Category: I-phone

Four years ago, I went indie. My business, Instinctive Code (@InstinctiveCode) has been going strong since then, and it’s been a great ride. I’ve worked for many interesting clients, from Fortune 100 companies (including one with a certain fruit logo, on more than one occasion) to fellow independent developers, and I’ve learned a lot. I’m very grateful to everyone who has made it possible, and I want to give you some free stuff to celebrate!

This year, I want to seriously begin a transition from a mostly-consulting-based to a mostly-product-based income, with (of course) a focus on iOS and Mac OS X. I’m also expanding my services to include usability and accessibility reviews, which I’m very excited about.

It feels like about a decade since I was an employee, and I’m not looking back. I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot in the past year especially, and I thought I’d briefly take stock of where I am right now, professionally speaking.

• I have some exciting apps in the works, and a roadmap to get them out there.

• I’m a speaker at industry conferences. You can see some of my workshop and presentation videos here:

  • Making Mistakes Impossible (free)
  • Designing and Developing Custom Controls (free)
  • The World According To Gemmell Usability Workshop (paid)

• I’m a writer for Tap! Magazine (@TapMagUK), specifically the Dev_Zone section in every issue.

• I’ve released many open source components for iOS and Mac OS X that are used in what by now must be hundreds of apps.

• I’ve written a number of very popular articles on this blog, on topics relating to software and user experience. Some of my favourites:

  • Designing usable iPad touch-screen software interfaces
  • Engineer Thinking – Removing choice to aid usability
  • Accessibility for iPhone and iPad apps
  • Your App’s Website Sucks – Designing a user-friendly website for your app
  • Touch Notation: A concise visual language for multi-touch interaction design
  • Finger Tools: A context-free multi-touch interaction concept
  • The iPhone Development Emergency Guide
  • Client Requests – Being fair about “stupid” clients
  • What Have You Tried? How to ask technical questions the right way
  • The UI Design of Favorites

I feel a great pressure to contribute to the community, and I have more planned for the future. I think I’m doing alright so far.

So, on to the free stuff. First up, a few free promo codes for my speed-dial (and FaceTime, SMS and email) app for the iPhone, Favorites. It’s only $1.99, so if you don’t manage to snap up one of these codes, do feel free to buy a copy regardless!

If you do redeem one of these codes, I’d appreciate a comment telling me which one to strike off the list. Thanks!

Update: all of the current batch of codes have been used – that was quick! Sorry if you missed out this time; if you’d still like to try Favorites, you could always buy a copy (for just $1.99)!

1. YE76JJ43P99F
2. J4LRK6WYHTPJ
3. 6E3K37JXX9T6
4. A7YTKNF6WRYN
5. X6TMT363XFAT
6. TWLH3E4XJ6JJ
7. NLXAJ7HYRPMY
8. N3TM46HW63MR
9. MK6KTTTMRHL9
10. 6XYH9HL97TAH
11. XH43AFKFEWLA
12. KJXPNMW93LXN
13. 7HM3FPK3EX4P
14. 77EPEJKW6EEL
15. JN43JA447E69
16. KY49FF49M6JL
17. 3WNRHRLR3TJJ
18. 6KANHXKTJMFJ
19. 4WFKXRLY9YFN
20. EXY6LTXJE7EN

Secondly, I recently began offering no-attribution-required commercial licenses to my portfolio of open source Cocoa code, for those who either can’t or don’t wish to attribute me in their apps. If you need such a license, you can visit the license store here, but you can also try to win a free unlimited license for a source code package of your choice!

Just fill in the entry form here, and I’ll pick a winner later this week. I’ll probably repeat this exercise too, so you might want to follow me (@mattgemmell) on Twitter. Good luck!

Many thanks to everyone who has made the last four years possible; not just the clients, but also the community. I’m well aware of how fortunate I am, and I look forward to continuing to contribute.

Well, it’s been a full week here at iPhone.AppStorm, and it’s all been about productivity, getting things done and generally making yourself a more efficient person. It’s been so hectic that maybe you missed out on something, or possibly you haven’t had time to catch up on all the big news. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered. Check out all the details after the break.

The Apps

• Things: An Intuitive Productivity Tool
• Track Time, Money and Tasks Easily With Weave
• Headquarters: Basecamp For Your iPhone
• Desire: Manage Your Financial Goals
• OmniFocus for iPhone: The GTD Powerhouse
• iWork for the iPhone: Numbers
• Week Calendar: A Powerful Scheduling App

Competitions, Opinions and Roundups

• Weekly Poll: Do You Use GTD Apps?
• Win a Free Copy of Things for iPhone!
• How to Choose the Best To-Do App for You
• Scanning Documents with Your iPhone: 5 Apps Compared
• 25 Fantastic To-Do List Apps for iPhone

So what do you think? If we missed anything or you want to see another week dedicated to something, let us know in the comments.

It’s Productivity Week here at iPhone.AppStorm, and all week we’re going to have app reviews and how-tos, all based on getting things done. Plus, we’ll even pull some classic reviews out of the archives. Stay tuned all week!

One of the great things I love about my iPhone is the ability to stay organized. When trying to coordinate schedules between myself and my wife, it’s so crucial that we know what is going on throughout each day. And now with a baby, it is that much more important that we work together efficiently.

The iPhone calendar app is okay — it gets the job done — but like anything else, I always try to see if I can find something different; something that will do the job just a little bit better. Week Calendar does that and more. It packs a ton of features into the calendar and I honestly believe this could replace the official calendar app. Let’s get into it more after the break.

Calendars and Views

With the advent of Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange we all want to sync our calendars with our iPhone. Week Calendar is no exception. You can still sync your calendars with your iPhone calendar app, and it will also then sync with Week Calendar. Because it syncs with Calendar app, if you already sync your Google Calendar, your calendars will also sync with Week Calendar.

Week Calendar provides you with many different views to choose from — five, to be exact. I personally use List and Agenda view the most because I feel these are the two views that give me the best overall picture of my week.

List View and Agenda View

The other three views — Week, Month and Year — are views that I don’t often use. For one, Week view is a little too cramped for me and I can’t really see what I need to see, and I hardly ever need to see the month and yearly view of my calendar. If you are like me and only like certain views and know that you are not going to use other views, you have the option to turn these views off.

Month and Week View

A different perspective that you can have in any of the views that I have mentioned above is full screen. When in full screen view you basically take out the top and bottom bar so that you can see more of your calendars. If you want the bars back, all you have to do is tap on the calendar and they will appear again. When you then wait a couple of seconds, the bars will disappear so that you can enjoy full-screen view again.

View with and without the top and bottom bar

Lots of Features

There are some neat features that are implemented into Week Calendar that separate it from other calendar apps, and one of them is called batch editing. Let’s say for example, you have set three different appointments, but the first one needs to be pushed back an hour, affecting your other two meetings as well. So instead of having to go into all three appointments and change the time, you can actually select all three appointments and change them all at once.

Select all three appointments and you can move them all at once.

Another great feature is ability to move or copy and paste an event. If you want to move an event from one day to another or to a different hour, all you have to do is press the event and hold down on it for a couple of seconds. This will create that jiggle effect you see when you press and hold down on apps on the iPhone. From here, you are able to move your event with your finger to another time, day or week. You can also copy and paste an event as well. To do that, you tap on an event and select “Copy,” then tap again on a different date and select “Paste.”

One of the other features that make Week Calendar different than other calendar apps is the custom alerts. With the alerts, most calendar apps let you set an alarm at a specific amount of time before the event. For example, you can set an alarm at ten minutes or two days prior. With Week Calendar, you can set alarms like this, but you can also set it for a specific day, hour and minute that you want the alarm to go off. So if you want to be reminded one day, three hours and five minutes before an event, you can.

You can set very specific alarms with Week Cal.

Week Cal also introduces what they call Complex Recurring Events. This is a nice feature to have because as we all know, different people tend to have different reasons why they want events to recur on certain days. For example, with my work schedule, I am in the office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, so with Week Calendar it is easy to set up this recurring event. I can also set this up for something to repeat during certain times of the month. For example, if I want an event to repeat every month on the second Tuesday of the month, I can do that.

Screenshot showing the Complex Recurring Events setting page

Minor Features Worth Noting

There are a couple of other minor features that are worth mentioning. Gesturing is implemented into Week Calendar. You can pinch both vertically and horizontally to see more or less days as well as double tap to zoom in on an area.

One more feature worth noting is called Templates. If you know a certain type of event comes up often, but not necessarily on a regular basis, you can create a template for that event. When you know you are going to create that event again, instead of having to input everything again, you just need to click on that template and all the details get filled in for you.

Conclusion

When I used this app and put it through its paces, I envisioned the power user liking this app and the minimalist not. As you can see, Week Calendar has a lot of features, most of them featured in this review. It is definitely a Calendar app replacement because it does everything that the standard Calendar app does and a lot more.

You can get Week Calendar on the App Store for $1.99, which I believe is a perfect price point for this application. There are many other calendar apps that are out there that have solid features, but if you are looking for one that does just about anything you want it to do, then this one is for you.

If you’ve been following iOS development sites for awhile then you’ve likely come across a few source code stores that often sell components that could be cloned in an hour or two at an extremely high price. Because of this, the first time I that I came across Sensible TableView I didn’t really give it much of a chance – that was a mistake.

When I noticed the team at Sensible Cocoa was purchasing advertising on this site I decided to give it a look.

Please keep in mind that while Sensible TableView does purchase advertising on this site they did not ask me or pay me to write this article. I was curious about their product, and I thought others visiting this site might be too.

Tarek from sensible Cocoa gave me a chance to check out the Sensible Tableview library, and I was very surprised by the number of features and the very high quality applications that were already using Sensible TableView as a sort of secret weapon to build apps quickly.

Apps Using Sensible TableView

Some of the extremely high quality apps using Sensible TableView are ThinkBook, Tap Forms, and iTeach .

A UITableView Replacement

I was very surprised at how easy things were after going through their brief 7 minute “UITableView replacement” video which shows you how to build an interactive, and editable UITableView replacement automatically. Keep in mind that the tableviews you create with Sensible Tableview are real native UITableView’s – these are not built using html5/javascript or any hacks, and you are still using Objective-C and the iOS SDK. You also get full source code so you can tweak, adjust and extend as much as you like.

Other Features

Sensible Tableview is much more than a simple UITableView replacement, and you can check out this page for a list of many of Sensible TableView’s custom cells, and features.

From the list of features you can see that Sensible Tableview has many useful time saving features for an app that displays data from or saves to a database, and especially if you are creating an app that requires the user to enter data into a form. I highly suggest checking out the Sensible TableView intro video for a more in depth introduction.

An Active Community

Another thing to take note of is that Sensible Cocoa has a very active and helpful community forum. You can find many gems in the forums provided by the Sensible Cocoa team. I haven’t seen any products similar to Sensible Tableview that have anything close to this community.

Documentation

Sensible TableView also includes video training (downloadable for registered users), and searchable help that can be installed within Xcode. The videos include demonstrations on how to integrate with Core Data, how to extract values from the tableview, and using Sensible Tableview’s included validators to validate user data.

Conclusion

A few people have asked me how they can contribute to this site. Since Sensible Tableview have supported this site one thing you can do is check out their site, and see if Sensible Tableview is for you or share this article with someone who you think might be interested in Sensible Tableview.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Other sites have rumors and speculation. We have the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today’s topic is iCloud. With so much to offer, what will its true killer feature be?

iCloud stands ready to revolutionize the way we think of cloud storage. It brings so many options to the table, it’s hard to pick just one. So, of course, that’s what we’re going to ask you to do. Of all these features, which is going to truly change the Apple user experience most profoundly?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your iCloud predictions.

View Poll

You’re the Pundit: iCloud’s Future originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cave Story is a freeware PC game that came out back in 2004, a 2D action platformer created by a one-man team named Pixel. Since then, it’s come out on quite a few consoles (I’ve got it on my DSi, though it’s on the Wii as well), and now it’s available as Cave Story+ on the Mac App Store. The app is US$9.99 and available for download right now.

Wait a minute, you might be asking: Why do we have to pay $10 for a game you just called freeware? Good question. The original PC title is still downloadable for free, but the Mac App Version is a plus version with new graphics and music created for the WiiWare upgrade, as well as a new level called the Wind Fortress. Pixel is also reportedly planning to add more content to the Mac App Store version in the future, and this is such a lovely and awesome game that it’s worth supporting with a few bucks anyway.

If you’ve never played Cave Story and you enjoy a good “Metroidvania” platformer, you’re in for a treat this weekend. Go pick Cave Story+ up right now.

Cave Story+ out for the Mac App Store with new content originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Macworld has been doing some more testing in Thunderbolt performance, this time between the Snow Leopard and Lion operating systems. The results say that if you spent that $30 on Lion just so your Thunderbolt connection would go faster, you probably wasted your money. Results weren’t that different, coming in only a few megabytes a second apart but still well within the optimum speed for the various transfer services. In general, Thunderbolt’s going to be fast no matter what operating system you’re using it on.

Macworld also did some testing between the MacBook Air and the 17″ MacBook Pro, and again, while the Air’s flash memory gave it the edge in a file writing test, most of the speeds didn’t differ more than a couple of megabytes.

In other words, there are quite a few other, more important considerations to keep in mind when you’re looking for a system, besides just how it runs Thunderbolt. If you’re looking for what will really limit or boost your file transfer performance, you’d do better to look elsewhere.

Snow Leopard and Lion neck and neck on Thunderbolt file transfers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I recently upgraded to Lion 10.7 and have found that VNC (I use iteleport) on Lion has not been working. I have searched far and wide across the jungles and valleys of the interweb to no avail. I did find that I am not the only one having this problem. Any help you could provide would be much appreciated

Thanks,

Niko

Dear Niko,

Apple’s Screen Sharing / Remote Desktop Server appears to have a bug related to mouse movement feedback. Auntie contacted iTeleport Mobile, who helpfully pointed her to this page. Apple says they’re working on a fix.

In the meantime, iTeleport offers a workaround by suggesting you adjust your primary display so it lies to the left of all other displays.

What’s more, Jahanzeb Sherwani of iTeleport promised to get in touch with you directly to help you work through your current problems. Expect a letter in your in-box. Thank you, Jahanzeb!

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: What’s wrong with Lion VNC? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has provided an eighth beta seed of iTunes 10.5 and a third beta of iWork for iOS to developers. This is the first time in the development cycle for iTunes 10.5 that a new beta for the music player hasn’t simultaneously come alongside a new iOS beta; iOS 5 is still in its seventh beta as of this writing.

Both betas are now available from Apple’s Developer Center.

iTunes 10.5 beta 8 and iWork for iOS beta 3 available to developers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The lawsuits from and to Apple keep flying around, and today is no exception. Texas based Droplets Inc., is suing Apple for patent violations in the Apple website, iTunes, and the Apple movie trailers page.

The suit, according to the Patently Apple website contends that the Droplets patent covers delivering interactive clickable links using object oriented methods. The patent was granted in 2000.

Droplets is also suing Google, Facebook and Yahoo. The suit was filed in Texas Eastern District Court, generally considered to be a patent lawsuit friendly venue.

Droplets, Inc sues Apple over iTunes, movie trailer site originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here.

Daily Update for Sept. 9, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can talk about Steve Jobs’ legacy as CEO of Apple, look at the products he launched and analyze the earnings statements, but sometimes all you need is a simple picture to summarize it all. As Edible Apple points out, Apple’s stock price from when Jobs took the helm in 1997 until now reveals how he has transformed the company from Cupertino.

Apple stock performance under Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s online storefront includes shipping times that give prospective customers an idea of how long they’ll have to wait before an item arrives on their front door. Many Apple products no longer have an estimated ship date and are labeled as being “In Stock”. The only products with a ship date are those with limited availability.

In the past, these shipping dates were used to estimate product inventory and guess when new products may be released. Earlier this week, savvy customers noticed the ship dates for the iPhone 4 slipped from 24 hours to 1-3 days. This kicked off a round of speculation that Apple was clearing inventory of the iPhone 4 before the launch of the iPhone 5.

Likely tired of these rampant rumors, Apple has removed these ship dates leaving customers and rumormongers in the dark about product inventory.

[Via AppleInsider]

Apple removes shipping times for many online items originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has rolled out security update 2011-005 (Lion) and security update 2011-005 (Snow Leopard), which addresses the certificate trust policy regarding DigiNotar certificates. The update removes DigiNotar from the list of trusted root certificates, the list of Extended Validation certificate authorities and configuring the default system trust settings so DigitNotar certificates — those issued by DigitNotar itself and other authorities — are not trusted.

These downloads are available through Apple’s support site and via Software Update.

Apple security update addresses DigiNotar certificates originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At the IBC trade show in Amsterdam today, Adobe announced version 4.5 of its Flash Media Server and Flash Access 3.0. The $4,500 media server will stream video to Flash-enabled devices, and also to Flash-less iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. The transcoding is done on the server’s end and is streamed to the iOS device using HTTP live streaming. The server product comes in four flavors for various deployment sizes, including a version built to run on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform.

Adobe’s move isn’t a surprise. During the National Association of Broadcasters’ trade show in April, the company revealed its plans to include HTTP live streaming in the Flash Media Server, which in turn enables the iOS support. Don’t be confused, however: these server products don’t add up to “Flash is coming to iOS!” as some headlines would have it. They stream video, but they don’t permit Flash animations, games or other interactive content to work in Mobile Safari.

As Kelly Hodgkins wrote in April, HTTP live streaming is an HTTP-based media streaming protocol developed by Apple. It uses H.264 video and AAC or MP3 audio to deliver its media stream. The protocol is supported by QuickTime on Mac OS X and is compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

At the time, this was seen as a win on Apple’s part in the Flash vs. HTML 5 war. Adobe knows full well that even though Steve Jobs is no longer at the helm, it doesn’t mean Apple will suddenly become Flash-friendly.

In principle, streams delivered by the new 4.5 servers should be viewable in Mobile Safari, although they can also be integrated directly into iOS apps. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not the big video players (Hulu, ABC, HBO) decide to simplify their back-end environments for iOS streaming with Adobe’s offerings.

The full press release can be read below.

Adobe’s Flash Media Server 4.5 will stream video to iOS devices originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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