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Source: XKCD
App store ratings are both a blessing and a curse. They can offer prospective buyers a semi-objective opinion on the use of an app and be the means of pushing a wary shopper to a purchase, but that all kind of hinges on the user actually providing useful information or even not having a personal vendetta against you.
I can completely sympathize with users not wanting to get hoodwinked out of their own cash, but many app store reviews are actually pretty worthless, even ones rated high. But if that weren't enough, I got a really strange email last...
iOS 5 has been a real treat, not just for the end-users, but also developers, as well. The introduction of UIAppearance, CoreImage, ARC, and many other goodies has really amped up the awesomeness in developing rich applications at a much quicker pace. One of the other interesting items is called UIStoryboard. Storyboards offer us the ability to apply our Interface Builder skills and take it to the next level for developing cohesive applications through a WYSIWYG interface. I developed my latest application, TF2 Recipes, exclusively in Storyboards in order to get a real feel of how they might be a...
As an iOS developer I have a number of devices with which to test. Among those are FaceTime capable iPhones, but because I don't have a phone contract or data plan for them the FaceTime app isn't available to use. The reason is because Apple uses a specially crafted text message to activate the application. But because I don't have a carrier plan I can't ever receive it.
Except there's a loophole that I just discovered. You still have to go into Settings --> FaceTime and do the usual setup:
Turn FaceTime on.
...
After reading the authorized Steve Jobs biography I came away impressed at the integrity he had with the products he created, even in those places where no one would really look:
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried...
Yesterday I waited 5 hours in line to get my hands on a new iPad 2.
The Device
Having owned the original iPad for almost a year now, the iPad has been an integral part of my life workflow. I use it to gorge on RSS feeds, keeping up on the latest news and loved it for reading books. Despite what Amazon would tell you, the iPad is a wonderful eBook reader. Most people don't live at the beach or spend most of their time outdoors, so the fact that you can't read very well in the open sunlight is not an...
It has been too long since I've posted to my blog, but things have gone extraordinarily well with Webmail++. It has kept me plenty busy, but more than that, it has taught me so much about iOS development. I'm prepping some major updates to the app, but the original implementation has given me a real eye opener into Apple and their relationship with developers.
I've had my fair share of app rejections, all because I've tapped into their so-called private APIs. These are API that, by rule, are disallowed for third party developers like myself to use. Apple disallows the use...
It has taken a while, but my new for-pay app, Webmail++ is live! This app makes doing web mail a whole lot easier. I originally coded it up because the company I work for does not allow us to use Exchange on our own personal devices and we are forced instead to use a web mail solution. I wrote up this app to simplify the log in process and have a full screen of web mail goodness. You can add not only your Outlook Web Access account, but Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, AIM, Windows Live, and Road Runner accounts.
It's currently on...
I went to the Apple store today to check out all the new products that came out a few weeks ago. It was cool to see the new iPod lineup, but I have to admit, it was quite underwhelming.
First, with the new iPod Touch, Apple set a pretty high bar as far as features go with the new iPhone 4. Apple has always created artificial parity between the iPhone and the Touch, but this time I really think they sold themselves short. First off is the camera. New to the Touch line, the front camera is about the same as...
Learning a new language can be a rewarding experience, if for no reason but to view the coding world in different way. Another way to enrich this experience is through the environment that a company creates to actually write programs. Visual Studio and Eclipse have spoiled me rotten, which is why I grit my teeth at times when developing for the iPhone/iPad with XCode, Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for writing apps on the iOS platform. A few quick rants:
Why do I have to @synthesize everything by hand? Why can't I click a button and XCode...
WIRED magazine came out with a new digital magazine on iPad last week with much fanfare. I purchased the app myself and thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were some who criticized the inclusion of advertisements. Economics aside, advertisements can have a lot of intrinsic historical value as well. Quite by accident I discovered this will perusing the archives of Popular Science, hosted by Google.
There's a good chuckle to be had in this Canon PalmPrinter, from a 1980 issue:
It's interesting to note that the emphasis of the ad is on its size. As a single function device,...
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