Category: I-phone

Task management is something most loathe but have to do to keep productive. Producteev, a previously web and iPhone app focused task management service has just launched a Mac app.

Producteev focuses on creating and managing tasks with the ability to connect those tasks with other people, other services and sync them to the web. You can create tasks in different categories, arrange them by due date, attach notes and files to them, and even comment on them.

You can set up alerts for deadlines and get notified through the app itself, Growl, the Menu bar or Dock icons, or even via email and Gcal with a little help from the web app. You can also apply customizable color coded labels to your tasks to help you differentiate them from one another, as well as “Star” them with a rating from one to five.

For an individual, Producteev could be a little over complicated for what you need unless you’re a serious multi-level task manager. But for a team, Producteev allows you to share tasks, create and assign them to others (individuals and groups of people) and has the potential to make collaborative tasks just that little bit easier. Comments and file attachments allow adjustments and additions to a task, while everyone can monitor progress and pitch in if needed.

The Mac app portion of Producteev is free and so is an individual account with up to two users sharing workspaces. If you want more plans start at US$5 per month and reach up to $30 a month for unlimited users and 1.5 GB of file storage (with a two-week free trial).

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Producteev originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last summer, when the folks at iFixit first did a tear down of the iPhone 4, one of the interesting tidbits they revealed was that the iPhone 4 has two mics (which is more than most other cell phones), and that it has a white-labelled (manufacturers details removed upon request from Apple) noise cancellation chip in it. The idea being that ambient noise is identified by the second mic, and processed and cancelled out by the chip — leaving the person listening to whoever is speaking into the iPhone 4 with much clearer audio.

Furthermore, a few months ago, you may have noticed that iFixit — along side the help of Chipworks — revealed the unbranded chip to be a low power audio signal processor manufactured by Audience. The same noise cancellation chip found in the Google Nexus One phone.

While that in itself may not be all that interesting, we thought you may be interested in the YouTube video iFixit sourced to demonstrate the power of the Audience chip. The video below is a recording of two separate voice mail messages called from the same noisy location, but on two different phones. One is from an unnamed, standard cell phone, the other is from the iPhone 4.

iPhone 4 noise cancellation chip demoed with comparison video originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Raise your hand if you’ve ever found Web Outlook on your Mac ugly and unusable, particularly the “classic” style. Now, if you have an iPhone and have been forced to use this adomination of everything good about web design, you know that the painful gets even more painful when you have to constantly zoom into impossibly small targets. Of course all this would be precluded if you could use your personal iPhone with your company’s Exchange server, but that isn’t going to happen.

What do you do? First, take a look at Webmail++. This app scrapes off the gunky code in Web Outlook and presents it to you in an iOS-friendly format. For iPhone and iPad, the app does a good job of making Outlook on Webkit far more usable, even touch friendly. Check out the video for some nice touches, like floating menus.

Webmail++ isn’t just for Outlook, however. You can connect Webmail++ to a number of email systems like Yahoo but some ISP webmail systems too, including RoadRunner and Comcast.

Video App Demo: Webmail++ originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like their big brothers, the new MacBook Air models now include a Thunderbolt port. Though it looks the same on the outside, internally the Air’s Thunderbolt controller is much different from the one found in the 2011 iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac mini line.

To fit a Thunderbolt controller in its thin chassis, the MacBook Air includes a controller that is half the size of the one found in other 2011 Mac models. Codenamed Eagle Ridge, this smaller chip includes two Thunderbolt 10 Gbps channels (instead of four) and one display port output (instead of two).

Beside size, this chip may also be less expensive, notes Anandtech, which means it might show up in machines from other manufacturers; especially those companies looking to keep the cost of their hardware to a minimum.

[Image from iFixit]

Apple using smaller, cheaper Thunderbolt controller in MacBook Airs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

So, the last time I sold a Mac I bundled it up with my Tiger install discs and sent it on its way, but having installed Lion on my MacBook and readying my bank account for the impending purchase of a MacBook Air, what happens to Lion when this laptop goes to the big eBay in the sky?

Can I sell something on if I don’t own the physical product?
If it’s tied to my iTunes account does it take records of my associated email account with it?

Your loving nephew,

Matt

Dear Matt,

Auntie is not a lawyer. She does not even play a lawyer on TV. But as a completely unqualified non-expert, here’s how the matters seem to shake out.

• App Store Lion licenses follow the account and not the hardware
• Pre-installed licenses follow the hardware, and not the account
• The install process from the recovery partition seems to follow the hardware as well.

Preinstalled Lion

Here’s what Apple says about hardware that came with Lion.

If you obtained the Apple Software preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware, you may make a one-time permanent transfer of all of your license rights to the Apple Software (in its original form as provided by Apple) to another party…

Hardware that already had Lion on it, can be sold and the license transfers with it. You can restore the machine to its virginal state and sell it off. The new user should be able to use the recovery partition to re-install the OS whenever needed. Your e-mail should not be involved.

Since the hardware is newer, should the hard drive fail, the user should be able to use the over-the-air restore process.

That process does not seem to involve any user authentication. The hardware likely checks in with some kind of central Apple database that associates the machine ID with shipped-with-Lion install, but Apple is being closed lipped as usual in disclosing how the eligibility is determined. Auntie guesses it’s the hardware identity.

Upgraded to Lion

For pre-Lion hardware, Apple takes a firmer line. Here’s what they say about selling systems to third parties.

If you sell your Apple-branded hardware to a third party, you must remove the Apple Software from the Apple- branded hardware before doing so, and you may restore your system to the version of the Apple operating system software that originally came with your Apple hardware (the “Original Apple OS”) and permanently transfer the Original Apple OS together with your Apple hardware…

So as far as Apple is concerned, you still “ship with DVDs” but you also need to downgrade to the original OS. That means completely wiping the drive to remove the recovery partition as well as experiencing all the joys of an OS re-install from DVD.

Auntie suggests another way. Starting in August, you will be able to purchase an install dongle at the Apple Store. That additional $69 may simplify the whole process and the questions behind it ownership transfer.

When you ship a dongle along with a newly dongle-installed machine, you ensure that the new user can start fresh and will have a full license of their own. Of course, that extra $69 takes a bite out of your profit margin. But you’ll be selling Lion-installed hardware rather than whatever your system started out with. (Do make sure to send the original install DVDs as well.)

Dongle installs shouldn’t be associated with your identity either. So again, you should be safe there as well.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: If I sell my old Mac, does Lion go with it? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So, you’re in Shanghai, China with your fake MacBook Air when it suddenly stops working. What do you do? Make an appointment at the real Genius Bar for the Apple Store, Pudong in Shanghai and get help.

Fortunately for the man who brought the “MacBook Air” into the store, the Geniuses behind the bar were in a good mood and actually helped him out with diagnostics and troubleshooting. I somehow feel this type of friendly and helpful reception might be lacking if a certain colleague of mine brought her trio of hackintosh netbooks into a local Apple Store here in the U.S.

Hackintosh repaired at Apple Genius Bar originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released iOS 4.3 for the Apple TV 2G with build number 8F455. You can download iOS 4.3 for Apple TV 2G from below. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber suggests that iOS 4.3 brings the possibility…

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An Apple led consortium has purchased all of Nortel Networks patents and patent applications. It is rumored that Apple contributed $2.6 of the $4.5 billion purchase price. The sale is pending a US Anit-trust investigation. Here is the press release:

TORONTO – Nortel Networks Corporation [OTC: NRTLQ] announced that it,its subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited (NNL), and certain of its other subsidiaries, including Nortel Networks Inc. and Nortel Networks UK Limited (in administration), have completed the sale of all of Nortel’s remaining patents and patent applications to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony, for a cash purchase price of US$4.5 billion.

As previously announced, the sale includes more than 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patents. The extensive patent portfolio touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.

As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that the Company’s common shareholders or the NNL preferred shareholders will receive any value from Nortel’s creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

Several weeks ago I mentioned the excellent WEPopover controller that allows you to implement iPad style popovers with a customizable background on any iOS device designed to provide the same functionality as a UIPopover.

I’ve come across another library allowing you to make popup bubbles with a similar look to the UIPopover elements, but designed specifically for displaying information.  These informative popup bubbles have custom animations – they can slide in or pop in, can be provided custom colorings, and automatically orient and resize.

The library is known as CMPopTipView from Chris Miles.

Here’s a quick video demonstration of the CMPopTipView demo in action:

You can find CMPopTipView on Github here:
https://github.com/chrismiles/CMPopTipView

A great way to provide your users with some quick information.

[via John Muchow]

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

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In the last couple of years of updating this web site, especially after the iPad was released, I have received feedback from authors asking about creating comic book apps.

Last week I mentioned the extensive Cooliris-Toolkit, and one of the projects that makes extensive use of that toolkit is a beautiful open source comic book reader app known as ComicFlow.

What’s cool about this app is that not only does it look great, but also supports all the different common comic book formats such as CBZ (zip), CBR (rar) and PDF files.  Making it a great example on how to use those files.

ComicFlow is from Pierre-Olivier Latour and the Google Code page for the project can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/comicflow/

Keep in mind that if you decide to create a reader yourself using this project that it is GPL licensed.

Added to the Open Source iOS Apps List.

 

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

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Adobe’s new HTML 5 authoring tool, Edge 1.0, is now available for download. Edge aims to be a “web motion and interaction design tool that allows web designers to bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript and CSS.”

While we give Adobe flack for Flash Player’s Mac woes, the truth is that the Flash platform successfully brought a higher level of animation and interaction to the web long before HTML 5 was in the picture. When Apple unequivocally said Flash would not be supported on iOS, I knew Adobe (despite some infamous bluster) wouldn’t sit idly by and let HTML 5 be a cash cow for other developers.

Enter Edge, Adobe’s effort to offer web developers a choice. Edge 1.0 is a free beta, and more importantly, it’s a first version of an application which Adobe states will be developed in the open with the aid of the web developer community. In fact, according to Adobe this isn’t even “beta” yet — they are releasing the application before it even reaches that status in an effort to ensure that what developers want the most gets in the app first. For now, Edge is a very simple (but still useful) tool.

Edge is currently limited to basic animation and simple page layout. Users of timeline-based applications will immediately grok Edge’s simple UI and timeline for HTML 5 animation. Of course, just like in Dreamweaver, you can access code directly. Edge creates pretty clean code, but as an early product it isn’t doing anything particularly difficult yet. Edge is primarily designed for WebKit-based browsers, as Adobe has contributed to WebKit; the in-app sandbox browser is also WebKit-based.

When I spoke to Adobe I asked about integration with their other products, as I see the Adobe pipeline and workflow being a competitive advantage when comparing Edge to competitors such as Tumultco’s Hype. As this is so early in the development stage, I was told that features like integration with other Adobe tools would happen, but at a later date. This initial push is to open the floodgates of feedback, and Adobe will shovel in features as needed.

I do hope Edge is a success for Adobe. While not all of the company’s decisions make sense, there’s no doubt that Adobe makes strong tools for designers and developers. If Edge helps make better, faster, standards-compliant websites for everyone, I think that’s great. Download Edge here and take it for a test drive. Then be sure to let us know in the comments what you think.

Adobe introduces Edge 1.0, the HTML 5 tool with an eye towards open improvements originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like it or not kids, we’ve come up on another Sunday night, and you know what that means: Talkcast Time! We have some fake Apple stores to discuss, some beautiful hacks for our shiny new formerly [ROARDACTED] operating system, and my personal favorite, a bit of speculation! Ah, theories. I love them so. It’s why I run the home.

You don’t always know who will show up to talk Apple news with us, so it might be best if you just showed up to see for yourself. As a bonus, I’ll rock a little aftershow for the live crowd. If they’re good.

It’s really all about you, the community, so please join me won’t you? To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for +5 Interactivity, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (Viva free weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink or X-Lite SIP clients, basic instructions are here. (If you like Blink, the pro version is available in the Mac App Store.) Talk to you tonight!

TUAW Talkcast, July 31, 2011: Practically August edition! originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another great week has gone by for iOS developers, and the upcoming release of iOS 5 is coming closer.

There was a definite increase in the number of great resources shared this week, and it was difficult to pick and choose which to feature on this site.

This week’s resources include a massive collection of useful iOS libraries that is really a must bookmark, a library created to replace Three20, a free augmented reality sdk – that actually works well – and more.

Here are the resources shared in order of popularity:

Open Source: Massive Toolkit With Over 40 iOS Objective-C Libraries – An excellent collection of useful categories, wrappers, and libraries that had already been used in a number of apps prior to release.  If you are doing any Objective-C development for iOS devices then you will probably find something in here to save you time.

Open Source: Well Documented Three20 Replacement Library – A great start on a library created to provide the same functionality that exists within the Three20 library, but with thorough documentation a top priority.

News: Free Augmented Reality SDK For iOS Released By Qualcomm – An amazing AR SDK that had only been available for Android devices.  Works extremely well, and can even track 3D objects.

Open Source: iOS Scene Graph Library 3D – Free 3D Graphics Engine – An open source 3D graphics engine with a very impressive feature set, and excellent tutorials.

Open Source: Text Adventure Game Framework – Make Some Interactive Fiction – An easy to code, well documented, object oriented framework created specifically for text adventure games.

Open Source: Sudoku Solving App Using Computer Vision – An app featuring some impressive use of the OpenCV project to perform OCR, and puzzle finding.

Tutorial: Creating An Evernote Style Button Activated Keyboard – A tutorial demonstrating how to duplicate the same sliding and stretching animation as in the Evernote app.

Tutorial: Masking Sprites In Cocos2D With CCRenderTexture – Demonstrates showing how you can use Cocos2D’s image masking capability to perform effects on your images.

Open Source: Social Networking, Sharing And Activity Tracking Library – A library that allows you to add in a social network just for your app that includes social network sharing and activity analytics.

Open Source: Easy Image Gallery With HTML/CSS Complete With Swipe Support – A useful library that allows you to automatically generate a full featured image gallery which can be used on a website or embedded within a native app using a framework such as Phonegap.

Thanks for reading, please bookmark and share this post!

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

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Sprite masking can be used to create some very cool image effects.  Things like adding a ragged border around images, hiding body parts of an image can be done easily with sprite masking.

I’ve found a tutorial explaining how to mask sprites within Cocos2D 1.0.  The tutorial explains how to apply a mask to a sprite using CCRenderTexture within Cocos2D.  What’s cool about this is that it is very easy way to add some style and interesting effects to your sprites.

The tutorial is from Ray Wenderlich and can be found here:
How To Mask A Sprite With Cocos2D 1.0

Ray has also written a tutorial on sprite masking with Cocos2D 2.0.  This can be done much more efficiently in Cocos2D 2.0 as it uses OpenGL ES 2.0 so the entire process can be done using shaders.  Keep in mind Cocos2D 2.0 is in an Alpha state right now, but provides some great info if you want to learn about using custom shaders.

You can find the tutorial here:
How To Mask A Sprite With Cocos2D 2.0

Some essential material if you are developing with Cocos2D.  I find the OpenGL ES 2.0 stuff to be quite challenging to understand, but there is definitely a big performance improvement.

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

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Before I left on a business trip recently, I went out and spent some cash on a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones. At first, I loved the sound and was amazed at how it shut out the static around me. Problem was, they felt really flimsy and although they looked cool, they got uncomfortable quickly.

It made me wonder how many of our readers spend some decent cash on their headphones, or if they just use the pair provided in the box with their iPhone. So let’s put it to a poll: What kind of headphones do you use?