Category: I-phone

I’ll be honest — I heard that Aftermath was a zombie game and almost gave up on it. I wouldn’t be offended if you did the same, since lots of developers (especially iPhone developers) are depending a little too much on zombies for their gameplay. Yes, it’s fun to fight the walking undead, but they’re used over and over again because a) they’re easy to program, and b) they let you make a “shooting humans” game without getting involved in the whole morality thing.

But Aftermath is still worth a look. While a lot of zombie games on the store go abstract or silly, this one sticks pretty close to realistic, and it has some serious quality and interesting gameplay behind it. You’re fighting zombies and moving through levels, but instead of aiming and shooting a gun, you’re actually aiming a flashlight, and your gun automatically fires for you. The projected light makes the whole affair very atmospheric; the game’s just dark enough that it actually feels a little spooky trying to navigate the shuffling brain-eaters to your next objective.

Particularly if you’re a fan of Left 4 Dead or that ilk, Aftermath is probably worth a look — it’s US$1.99 on the App Store right now. And please, developers, unless they’re as inventive and well-done as this one, let’s keep the zombie games to a minimum. Maybe we could fight werewolves instead? Or angry robots?

TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Aftermath originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dev-Team has published a video demo of iPod Touch 4G Jailbreak with Shatter Based PwnageTool, means iOS 4.1 jailbreak release is imminent. MuscleNerd used the Shattered exploit in PwnageTool beta and has successfully jailbreak iPod Touch 4G. Video demo after the jump…

For those who don’t know, PwnageTool creates custom firmware to jailbreak iPod Touch and iPhone. PwnageTool is the best option for iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G users who want to update firmware while preserving the baseband so that user may unlock iPhone using UltraSn0w unlock.

Cydia, customized preferences, root access, and all basic stuff is working fine on jailbroken iPod Touch 4G with SHAtter based PwnageTool. Dev-Team confirms that there’ll be faster tools for iPhone and iPod Touches (Greenpois0n?), however, PwnageTool will be beneficial for iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G users. All these jailbreak will be based on a low level SHAtter exploit, found by ipod2g. When we talk about low-level exploit, it means Apple cannot fix it via firmware update. A new hardware revision will be required to patch the exploit.

Although PwnageTool was a useful first test of a full iPod 4G jailbreak via SHAtter, it’s really overkill compared to the faster tools being developed. Its main use in PwnageTool will be for those with iPhone4’s, to allow updates while preserving the baseband and ultrasn0w carrier unlock.

SHAtter based PwnageTool for iPod Touch 4G is not available to general public. Just like you guys, we’re eagerly waiting for the iOS 4.1 jailbreak to come out but there’s no ETA for the jailbreak tool. Hackers are working day and night to bring us the iOS 4.1 jailbreak and hopefully Greenpois0n and PwnageTool to jailbreak iOS 4.1 on iPhone 4G, 3GS, 3G and iPod Touch 4G, 3G and 2G will be out in a couple of weeks.

We’ll keep you posted as soon as the Greenpois0n / PwnageTool / any other legit jailbreak tool is out. Stay Tuned!

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A question that has been asked on the forum was about multi-player games running over the internet. Now, apple has built Game Kit that allows you to develop networked games that operator over bluetooth or wifi. iOS being based on Mac OS X contains the Unix networking library so that means that there are many different networking libraries available.

Previously I mentioned turn based multiplayer with OpenFeint. What I’m talking about in this article is networking real-time games.

There are three libraries I know of that have been used for just this purpose:

1. Enet – Enet is a very basic networking library that provides ordering for UDP packets. It has been around for quite some time. If you’re just looking for a bare bones networking experience, and want to code the lobby, server, security… yourself. I’ve used Enet and it served it’s purpose well. There is no support beyond basic instructions so you will have to work your way through it. MIT licensed so you can use it for free in your apps.

2. Raknet – Raknet is a complete solution, and provides extensive support through their community. There are sample lobbies, and servers. Raknet has multiple secure protocols, and really is the complete solution for this stuff. I haven’t done much with this, but it is recommended all over the place. You’ve probably seen the Raknet logo fly by if you play commercial multiplayer titles. The catch is that there is a price if your gross revenue is less than 50k.

3. HawkNL – This is another solution like Enet that has been around for quite some time. I have zero experience with it, and have no idea as to what it takes to get running on the iPhone although I have seen developers say they used it within their iPhone games. It runs on Mac OS X systems although from the looks of it that could take some considerable tweaking to run on iPhone. It provides more options than Enet and looks somewhat higher level. LGPL licensed.

Conclusion

Overall I’d say if you want a complete solution go with Raknet and aren’t worried about the costs. Enet is the choice if you are just looking to implement basic multiplayer and want something completely free. I’d love to hear about other solutions for multiplayer games either here or on the forum thread.

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©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Another week has passed in the world of iOS development, and this week I decided to re-open the ManiacDev.Com iPhone and iPad development forum.  I have not officially launched the forums as of yet, but feel free to go there and post any iOS development related questions or resources.  I occasionally get e-mails about where the original forum went (which is kind of surprising since it was almost a year and a half since it’s they’ve been gone!) so I decided to bring it back..  I had to take it off due to server issues, but that is no longer a problem.

One of the big topics in the past week has been about iAd revenue.  While the revenues are still terrific some developers are starting to see smaller fill rates, and are looking for ways to supplement their revenue.  Not surprisingly the most popular article this week was about a great tutorial on how to implement in-app purchases.

Here’s the most popular resources from the last week:

Tutorial: In App Purchase Implementation And Testing – A nice and straightforward tutorial covering how to code in app purchases, and test them out with your iTunes connect account.

Code Snippet: Log Meaningful Information About (Nearly) Any Type In Objective-C – This is a quick article about a brilliant macro for anyone coding in Objective-C.

3 Interesting Little Known iOS Game Engines – An article covering 3 more iOS game engines, including one that uses the BASIC language, and a drag and drop open source engine.

Tutorial: Share App Data Through E-mail Attachments – Great tutorial about how to create date files and send them as e-mail attachments, and how to use the data in your apps.

Tutorials: Swipe Reading, Orientation Support, And Image Slideshows In iPad Web Apps – An interesting set of tutorials and tips for iPad developers and users.

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©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Blog reader Steven Burgess dropped me a line yesterday letting me know he had seen Sir Lamorak’s Quest on the Staff Favourites list on the App store. I couldn’t resist jumping onto the App Store and taking a look. Sure enough, Sir Lamorak’s Quest has made it onto the Staff Favourites. This is really unexpected […]

We just started Daylight Saving Time in New Zealand yesterday. Since then, many iOS users here have experienced what’s probably one of the weirdest bugs I’ve ever seen: our alarms are now going off an hour early. My iPhone’s alarm woke me up at 5:50 in the morning today instead of 6:50, and it turns out I’m not the only one.

In the iPhone’s built-in Clock app, setting a recurring alarm will cause it to trigger an hour early every time if you’re running iOS 4.1, iTunes 10.0.1, and live in a Southern Hemisphere country that’s just gone over to Daylight Saving Time (which, for now at least, just means New Zealand). It’s also been affecting US users in Indiana since late June because of the weird time zone situation in that state. For some reason, non-recurring alarms aren’t affected; so far, changing recurring alarms to non-recurring is the only thing that’s fixed the problem.

Standard Time doesn’t start in the US until November 7, which is right around the time that iOS 4.2 is supposed to come out. Since this bug is probably something that can only be addressed by an iOS update, and since a relatively small portion of iOS users will be affected, I won’t be surprised at all if Apple sits on this bug until November and bundles the fix into iOS 4.2. Meanwhile, Australian iOS users in territories that observe DST will have something to look forward to: unless this gets fixed before October 3rd, their alarms are going to start going off an hour earlier, too.

TUAWiOS alarms broken for New Zealand users after Daylight Saving originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I think we can call this one “saved by a policy change.” Earlier this month Apple changed its rules and is now allowing developers to use third-party tools for creating apps for iOS devices. In a statement released this weekend, the EU said it welcomed Apple’s changed policies, and that the investigation would be closed.

Apple also loosened policies on cross-border warranty repair of computers and iOS products. Previously people who bought a product in one EU country and tried to have it fixed under warranty in another EU country encountered red tape or a refusal to fix the product, but apparently that issue’s been fixed as well.

This recent change is on top of Apple settling a case with the US Department of Justice dealing with agreements between major tech firms about not poaching employees. The settlement involved other companies including Pixar, Google and Intel. Apple is clearly getting a bit more liberal in the way it runs the business. There’s nothing like a little competition and litigation to get things moving.

TUAWEuropean Union closes Apple investigation originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s Sunday, which means it’s time once again to get ourselves all in a Talkshoe chatroom, and have a lively talk about what’s been up during the last week of Apple news. Tonight on the show, we’ll be talking about Microsoft’s stance with Apple on Blu-ray, the arrival of VLC and Google Voice on the App Store, the coming glucose meter for the iPhone, and if we have time, we’ll chat a little bit about Stevemails and just what they mean. Should be fun — tune in if you’re around!

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): 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 or your PC, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients or using the Talkshoe client’s ShoePhone tool; basic instructions are here.

We’ll kick things off at 10pm ET/ 7pm PT. See you there!

TUAWTalkcast Tonight: Join us at 10pm ET to talk Blu-ray, new apps, and Stevemails originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My shocking day job revelation: I write enterprise Java software using Windows. There, my secret shame is finally out.

Now that’s off my chest I have something to confess about Windows 7: Microsoft must be doing something right because I hate it considerably less than any other version of Windows. For example, it might have taken it eight years to bring the draggable reorder feature from OS X 10.0’s Dock into the Windows Taskbar, but they got there in the end and I’m a happier user for it.

One of the things I quite like is Aero Peek. Suppose you are juggling three PowerPoint presentations because you are a SRS BSNS enterprise user so obviously you’re not doing anything fun. You move your cursor down to the PowerPoint icon in the taskbar and three medium sized thumbnail icons pop up, each showing the current window contents of the three PowerPoint windows you have open. This visual cue makes task switching more efficient. It sounds small but it’s quite a neat little time saver.

Sadly OS X doesn’t have anything like this. We’ve previously covered using Exposé in the Application Switcher, but it’s clunky. Wouldn’t thumbnails in the Dock be a nice addition to OS X? I certainly think so, and it seems Christian Baumgart agrees with me because he’s written free-in-beta utility HyperDock to do just that. You can see how it works in the screenshot above: in this case, I moved my mouse over to the Firefox icon, and it presented me with previews of the three browser windows I had open.

But that’s not all it does — check out some more of HyperDock’s features on the next page.

TUAWHyperDock puts some Win7 in your OS X Dock originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Safari’s Top Sites feature is nifty and all, but what I’ve really wanted to do is have new Safari tabs open showing me my recent browsing history. I couldn’t figure out a way to do this until just now. Maybe if you’re an experienced Safari user this is obvious, but I’m still a fairly recent Safari adopter.

If you look in Safari’s preferences, it will show that new tabs can be set to Top Sites, Home Page, Empty Page, Same Page, or Bookmarks. No ‘History’ option. The good news is that you can work around this by choosing “Bookmarks” (as shown above) and then click on “History” under “Collections” at the top-left of the window.

Safari remembers what you had selected in the Bookmarks window, so whenever you open a new tab, it will open to the Bookmarks with the History selected. You could also do this by setting new tabs to open to an Empty Page and then press Command + Option + 2 (Show All History). If you find that key combination too awkward, as I do, you can reassign it in System Preferences under Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Personally, I like this because I can use Command-T to open a new tab and have the history show up right away. I’d still prefer to be able to use the History view which is shown if you start with Top Sites and then click the History half of the button-tab at the top of that window, but this is the next best thing.

TUAWMac 101: Open new tabs to reveal browsing history in Safari originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this week’s poll question, we want to know how well you guard your precious iOS device. Have you ever dropped it? If so how often?

Leave a comment below and tell us about when you dropped your iPhone and if it did any damage. Did the phone still work? Did the screen crack? Were there any noticeable scratches or dings?

As for me, I’ve never dropped an iPhone but I did drop my first generation iPod Touch into the pool one time! I thought for sure it would be dead forever but my crafty wife placed it in a bag of rice for 48 hours to dry it out and it has worked ever since. The audio now only works through the headphones but everything else is just fine!

Hoarding vast quantities of apps has been a time honored tradition for iPhone owners since Apple began allowing 3rd party development in 2008. However, with over 250,000 apps available from the App Store, finding those that are worthwhile isn’t always an easy task.

Enter AppShopper for iPhone: an app that helps you find other apps at a bargain.

Overview

AppShopper’s main goal is to keep you informed about the newest App Store apps, sales, and freebies. Where it really tends to shine is in its ability to sort apps into categories that Apple’s App Store simply doesn’t support. This depth of sorting makes it a snap to find applications that are having one-day sales or have recently been updated with new features.

AppShopper also features apps from smaller developers who don’t get as much exposure as some of the mainline shops. You’ll come across applications in AppShopper that you wouldn’t have considered otherwise; as we’ll see later, this can be both a good and a bad thing.

Getting the Most Out of AppShopper

AppShopper is most useful when you create an account on the AppShopper.com website. Though it’s not necessary for basic use of the app, signing up for an account enables all kinds of nifty features, such as wish lists for apps you’d like to download later and cataloging of apps you already own.

Signing up for an AppShopper account is a relatively straight-forward affair. Choosing the “Create Account” option kicks you out to a simple web page via Safari; pick a username and password and you’re done.

Once you’ve set up your account, AppShopper can email you notifications when any of the applications on your wish list are updated or go on sale. This feature would be more useful if AppShopper utilized push notifications, but the developer says that feature is being added in a future update.

Getting Around

AppShopper has a fairly intuitive layout. It’s not a gorgeous app: icons for the list of apps are pixelated, the sorting options seemed crammed together, and iAds dominates a large amount of screen space at all times. Still, its looks are serviceable and it packs a lot of options into a small space.

There are five major sections to the app: Popular, What’s New, My Apps, Wish List, and Search.

The Popular and What’s New sections are sortable by platform, category, cost, and type. Given the small amount of screen real estate, AppShopper makes it simple to swap out all of the different options and browse through its listings.

Apps are listed with sparse information: name, category, price, and icon. Price drops, updates and the like are noted under the price tag.

Selecting an app will take you to a separate page displaying that app’s description, screen shots, and recent updates. You are also presented with check boxes allowing you to instruct AppShopper to add the app to your Wish List or My Apps sections . As long as you are logged in with an AppShopper account, your Wish List and My Apps will update as you give feedback to AppShopper.

Unfortunately, the most notable omission is the Customer Rating feedback from the App Store. It’s impossible to sneak a peak at the reviews for any of the applications unless you choose to leave AppShopper and enter into the App Store. This doesn’t make for a very seamless experience and can result in continuously swapping back and forth between these two applications. Click on the price tag for the app and the App Store launches where you can read the reviews and make your purchase.

At the bottom of each app’s dedicated page are the options to view its activity and other apps available from the same developer. I found the activity page to be interesting as it shows all of the updates and price changes over the course of the app’s life enabling you to see at a glance if you’re getting it at a good price or if you should perhaps wait for the app to go on sale.

Hidden Treasure or Prominent Crap?

With the constantly shifting prices of the App Store, it should theoretically be possible to find great deals by using AppShopper. For instance, you could sort AppShopper to display popular iPhone apps that had recently undergone a price change.

Now you would certainly hope that this would result in discovering new unknown gems for a great price or locating popular well-known titles at deep discounts. And while this happens occasionally, the odds are much higher that you’ll end up being presented with a mountain of applications that are unknown for a good reason: they suck.

Of the first 20 apps presented to me in the Popular section of AppShopper, only five had a 4 star rating or higher. Three of them hadn’t received a single review and eight of them were rated at less than three stars. Most of them were apps that duplicated functionality found in other, higher quality apps and some of them seemed completely useless.

I realize you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover or an app by its icon, but as my eyes began bleeding from looking at the horrific icon designs of the first 20 apps in the Popular section, I started to have serious misgivings about finding any diamonds in the rough.

I’m also unsure of what criteria AppShopper uses in placing a given app in its Popular section. AppShopper.com has a list of the “Top 200” current downloads from the App Store, but clearly this list has no bearing on what the iPhone app lists in its Popular section. Are developers paying to be included here? Is it based on clicks from the AppShopper.com website? And why does the iPhone app not contain the very handy “Top 200” section like the website?

Concluding Thoughts

AppShopper really shines when it’s pointing you to limited-time deals on apps, alerting you of a price drop for an app you’ve been eyeing, or keeping track of your existing app library. As a free application with the ability to save you money on future app purchases, it’s hard to complain too much about its limitations. However, its clunky UI and limited ability to aid in the discovery of quality applications detract from its overall value.

Download it for the bargains; just don’t expect it to change your iLife.

Today we’re going to look at how to create an awesome digital note system that automatically syncs between your Mac and iOS device.

If you’re using the default iPhone notes app, you’ll definitely want to read this and check out our suggested upgrade. It’s completely free, works across any number of computers and is much more robust than those plain old iPhone notes.

Isn’t This a Built-In Feature?

The iPhone default notes app has been there since day one and though the feature wasn’t there originally, Apple eventually figured out that we wanted the notes to sync with our Macs. So without downloading a single application you do in fact have simple note syncing between your iOS devices and your Mac.

However, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the iPhone note app kind of sucks. First of all, we all got sick of the Marker Felt font real quick. The readability is horrible for large blocks of text and it makes notes look all cutesy like a bad cliche.

Beyond the appearance, there are some basic features such as tagging and post-trashing note recovery that just aren’t present on the default iPhone notes app. It would also be nice if the notes (and everything else for that matter) would sync over the air rather than through iTunes and a physical connection.

Is this too much to ask of a simple and free note application?

Meet Simplenote

Simplenote is exactly what it sounds like: a basic utility for creating notes. The notes that you create with Simplenote are text only, just like the notes on the default iPhone app.

Unlike the default app, the notes are shown in an easy to read sans-serif font on a plain white background.

Your notes are presented in a simple searchable list with brief previews and titles grabbed automatically from the first line of the note. Simplenote is in fact ad supported, but they’re not intrusive and usually blend pretty well with the interface.

While Simplenote is about as basic as it gets, it does have the important features that are missing from the iPhone notes app. You can tag notes and browse by tag as well as view the contents of the trash after deleting notes. There’s also support for version history (how sweet is that?).

To make sure your notes stay nice and synced with the online database, you’ll be asked to create an account. This is a super quick process that only requires an email address and a password.

JustNotes for Mac

Since we’re shooting for a synced library of notes that exists on both a Mac and an iOS device, Simplenote is only half the story. For the Mac part of the equation, we’ll be using JustNotes.

JustNotes is an awesomely handy application that lives in your Mac’s menu bar. After using JustNotes daily for a few months, I couldn’t go without it. The convenience of having your notes a single click away can’t be beat and the interface is beautiful.

JustNotes is super easy to use and has an almost nonexistent learning curve. On the left is your list of notes. Simply select one to see if pop up in the note area on the right.

The little plus and minus icons at the top allow you to quickly add and delete notes and the trash icon on the bottom allows you to view previously deleted notes.

If you have your account set up, the cloud button at the bottom right will sync your information. If you don’t like how the app looks, you can customize it in the preferences panel. You can choose between a vertical column view (shown above) or a stacked view. Fortunately, you can also change the font used in the notes (I use good old Helvetica).

Keyboard Shortcuts

One of my favorite things about JustNotes is that it is fully keyboard accessible. You can setup a global shortcut for showing the window and/or creating a new note and use the built-in shortcuts for all the other commands.

In the window above you can see all the various shortcuts that are available. Holding down the command key, the arrow keys navigate the note list, plus and minus create a delete notes respectively, “M” mails the note, “F” runs a search, comma opens preferences and “S” initiates a sync.

Syncing

All you have to do to sync the notes between your Mac and iPhone is type your Simplenote account information into the JustNotes preferences.

After this, hit the little cloud button and everything will sync in mere seconds. For some reason, JustNotes will occasionally give you a failed login message when you hit the cloud. This usually happens to me about once every two weeks. If it happens to you, just go to preferences and hit the login button again. This wakes up the connection and makes sure everything is still syncing properly.

Bonus: Simplenote Web Interface!

If you aren’t on your Mac or for some reason don’t like JustNotes, Simplenote has an awesome web interface as well that is always in sync with the iPhone app. In fact, the web app has even better support than JustNotes for the various Simplenote features (though JustNotes does provide offline access).

You could even turn this into a desktop app using Fluid. Then you’ll have an iOS option, a menu bar option and a desktop application option! Surely that’s as close to digital note bliss as it gets.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re like me, you put off syncing your iOS device for days and weeks at a time. This tendency towards procrastination along with the pet peeves I have with the built-in iPhone notes app really necessitates a third party solution. I’m a huge Evernote fan and use it on Mac and iOS to store really important long-term notes, but it’s a bit too much for stuff that I want to quickly jot down.

The Simplenote/JustNotes combination makes for an lightning fast, extremely basic and distraction free note workflow that is by far the best solution I’ve found for my own personal needs. Give it a shot and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Also, if you have a different setup that uses other apps, tell us about it and how it matches up to the features and convenience of the solution above.

The flood of 8-bit revival games continues this week with some fresh entries, and if they’re any indication, then this trend just keeps getting better and better. Plus, with the Game Center coming to life and services like OpenFeint collecting results, the long-lost art of arcade-era high score chasing is coming back too.

Here are a few fun new titles we’ve been enjoying this week from the App Store. Want your game featured? Just drop us a line!

What Have You Been Playing?

Have you discovered any great new games this week? Let us know in the comments below!