Category: I-phone

VoiceActivator is a new jailbreak tweak by chpwn that lets you take full control of Voice Control on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. You can launch apps, open URLs, use Activator actions: it’s all here, in one tweak; VoiceActivator.

Watch the VoiceActivator video demo after the jump…

Custom Voice Control commands! VoiceActivator is a new tweak by chpwn to let you take full control of the Voice Control feature of your iPhone or iPod touch. Launch apps, open URLs, use Activator actions: it’s all here, in one tweak.

VoiceActivator will be available in Cydia Soon. There’s no word on pricing.

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• 3DBoard – Glasses Free 3D Effect for iPhone SpringBoard [Video]
• Mail Rules – Apply Rules to New Incoming Mail on iPhone/iPad
• Springboard Rotator: Added Animation, Supports iPhone 3GS & 3G [Video]

Analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein has surveyed several top developers about iOS and Android.

The survey indicates that developers find Android to be the easiest to develop for, followed by iOS. One of the key issues with Android is the plethora of screen sizes and different memory specifications.

Among Android developers, Sacconaghi sees the fragmentation of both the software and the hardware profile of the many Android devices as an issue. That’s not going to change anytime soon, given the various competing interests in the Android market that keep parties from getting on the same page, he believes. There are 15 different combinations of screen-size and resolution on Android devices, he notes, and five different combinations for memory specification.

You can read the entire article here.

To get started with iPhone development you will first need to learn some things…

Firstly, some history is always useful when learning something new. iPhone apps are written in a computer programming language called Objective-C which was originally created by a company called NeXTSTEP. Apple soon purchased Objective-C and used it to develop their operating systems. Objective-C is used on many different platforms today, like, iOS and Mac OS X.

That’s enough history for now, we’re not in high school and it’s not incredibly important to this series of tutorials.

I’m writing this series of tutorials assuming that you have no experience with computer programming so there are really no prerequisites to this series, other than knowing how to run a computer with general competency.

Step 1: You are going to need a few things before you can get started developing apps for the iPhone, iPad, or any iOS device

1. Intel based Mac
2. xCode

Obviously you must have a Mac to continue to step 2, so if you have a Mac follow the these instructions to get started with xCode.

Step 2: Lets download xCode so we can start making our apps.

1. Go to the iOS dev center on Apple’s website
2. Now you’re going to want to signup by clicking the register link. Follow the instructions on the screen until you are completely registered, then proceed to the next step.
3. Once you are registered go back to the iOS dev center page and login.
4. As soon as you login you should see a page that looks like this:

You can instantly see that Apple has tons of documentation, sample code, and tutorials, all at your finger tips.

You can explore around here if you want to, but right now we’re going to skip this and get to xCode.

(this page contains nearly everything you will need to get started making iOS apps)

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and download xCode.

(you should see something similar to this)

6. Once you have downloaded xCode, go ahead and install it.

7. Go ahead an open xCode. You can find it by going to your main hard drive and click developer>Applications.

8. Click File>New Project where you will be presented with a window similar to this:

9. Choose a “View-based Application” and give any name.

(here is what your window should look like)

Step 3: We now have xCode fully setup and a new project started. Lets look into some of the features xCode offers.

All your code and resources (and pretty much everything) is organized into folders on the left hand side of xCode.

This is called “groups & files” and it’s map to everything in your program.

Your code is organized into folders, most of your code will go in the “Classes” folder.

Your code is stored in files with the extension “.h” and “.m”.  If you click on the files you will see the code that is stored in that file on the right side of xCode.

We won’t worry about understanding the code or the files it’s stored in right now, we’ll get to that later.

If you look at the top bar you will see some buttons that pertain to your project.

Lets start from the left and work our way over…

On the very left you have the target selector. In this menu you can choose run your app in the app simulator (we’ll get to this soon) or run your app on your device, you can only do this if you paid the $99 developer fee. The only advantage you get from paying the $99 dollar developer fee is the ability to run your apps on your device and post your apps to the app store. I would suggest not paying this until you have an app that is ready to be uploaded to the app store. In this menu you can also chose the targets and your active configuration (we’ll talk about this in a later tutorial).

The action menu is pretty self explanatory and it’s essentially the same as right clicking on a file.

Breakpoints are a very useful thing when making iPhone apps. Breakpoints allow you to run a program and stop the program from running on a certain line of code. This is very useful for finding problems in your program.

The “Build and Run” button opens your project in the iPhone simulator so that you can debug your app and make sure it’s setup the way you want it. This button is very useful and you will use it in nearly every app you make.

The “Tasks” button will stop your app from running after click the “Build and Run” button.

The last two buttons are pretty self explanatory.

Lets go back to the “Build and Run” button… Go ahead a click it.

You will see a window like this. As you can see there’s not much going on here… That’s because we haven’t made any changes to our project. This is just an example of how you will open your project and run them just as they were an app on your iPhone or iPod.

We have now gotten xCode up and running and have explored it a little bit. This is all we will do for this tutorial, but in the next tutorial we will go al little bit more in depth and I’ll start explaining what computer programming and Objective-C is and what it looks like.

Keep an eye out for the next tutorial!

Derek is an iOS developer and owner of HomeSchoolDev and creator of MiBinaryClock. If you have questions about this tutorial you can leave a comment or email Derek.

Now that people have their hands on the long awaited Verizon iPhone we are starting to see teardowns from several sites around the web. While the CDMA and GSM versions are pretty much the same PC Magazine analyzes 5 distinct differenences:

1. World-Mode CDMA/GSM Chip
2. Dual-Antenna Design
3. New Vibration Mechanism
4. Integrated GPS
5. Lighter Battery

You can read more about PC Mags analysis here.

Ben Harvell is a freelance writer and former editor of iCreate magazine. He now writes for a wide range of international technology magazines and websites including Macworld and Mac Format. He has written several books on consumer technology and blogs at benharvell.com. Ben covered the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and has been closely associated with the device and it’s rivals ever since. He has commissioned his own apps and reviews App Store content on a regular basis. He’s also rather obsessed with Twitter.

So, The Daily has finally arrived. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from this Rupert Murdoch-backed “revolution” in publishing but I guess I have to admit to being caught up in the hype.

It had all the hallmarks of marketing from 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino during the buildup to the first tablet-only newspaper. Web rumours, leaks, delays and speculation right up to the point the app was unveiled. The announcement, in fact, turned out to be a very un-Apple affair that seemed more like a bunch of rich kids showing a school project to their grandfather than it did the launch of something groundbreaking.

Initially, I liked some of the features offered by The Daily as well as the concept of a completely iPad-focused publication that isn’t simply the panini version of an existing newspaper squashed into the iPad form. I also liked the way in which The Daily tried to be more social than other iPad newspapers and magazines with sharing features enabled rather than a gated community. The true litmus test, however, and this goes for all apps, is whether or not people will be willing to actually pay for the product. My initial reviews of The Daily were mixed yet generally positive, but now I’m receiving messages informing me that I’ll soon have to pay $.99 per week, I’m finding all sorts of flaws.

Let’s get the superficial elements out of the way first. I hate the logo. I understand The Daily wants to be different to a broadsheet newspaper and therefore has avoided script fonts and fancy lettering, however this is the most bland logo I’ve seen in a long time. I hate the stupid noise the app makes when it launches. It doesn’t need to be there, and I seriously wonder why developers (usually those working on high-profile projects like this) decide to include such pointless, irritating and ultimately space-wasting elements in their apps. Who made that call? There’s probably a “VP of sonic production” working on The Daily who simply beams each time he hears that sound.

Then there’s the application itself that, as an iPad newspaper, is perfectly acceptable. It has all the right elements, the right balance of interactive and editorial features, topical (although shallow) stories and a fairly simple interface. One day, however, I hope that all newspapers and magazines on the iPad will conform to a standard browsing method so we don’t have to learn each new app or put up with cringe-worthy video intros and patronizing diagrams that currently prevail across the genre.

The real problem I have with The Daily, however, is that I don’t think anyone bar my grandparents (should they ever buy an iPad) want to receive digital news this way. As much as The Daily hopes to be a next generation news platform, it’s still basically the same old format with nicer pictures and a bigger budget. After none of the much-rumoured news applications appeared within the first few months of the iPad launch, myself and others like me found ways to view the news we are interested in from a number of sources. Whether it be through aggregators like Flipboard and Pulse or services like Read It Later and Instapaper, the simple picking and choosing of news stories rather than being force-fed content is the new way to stay informed. No amount of 360° photography or tweets from celebrities is going to change that. Especially not, in the age of the mobile ad, if people must also pay for the privilege.

A Bloomberg report says Apple is working on new versions of the iPhone that are smaller and cheaper.

According to iSuppli the CDMA version of the iPhone is cheaper to produce than the GSM version by $16.00.

In iPhone security news, a group of German researchers have cracked the iPhone’s keychain system which allows access to passwords.

TechCrunch has spoken to several iOS developers who say that Apple’s iAds are not doing well.

While the iPhone and iPad are still the leaders, Android is gaining a large amount of developer interest according to a report from Appcelerator and IDC.

Wal Mart has issued a press release that they will be offering the Verizon iPhone starting February 10th. Here is what they had to say:

“We’re excited to bring iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless, one the most anticipated mobile phone launches in recent history, to Walmart customers,” said Gary Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Walmart U.S. “As customers continue to embrace smart phone technology, we’ve added nearly 20 smart phone models to our assortment, including the new iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless.”

This is great news. I can now check out the iPhones when getting my oil changed. The Verizon iPhone news keeps getting better and better, except for that antenna issue reported yesterday…

In web design we have the concept of Styles and Themes. Styles like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) define the values of the web controls attributes such as width, height, font color, background and so on. A style can be applied on several controls in several web pages.

Themes are used to group a set of styles to be applied on the whole web application. Themes (or sometimes skins) define the look of all control within the application.

Android introduces similar concepts by using Styles and Themes. A Style can be applied to views individually while a Theme is applied to a whole activity.

Styles:

Styles are defined as xml resources files in res/values directory of your project.

consider this definition of a TextView:

<TextView    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"
     android:textColor="#FFF"
     android:typeface="monospace"
     android:text="First Text View"
     android:background="#00F"
     />

this defines a text view with width and height equal to wrap_content, white font color, font type “monospace” and blue back ground.

if we want to have the same results using a style: we first create a xml file (call it styles.xml) in res/values directory and it would be like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="BlueLabel">
<item name="android:layout_width">fill_parent</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
<item name="android:typeface">monospace</item>
<item name="android:background">#00F</item>
<item name="android:textColor">#FFF</item>
</style>
</resources>

then redefine the TextView like this:

<TextView android:text="First Text View"
     style="@style/BlueLabel"
     />

and you will receive the same results.
the attributes in the <item>tag can be any layout property.

Inheriting Styles:

Styles in Android has an interesting feature which is the ability to inherit styles in a fashion similar to that in CSS. consider this example:

we have a style for a button like this:

<style name="ButtonStyle">
<item name="android:layout_width">wrap_content</item>
<item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
<item name="android:textSize">15px</item>
<item name="android:typeface">serif</item>
</style>

the button will appear like this:

we can make this style inherit from BlueLabel defined previously by adding the parent attribute to the <style*gt; tag:

<style name="ButtonStyle" parent="BlueLabel">

then the button will be like this:

the button inherited the background color from the parent style.

another interesting feature in styles inheritance is the ability to inherit from the platform built-in styles defined in the android.R.style namespace. to know more about the platform styles check this link

or you can type in your editor (Eclipse) android.R.style and let the intelli-sense list you the complete list of platform styles, if you want to use them in your xml just replace the undrscores with a period like this:
Widget_Button becomes @android:style/Widget.Button.

In the previous button style example we will set the parent of the style to be @android:style/Widget.Button.Small
and the button will be like this:

Note: if you apply a style to a ViewGroup widget, it’s child widgets will not inherit that style.

Using Themes:

you can apply styles as themes on an activity level or application level.

if you apply a theme on an activity level then all widgets within that activity will inherit from that theme.
to do so, open the AndroidManifest.xml and go the <activity> tag and add the android:theme attribute:

<activity android:name=".StylesDemo"
                  android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@style/BlueLabel">

to apply a theme on the application level so that the style will be applied to all activities within your application, open the AndroidManifest.xml and go the <application> tag and add the android:theme attribute:

<application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@style/BlueLabel">

to set the theme of an activity programmatically call this line in the onCreate method

this.setTheme(R.style.BlueLabel);

and that’s was all about using themes and styles in Android, stay tuned for another topic next week.

From the “Oh no, not this again” files is a report from Charles Starett of iLounge that the CDMA version of the iPhone suffers from the death grip. Here is what they had to say:

In the course of conducting our standard suite of iPhone 4 performance tests, iLounge has discovered that the Verizon CDMA iPhone 4 suffers from signal attenuation problems similar to ones discovered in the original GSM version of the iPhone 4.

Check out the video showing the issue:

You can read the entire story at iLounge.

IDC has released the latest numbers on smartphone shipments as well as market share and it looks like Apple came in 2nd for the 4th quarter of 2010 and 3rd for the entire year. Here is a tidbit on what IDC expects for 2011:

IDC expects further gains for the smartphone market in 2011, as smartphone vendors deepen and broaden their offerings. “The high-end of the market has been important to help grow the smartphone market in recent years,” noted Llamas. “IDC expects vendors to provide more mid-range and low-end smartphones at lower prices to reach the mass market. In the same manner, even high-end devices will become available at lower prices. This will result in greater competition and more selection for users.”

You can read the full report here.

Let’s face it, most mobile app design leaves much to be desired.  Why is this? Because awesome designers like yourself haven’t jumped into the mobile design space! Why is this? Because the learning curve for mobile design can be STEEP if you’re doing it all alone.

That’s why the Mobile Design Starter Kit was created. It gives you everything you need to quickly get started designing for iPhone/iPhone4, iPad and Android. The kit includes editable Photoshop files well over 300 custom and standard design elements for each platform. All assets are pixel perfect, vector shape layer elements that can be easily resized without degrading the image quality. And you can get this awesome kit today for a mere $57 (regular $199).

Here’s what you get:

Objective-C has many nuances that can take some time to grasp that can be difficult to understand, as they are rarely seen in other languages.

Some of these nuances involve the self keyword.  When first starting out it may be difficult to figure out exactly where to use it.  Another nuance involves the “dot syntax” for properties that was added in Objective-C 2.0, and when programmers switch between this and the pre-2.0 syntax it can get very confusing.

Keith Harrison has created a very good tutorial explaining many of the confusing situations that can arise involving the self keyword, and properties and Objective-C 2.0.

You can find the tutorial on his blog here:
Understanding Your (Objective-C) Self

A very good read if you are starting out, and getting confused.

[via @rwenderlich]

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

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Welcome to the site, and to another edition of the best resources in iOS development featuring the most popular resources from this site in the last week.  The pace of iOS open source development appears to be growing, and thanks to the Mac App store the number of specialized tools for iOS developers is also increasing.

Highlighted this week are some great open source libraries allowing for easier communication with web services, and RSS feed parsing.

Here are the resources:

Open Source: Restkit Library For Easier Communication With RESTful Web Services – A great high level Objective-C library for communicating with RESTful web services.

Open Source: Easy iOS RSS and Atom Feed Parser Library – A library specifically created for parsing RSS and atom feeds allowing for easy XML parsing.

iPhone Balloon Game Programming Tutorial: Adding Retina Display Support – An update to the balloon game programming tutorial enabling retina support.

Tool: Easily Gather Sprite Data For Box2D And Generate Cocos2D Code – A great tool that allows you to gather sprite data, and even generate Box2D code based on your sprites.

Tool: Objective-C Code Generator For Faster App Development – A very interesting code generator that eliminates much of the tedium of coding in Objective-C.

Open Source: In App Location Maps Using Any Map Source – A library that acts very similarly to Mapkit, but allows for multiple map sources, even specially created ones.

Open Source: Cross Platform Cocos2D Game Engine Using C++ (Cocos2D-X) – An open source project featuring a C++ version of Cocos2D that runs on multiple platforms including iOS and Android.

Thanks for reading, please share this using the buttons below!

Read More: iPhone Dev News

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

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The complaint of many newcomers to the iOS platform is the belief that you need to use Objective-C to program on the iPhone and iPad.  That is completely false (yet the belief still gets repeated) and it seems like many programmers get in an uproar when they cannot use one of the programming languages that they studied (or are studying) in college such as C++ or Java.

A project that is making things easier for game developers interested in coming to the iOS platform is Cocos2D-X. An added advantage is that there is also support for Android, Windows, and Uphone.

Cocos2D-X is a port of the Cocos2D-iPhone game engine using C++.  Cocos2D-X iOS advertises itself as being “for programmers who are lazy to port games onto other platforms or learn objc”.

I found out about this project a few months ago, and at that time it really was still in it’s infancy, and has come a long way since then, and the project looks very active.

So if you are looking to develop 2D games on the iOS platform, don’t want to learn Objective-C, and don’t want to pay any upfront costs this could be for you.

You can find the Cocos2D-X homepage here:
http://www.cocos2d-x.org/

Looks like a great free project for those looking to perform cross-platform development, and still use all the cool new iOS features whenever Apple adds them.  If you haven’t taken a look at this project in awhile you might be surprised at how far it’s come.

Read More: Open Source iOS Libraries And Tools

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

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Recently I posted about a great tutorial on making an iOS RSS reader.  That tutorial used the Gdata feed parse, but I just found out about an interesting library that looks like  simpler alternative.  The tutorial does a great job of explaining how to set up Gdata for RSS feeds, but things are simpler with this specialized RSS and Atom feed parsing library.

The library is known as MWFeedParser, and what makes it different is that MWFeedParser is designed specifically for Atom and RSS feeds returning different elements of the feed as specific Cocoa objects for easy manipulation in your program.

The project is from Michael Waterfall and the Github repository can be found here:
https://github.com/mwaterfall

Looks like a great alternative for those looking to use RSS feed data within their apps.

Read More: Open Source iOS Libraries And Tools

[via Under The Bridge]

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

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