increased processing power thanks to Apple’s own A4 chipset, longer battery life, noise cancelling dual microphones and an awe inspiring glass and stainless steel industrial spec.

True, iPhone 4 had been dissected, diagrammed and reported on ad nauseam even months before Jobs’ announcement, but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm on release day. And despite the leaks coming out of Vietnam and hands-on time with stolen prototypes, what the prophets couldn’t prognosticate was how deliciously the hardware gooses the software. Just consider iOS itself. It’s a huge lift for developers, a massive gift from Apple for anyone with an eye to publishing for the App Store.

The first turn-on in iOS is multitasking, which depending on your application type can be achieved through one of 7 core background services Apple provides: background audio, voice over IP, background location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion and fast app switching.

The upshot of this is users will genuinely feel they’re multitasking, while the software is actually only running one app at a time, albeit with services. So in terms of raw power that developers can exploit and direct toward their apps, we have the lion’s share of CPU, memory and other resources at our disposal.

Aside from multitasking, we also now have Game Center with integrated social networking, and this is going to change the gaming experience on iPod touch and iPhone forever. And with the introduction of iAd, developers now have another revenue model with the potential for ad-supported apps distributed at no charge to users. User reaction to in-app advertising has yet to be tested, but we’re already testing various configurations.

The introduction of app-specific location settings also means you don’t need to change your location each time you use a new application that requires setup with different locations. The ability to gift apps is another nice feature with terrific upside for developers.

What else have we got to look forward to… ah yes, Spotlight now not only searches your device, but also the Web and Wikipedia. In-page video playback for Safari is another lovely addition. And iPhone 4 is now more enterprise-friendly with enhanced data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution and SSL VPN support. Wake on wireless, too, automatically re-connects you when your lost wireless connection is regained. Places in photos offers other interesting possibilities and Mail has been completely revamped.

Spotlight with Web & Wiki search

Coming to the SDK, full map overlays means developers can implement a transparent map layer on top of screen contents, a boon for location-oriented utilities, games, and lifestyle apps. And the AV Foundation framework for the first time gives developers full control over video playback and capture. Full photo library and calendar access now gives developers the power to directly access these previously semi-restricted features. Now, too, you can send short messages via your apps through in-app SMS, and Accelerate provides easy to use functions for your computational / number-crunching needs. Another welcome addition are the Quick Look APIs, similar to OS X’s desktop version, giving users the ability to page through documents and other filetypes without needing to launch an app. The UIAutomation instrument, too, can be made to automate touch events, while Time Profiler and Energy Diagnostics Instruments can be used to fine tune your applications.

All these new SDK-side features represent a huge opportunity for iPhone developers to not just tack on new feature to existing apps, but to dream up entirely new creations and markets. iOS and iPhone 4 mark another exciting chapter in Apple’s handheld lineup. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve got in store.

iPad Developer Loves Monday Mornings

cary — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:37:13 +0000

(Prasanna Kumar S)

pre-iPad

When Apple announced the iPad in January this year, we were as excited as the rest of the development community: new Apple products mean new opportunities to build our brand and make cool stuff that earns big monies for our partners and ourselves. Speaking in broad terms about our reaction to any new Apple product, we don’t microfocus on tech specs. We home in on the user experience, the operating environment and the implications for end users of our applications. The guiding principle is this: iPad and iPhone are not just the latest iterations of a cellphone or tablet PC, but entirely new experiences of technology, media creation and consumption and every piece of software we make for them should reflect or expand on these qualities. That’s the chief responsibility of our iPhone and iPad developers. So come January 27, first things first, we began drilling into the new SDK, day and night, all the while following every last bit of news and opinion coming out about iPad.

Screen

When it was announced that existing iPhone apps would be able to run without any glitches on the iPad, straight from the App Store, we were all pretty relieved. But then we saw the fine print: displaying an iPhone app centered at the much smaller native iPhone resolution or in pixel-doubled form looked and felt – well, crappy. The large screen was a pleasure on the one hand, especially for intensive apps and games with more space for controls and real-time status updates without interrupting workflow/gameplay. But on the other hand, we must be wary of presenting users with needless distractions, potentially confusing distractions, all the while achieving a certain level of tautness so the interface doesn’t look slack or empty.

UI Changes

The first iPad SDK (actually iPhone SDK 3.2) offered some great UI enhancements over iPhone, such as pull down menus and the newly added Master-Detail view. Added to this, iPad’s contextual menus are great at keeping the UI out of the way, displaying only the content and controls that are relevant to the user at the relevant moment. Bezier Path, originally part of the Mac development environment, has found a place in iPad SDK, helping us to create drawings much more easily. PopOverController, too, with its built-in animations, lessens the creative burden on our iPad dev team to a great extent.

A Pressing Invitation

While we were busy exploring the new SDK, we were happily surprised by an email from Apple notifying us that the App Store was already accepting and approving apps for iPad launch day. Initially we were skeptical about how to proceed as (unlike some developers) we didn’t have a hardware sample to run trials with and the time frame for release was less than a week. But there’s no way we were going to miss out on the grand opening of the iPad App Store, so we began brainstorming a port of one of our most successful iPhone applications to the iPad. With the senior members of our iPhone development team now on board, we immediately began redesigning and engineering the updated app for iPad.

Details, Details, Details

One thing for iPad developers to keep in mind is that every UI element supports two orientations: landscape and portrait. It was blissfully new to us at the time, and the design team responded with some awesome, first-ever iPad wireframes and gorgeous new graphics in no time flat. And as complex and tough as it was getting the functionality right, we spent even more time tweaking the UI to make it pixel perfect.

When developing for the Mac, resolution independence is a constant theme throughout the development process, but for those of us employing Rapid Application Development on iPhone, resolution independence was not a factor we were used to considering. Now, porting those iPhone apps to iPad, we find we’re spending a lot of time scaling the UI to iPad’s screen. While this has gone down internally as an enormous pain in the ass, it’s also given us a chance to revisit the graphics in our ‘greatest hits’ apps and improve them, something any good designer – and end users – can surely appreciate. And the fact that our first application for iPad is still in the Top Paid Apps section, has been staff picked by Apple, and featured as a Top 10 Must-Have iPad App by Engadget – yeah, that’s more than made up for the effort. ;) And now that we have the hardware in the flesh to tool around on, we’re doing even more polishing of our initial releases, and soon we’ll start releasing our first 100% start-to-finish iPad-optimized apps and we promise a much BIGGER experience than before.

Liftoff

Despite starting work on our port just a few sleepless days earlier, on April 1^st Apple started listing the first iPad apps on the App Store, and the very next day our app was spotlighted in the Showcase. Today, I hold the iPad close to my heart; I see our apps running smoothly and the display makes them look even better, all thanks to our talented developers and the tireless work of the user interface design team. When you look at the most successful apps in the App Store it’s the simple ones that succeed and have legs. ‘Keep it simple,’ the saying goes. And it’s true. The iPad App Store is still in its infancy, and this is the time to make your mark. If you’ve been mulling over even the simplest idea, who knows how it may turn out!? Drop a little hello our way and let’s see where it takes us!

From iPhone to iPad: UI Tips for Moving Beyond Mobile

cary — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:39:14 +0000

Big Ass iPod Touch
Google lists over 200,000 hits for “big ipod touch” {48,000 for ‘big ass ipod touch’}. And anyone running an iPhone-optimized app on iPad will get exactly that, and it’ll pretty much suck running letterboxed at 1/3 screen size or stretched and pixilated at double the native size. But developers taking advantage of cool, new iPad-only UI conventions are poised to create an entirely NEW class of breathtakingly powerful applications unthinkable on even the smartest mobile phone. And it’s happening now, with over 1,000 iPad-optimized apps already available less than one week into launch.

That Screen

Text Formatting Popover

Good iPhone app development aims for a stripped down UI due to the quick-to-clutter, pocket-
sized screen canvas. Rather than creating screenfuls of switches and check boxes, iPhone developers have typically built layers of menus, creating a vertical hierarchy of sometimes branching, confusing commands. While this has been the norm on iPhone, this is anathema to good iPad development.

The big deal on iPad is the big screen. This, combined with iPad’s new UI features, allows developers to offer on-screen controls much like a traditional Mac or Windows application.

Navigation Bars, Popovers, and the Edit Menu

iPhone developers coming to iPad will soon realize they can utilize the top navigation bar as a fixed toolbar, much like traditional, non-mobile applications. Thanks to iPad’s generous screen space, the top navigation bar / toolbar offers enough button space for the main controls that

Color Picker Popover

users have come to rely on in traditional applications, especially in landscape mode. Whether word processing or editing images, users should be able to work on a single screen for an entire session, just like on a regular computer.

On iPhone, users often jump back and forth to reach essential off-screen options and functions, but on iPad contextual controls are introduced not by forcing the user away from content, but instead with nav bars, edit boxes and popovers that allow users to linger on the main screen as they edit.

New Challenges
Application development for iPhone has been an utterly novel experience, with thousands of worldwide developers slowly coming to terms with multi-touch UI principles for a pocketable device. Now with iPad, Apple is challenging us once more to create the first generation of powerful, full-spec’d applications for full-sized multi-touch. If we do this right, the notion of iPad as somehow being derivative will quickly vanish as the platform comes into its own.

Native Frameworks for adding Network Connectivity to your iPhone Applications

rohit — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:11:37 +0000

Tons of new frameworks for iPhone developers to use that will should really simplify networking, credit card processing, shipping & tracking, banking, etc. for iPhone applications. Only one glitch its all commercial! You can find more info about them at Nsoftware.

• IP*Works! – A comprehensive suite of Internet components for professional developers (FTP, IMAP, POP, LDAP, SNMP, SOAP, etc.).
• IP*Works! SSL – Secure implementations of every major SSL-enabled Internet protocol
• IP*Works! S/MIME – Components for S/MIME e-mail and file signing and encryption.
• IP*Works! S/Shell – Add Instant Secure Shell (SSH) Security to your applications.
• IP*Works! Secure SNMP – Components for building Secure SNMP Agents and Managers
• IP*Works! Zip – An easy, fast, and effective suite of compression components.
• QuickBooks Integrator – Components for QuickBooks and Merchant Services integration.
• E-Payment Integrator – Credit card and ACH processing through Internet Gateways.
• E-Banking Integrator – Components for Open Financial eXchange (OFX) client integration.
• Shipping Integrator – Shipping and Tracking components via FedEx, USPS, & UPS.
• Amazon Integrator – Components for Amazon Web Services including S3, SQS, and ECS

Unit Level Developer Testing for iPhone Applications

rohit — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:55:02 +0000

Matt Gallagher writes an excellent article about unit level testing for iPhone applications and explain in detail the logic and application tests in a real world development environment using a test application as example. He is generous enough to post the code of the application as well.

[source CocoawithLove]

Version Control Application for your iPhone

rohit — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:53:17 +0000

iVersion is an iPhone SVN client which allows developers to edit and manage their code away form their desktop. More information can be found at http://www.benreeves.co.uk. IDB readers can get it for free by using the following promo codes:

WWX3A3WWY7LX, ELTKP7HNXE7L, 7PP4NK969RJ7, A43LWXK6Y4R4, LT4TL6ATTFRM,

F9WLLK4R67PP, EKTN36FYWWLX, 4MPYA3FWPAEA, 6WFTFAM694YY, EKJ79J69YHLY,

T6NNNHHTJLEE, L9WXP9YY36YA, R6LH4M34XH7P, K7K9EAMAEX94, Y4PEMKEXLTWX,

HTHEWNJHPW49, HY34TN7P9LL3, 4FT339Y6PREX, PE9NPP9PE64X, 7MTLPXTPJA66,

ALWM3LLHEPFN, ETF4L94RAFE4, 4K93KNXAH6LN, PW3AW6HHL3MN, WJ9HJL76JHHJ,

W9XLA6RETFL3, WY7WM7H94AEA, 3NJLA3FKHRPN

iPhone Application a day – Everyday – with Code

rohit — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:41:39 +0000

A brilliant blogger / coder by name Matt is making an iphone app every day, posting detailed information about it and also sharing the code with the masses. Enormous resource for all iPhone developers.

OpenGL ES Tips and Tricks for Game Programming

rohit — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:32:52 +0000

We all know OpenGL ES only accepts textures that are power 2. What if we have non standard textures ? Craig Giles has posted a solution for the same with the code snippet.

[source Journey into XNA]

iPhone 3.0 Programming Examples and Tutorials

rohit — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:46:18 +0000

This is a gold mine for all those who are looking for examples and tutorials for iphone application development. The examples include making your first app, editable detail view, animating a view, table views etc. Get a kick-start in iphone development, check the site now.

Best Practices for developing an iPhone / iPod Touch Application

rohit — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:40:12 +0000

Brian LeRoux discusses the best practices that can help an iPhone developer make a commercially successful iPhone application / game. The points that he discusses includes: focus, user interface design, approach, development tools, testing and appstore submission. Read the complete article here.

[source Mashable]

Creating your own iPhone Framework!

rohit — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:48:27 +0000

Scott means has posted couple of resources for developing your own iPhone framework. iPhone development frameworks can be used in various iPhone application / game development projects. Few popular examples are Unity 3D, JSON Framework etc.

How to Develop / Create a Shopping Cart Application for iPhone ?

rohit — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:10:03 +0000

A 30 minute video tutorial demonstrating the entire coding process of developing a shopping cart app for iphone / ipod touch is published here. The author is also kind enough to share the entire source code for the application.

[source OnlineTutorialVids]

XML Parsing Frameworks for iPhone Development

rohit — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:06:29 +0000

An excellent article by Mike on various XML frameworks available for iPhone SDK, particularly, TouchXML, KissXML. The article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using each one of them. As Sourcebits we extensively use TinyXML framework in our projects and highly recommend it too.

[source 71squared]

Resources to Learn 3D and Game programming on iPhone

rohit — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:42:34 +0000

For doing programming in 3D on iPhone, either we use the OpenGLES or use existing 3D frameworks like Unity3D, Oblong engine etc. Here are 8 great resources that will help you get started in 3D and game development on iPhone.

[source Maniacdev]

How to make your iPhone application accelerometer / rotation aware ?

rohit — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:41:33 +0000

A very detailed iPhone Development tutorial in which author uses the example of a digital clock to describe how the app can handle the rotation using iPhone accelerometer api calls. Source code included.

[source theappleblog]

Open Source Objective C Library for Facebook Connect

rohit — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:12:52 +0000

Joe Hewitt, has released the facebook source code library in Objective C for iPhone developers. This is a real good resource for developers that are looking to integrate their iPhone applications with Facebook. Download it from here.

[source infoworld]

jQTouch – jQuery plugin for iPhone Web Development

rohit — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:02:31 +0000

jQTouch is a jQuery plugin that allows development of iphone web applications with native animations and default application styles. Alpha release is available here.

Facebook Connect Software Development Kit (SDK) for iPhone

rohit — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:00:22 +0000

Good news for iPhone developers, Facebook has released a SDK for iPhone; Facebook Connect, that allows developers to hook up their native iPhone applications with the Facebook and take advantage of the vast facebook userbase. Download the SDK from here.

Native iPhone Applications using JavaScript, HTML & CSS ?

rohit — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:55:01 +0000

Yes, creating native iPhone applications using common web technologies is possible now, using PhoneGap. PhoneGap is a cross platform mobile framework that lets any web developer make native iPhone, Android and Blackberry applications.

Programming Dates in iPhone SDK

rohit — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:37:27 +0000

If you have been troubled with mundane tasks like Get Today’s date while developing your iPhone applications then this tutorial is for you.

[source howtomakeiphoneapps]

OpenAL Audio Programming on iPhone

rohit — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:21:38 +0000

An excellent tutorial along with code snippets for writing an OpenAL sound loader, OpenAL wrapper class and actual code to play some audio files in iPhone.

[source Gehacktes]

Multi Threaded Image Loading

rohit — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:40:13 +0000

A very thorough article including the source code, for loading multiple images from sites like flickr in your iphone app in an asynchronous manner, so that delay is less and user experience is quick and neat. Read it here.

Code for Sending email from your iPhone App

rohit — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:19:08 +0000

A quick and short tutorial plus code for calling mail app in iphone from your application and automatically filling in the address, subject and content. Read it here.

[source iCodeBlog]

Extending the iPhone’s SDK’s UIColor class

rohit — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:31:09 +0000

A very detailed article along with code samples for extending iPhone SDK UIColor class and make it more useful by Ars Technica.

Good programming practices ( Object Oriented / C++)

shihab — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:40:36 +0000

Some of the best practices given below.

1. Prefer inline function over macros, bcz macro willl bring unwanted errors.

eg: See the example of a macro to find maximum of two numbers

#define MAX(a,b) (a > b) ? a : b

suppose if we used the macro as follows

int x = 20, y = 19;

int z = MAX(x, ++y);

now what is the value of z ? is it 20 ? or is it 19 ? .

.. he he …it is 21 !

Let us see , how it is happened,

Compiler will compile the code after macro expansion .. after macro expansion , the code will be as follows

int x = 20, y = 19;

int z = (x > ++y) ? x: ++y;

y has been incremented twice .. !

What is the solution:-

Use inline function… it will not produce unwanted errors … and high fast like macros bcz there is no function calling burdens

Avoid complex expression when using macros… ie we can call the MAX as follows

int x = 20, y = 19;

++y;

int z = MAX(x, y);

2. Use call by reference other than call by value for big user defined data types.

//suppose we are having a class MyClass of size 100 bytes;

void foo(MyClass m) {

//some code

}

——————Instead use as follows ———————————

void foo(const MyClass& m) {

//some code

}

Explanation:

In both case we can call the method as follows

MyClass mc;

foo(mc);

In the first case a value of MyClass object, mc is copied to another object m, of MyClass.

Here Object of the MyClass has been created twice ie total 200 bytes used ..

also it will bring extra processing to initialize a new object.

In the second case , MyClass object is created only once then the alias of mc is created as m

there is no burden of new object initialization and processing.

The ‘const’ is used for two reason…

a) To avoid the misunderstanding that it is an output argument.

b) To avoid the accidental changes to the outside object from the function.

Note:- In C there is no call by reference but we are simulating call by reference

by passing address to the function argument and modifying the content of the address

from the function

3. Avoid unwanted file inclusion and prefer forward declaration.

Suppose Foo is a class and its definition is in Foo.h.

We are using the class Foo in the File MyClass.h as follows.

//MyClass.h

#include “Foo.h”

class MyClass {

Foo * aFoo;

//Some methods

}

———— Instead use as follows ————–

//MyClass.h

class Foo; // forward declaration.

class MyClass {

Foo * aFoo;

//Some methods

}

Explanation: -

In the first case, when including Foo.h , the entire code will be pasted in MyClass.h, it will

increase the size of executable and will creep in some unwanted errors.

We are not instantiating, or using the functionality of Foo, so the compiler should not bother about the size

of the class Foo ..it wants to know only what is Foo, we have forward declared it as ‘Class’.

Also aFoo is a pointer, the size of any pointer is the size of an integer.

so the compiler can allocate the size of pointer and it will not produce any error message.

4. Use header guard to avoid multiple inclusion of a file.

Start writing iPhone game code

rohit — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:25:56 +0000

A detailed article about writing code especially for developers who have experience with XNA framework.

[source Journey into XNA]

Memory Management for iPhone Applications

rohit — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:43:52 +0000

Managing memory is very important part of iPhone software development because of the hardware limitations. If the memory is not managed properly it leads to all those embarrassing crashes that can be avoided by following this excellent list of resources and tutorials for memory management on iPhone.

[source MobileOrchard]

Performance difference between iPhone Simulator and real device

rohit — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:37:33 +0000

An article by Savoy titled,”My iPhone is not a Mac Pro” brings out clearly that the performance we see for the iPhone apps on a simulator is not the same that we get in the real device. They have given a thorough explanation, read it here.

[source savoysoftware]

NSApplication – How it works ?

rohit — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:29:03 +0000

Matt Gallagher explains the steps that occur between program startup and the dispatch of events to your code — so you can gain greater understanding of what NSApplication does on your behalf. Read it here.

[source Cocoawithlove]

How to Parse XML using iPhone SDK ?

rohit — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:40:08 +0000

A nice tutorial by Craig Giles for parsing xml using iPhone SDK. Read it here.

Point and click web app development for iPhone with ModelBaker Framework

rohit — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:37:28 +0000

ModelBaker delivers point and click web development for iPhone and Android with practically no knowledge of coding required. Download the free demo here.

How to make your iPhone apps more responsive ?

rohit — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:58:50 +0000

Jonathan Saggau wrote an article about iPhone programming where he discusses how to optimize memory to avoid crashes at runtime. Also he explains some tricks that will make your iPhone applications, particularly the ones that are dealing with xml parsing and the cloud more responsive. Read it here.

iWebKit 4.0: iPhone Webapps Framework

rohit — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:08:02 +0000

iWebKit framework allows for easy creation of iPhone webapps/websites and requires very little programming knowledge.

[source iPhone World]

Checklist for iPhone developers and user interface designers

rohit — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:57:02 +0000

APCmag has posted a list of things for iPhone developers and UI designers that will help in making a usable and beautiful iPhone app.

Interesting tidbits for OpenGL programming on iPhone

rohit — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:29:44 +0000

I have been following this blog for sometime and must say the author Wolfgang Engel is posting some of the best tips for game programmers on iPhone. A must bookmark for every iPhone programmer.

UITabBarController Tutorial

rohit — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:46:25 +0000

The UITabBarController is a container that helps switch between different views using tabs, as can be seen in number of iPhone apps like NyTimes, MarketingProfs etc. A very nice tutorial on how to use this container along with source code for iPhone programming is posted by MIT student Edward Benson on his blog. Read it here.

[source Edward Benson Blog]

Porting Ruby Apps to iPhone

rohit — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:38:21 +0000

Rhodes, a new open source toolkit developed by Rhomobile makes it possible to port Ruby applications on to iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, and the BlackBerry.

[source MobileOrchard]

How to load a 3D Model ?

rohit — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:35:24 +0000

A very nice tutorial for new comers to OpenGL / iPhone programming that explains how you can load 3D Model from various popular 3D applications out there.

A review of available iPhone programming books

rohit — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:05:36 +0000

A review of three books that are available for iPhone programmers: Programming in Objective-C, Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK and The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.

Read it here.

[source iPhone Obsessed]

Oolong Game Engine for iPhone

rohit — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:59:57 +0000

The Oolong Engine is written in C++ with some help from Objective-C. It will help you to create new games and port existing games to the iPhone and the iPod touch. The best part is, its free.

IMA4 Audio Programming for iPhone game developers

rohit — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:57:18 +0000

IMA-ADPCM is a compression standard that gets you 4:1 compression on 16-bit audio files. It’s supported natively by the iPhone — but only using certain APIs. Read the full article here.

[source Wooji-Juice]

User Interface Design Resources for iPhone Developers

rohit — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:27:33 +0000

Several tutorials, links, and resources that you can use in your iPhone user interface design process. Check it here.

[source MobileOrchard]

Cocoa Framework a mirror image of Actionscript ?

rohit — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:24:01 +0000

Flash and Cocoa are shockingly similar. Much of the Cocoa framework is a mirror image of Actionscript classes / components. For example:

UIView = MovieClip
NSNotification = Event
UIButton = Button

Read the full article here

[source Insideria]

Video Out support in SDK v2.2

rohit — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:23:33 +0000

iPhone‘s latest SDK contains a programming class called MPTVOutWindow, which enables the iPhone’s Video-Out function, thus allowing the handset to send a video signal through the Dock Connector to an external display.

[source Cellaz]

iPhone SDK v2.2 – New AVFoundation framework

rohit — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:09:26 +0000

The new AVFoundation framework represents one of the most significant changes to the newly updated iPhone 2.2 SDK. It offers a simple playback system for anyone flummoxed by the inhospitality of Audio Queues. More ..

[source ArsTechnica]

Intro to iPhone Programming

rohit — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:53:27 +0000

A nice video tutorial, that gives an introduction to iPhone programming.

iPhone vs. Android development

rohit — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:55:30 +0000

5-day course on iPhone programming presented by Big Nerd Ranch, in particular to point out differences between Android and iPhone development.

[source zdnet]

Tips for Map Applications on iPhone

rohit — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:41:10 +0000

Little pieces of code to help you launch and use map application from your iPhone app.

[source objective-d]

SQLite Resources for iPhone Developers

rohit — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:52:07 +0000

A collection of the best SQLite related tutorials, and libraries in order to help developers in their iPhone development.

[source MobileOrchard]

Localizing iPhone Apps

rohit — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:55:50 +0000

A tutorial to develop a custom formatter class that is used to display local specific data.

[source iPhoneSDKArticles]

BASIC programming for iPhone

rohit — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:56:10 +0000

Point your iPhone or iPod touch to http://virtualgs.larwe.com/gsbasic and you can key in a BASIC program – similar to Applesoft BASIC. It supports the Apple II Lores graphics and text mode.

[source Retromaccast]

Quick SMTP client code for the iPhone: skpsmtpmessage

rohit — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:47:35 +0000

This should be very useful for developers who are looking to provide email functionality in their iphone app. You can download and read more info about it here

[source Alex blog]

Excellent iPhone Programming Chapters by Stanford University

rohit — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:27:56 +0000

Must read for all iPhone developers, here.

[source Stanford University]

iPhone development – Step by step for DOTNET / J2ME / Windows Mobile Developers

rohit — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:29:51 +0000

A nice article for the developers who are on the opposite side of Mac and are looking to get started on the iPhone platform. Read it here.

Debugging tips for Objective-C programming

rohit — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:03:20 +0000

An excellent article by Matt Gallagher about debugging cocoa applications. In the article Matt discusses about Objective-C specific gdb tips and commands that all Cocoa programmers should know.

[source Cocoawithlove]

iPhone Developer Forum Beta

rohit — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:34:25 +0000

Apple finally has opened the developer forums for iPhone platform just like they have it for mac. This should be a good resource for both new and experienced iPhone developers.

iPhone SDK vs Android SDK: Which is better ?

rohit — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:46:25 +0000

Christian Klotz posts about his experience with Android and iPhone SDK and tells us which is a better platform for developers. Read it here.

Tips for iPhone Development using Objective C

rohit — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:21:34 +0000

8 very useful tips when starting iPhone development using Objective C. As per author, “These are the 8 biggest foul-ups that I wish I had known before I started learning Objective-C. Hopefully you’ll learn something here that will prevent you from making an idiotic mistake I already made.”

[source Pathfinder]

iPhone programming screencasts

rohit — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:29:23 +0000

Informative iPhone programming screencasts.

[source MacHappens]

How to build an iPhone application

rohit — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:08:10 +0000

A nice article posted by ZDnet covers the basics of what you need to start developing your first iPhone application. Read it here.

[source ZDnet]

iPhone Sales Skyrocket

rohit — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:00:51 +0000

Apple said sales of 6.9 million iPhone 3G units helped it post fourth quarter (ended Sept. 27) profit of $1.1 billion, up 26% from net income of $904 million during the previous-year period.

Revenue increased 27%, to $7.9 billion, from $6.2 billion last year.

[source HomemediaMagazine]

Make iPhone apps without knowing Cocoa

rohit — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:25:13 +0000

AppLoop launched a mobile application generator which lets you turn any RSS feed into a mobile application for iPhone, even if you don’t have any programming experience.

[source Readwriteweb]

iPhone Fonts – Issues related to Programming

rohit — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:32:01 +0000

Late Night Code has posted a nice article on the fonts available on iPhone that developers can make use of in their apps and the article also explains the subtle differences in the fonts available on Mac platform as compared to iPhone. Good read.

[source Late Night Code]

iPhone & iPod Game Programming Forum

rohit — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:24:48 +0000

iDevGames has opened a message board for iPhone / iPod game development.

[source iDevGames]

iCodeblog – iPhone Programming Tutorials

rohit — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:13:15 +0000

iCodeblog is a good resource for programming tutorials on iPhone platform. Like us, this blog is new and there are only few tutorials but looks like so far so good.

[source iCodeblog]

Tris sourcecode on Google Code

rohit — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:24:57 +0000

This game got banned on Appstore but still it is a very valuable resource to understand how to develop a game for iPhone. You can download the source code of Tris on google code.

31 iPhone apps in 31 days

rohit — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:17:56 +0000

Apps Amuck is writing 31 iPhone applications in the next 31 days and they will also publish both the executable and the source code for each application. This looks like a great resource for developers who will like to jump into iPhone application development.

[source Apps Amuck]

PhoneGap – Bridge between iPhone SDK and Web apps

rohit — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:57:06 +0000

PhoneGap is a free open source development tool and framework that allows web developers to take advantage of the powerful features in the iPhone SDK from HTML and JavaScript. It is written in Objective-C and allows developers to embed their web app (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) in Webkit within a native iPhone app.

PhoneGap is developed and designed by Brock Whitten, Rob Ellis, freelance designer Colin Toomey and Eric Oesterle.

[source PhoneGap]