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Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 3:50 PM

These last few weeks, I’ve been teaching myself Cocoa to learn what makes Mac OS X and iPhone OS apps tick (not just for Flicks, but other software, too). While Objective-C is quite a departure from my usual web development world, Cocoa has quickly become one of my favorite languages, as it takes care of much of the drudgery of pure C and has plenty of useful frameworks to get your application up and running quickly. Here are some of the best resources I’ve found so far:

• Cocoa Dev Central and Become an Xcoder are both excellent tutorials for beginners, written in a clear, straightforward manner. They also explain the ins and outs of memory management, which is critical on platforms like the iPhone and iPod touch.
• Stanford’s CS193P lecture notes and examples have proven to be one of the best resources for learning Cocoa, particularly for the iPhone. These notes and tests offer Cocoa Touch in bite-size chunks, with a little bit of “on your own” work to ensure you know your stuff before moving on.
• Google Code Search is a good last resort for examples of how others are using a small bit of code or a particular class. For more accurate results, append “lang:objectivec” to your search string to narrow results to only Objective-C code.

If you already know Cocoa, feel free to share your go-to places for information in the comments!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Apps, Mac, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:49 AM

Grab your iPhone and DVD remote — something awesome is in the works.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Apps, Projects, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 10:19 AM

After hearing the cries of thousands of upset iPhone app developers, Apple has lifted the non-disclosure agreement covering (released) iPhone software. Developers can now freely talk about the inner workings of their applications, write books, publish blog entries, etc. Communicating developers means solutions to common problems get solved and shared, resulting in better software, making the iPhone and iPod Touch platform better as a whole.

For some time I’ve been worried that the NDA was going to remain in place indefinitely, silencing those who Apple needs the most, but it appears Apple has finally taken a positive action to help their App Store environment grow further. If you thought there was some cool stuff on the App Store now, just give it time…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under Apps, Programming, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 5:09 PM

While working on some iPhone and iPod Touch apps, I found that the iPhone OS automatically masks and overlays your application icon for quick and easy development. You supply a square 57×57 pixel image, and it rounds off the corners and overlays the Mac-like gloss to create a consistent look.

When developing an icon for a Touch-based application, it’s handy to be able to see what your rendered creation will look like without going through the hassle of exporting your icon, compiling your code, and running your software every time a change is made. To that end, I present a small Photoshop file which very closely mimics the iPhone-applied mask and gloss, which you can place over top of your in progress icon layers to approximate the final result. Also, if you dislike the gloss, or have something special in mind, you can set a certain flag in the application’s Info.plist to disable the gloss… I hope my Photoshop file will help others create great looking Touch app icons!

April 4, 2009 Update
By request, I’ve added a 512×512 version of the template as well, so you can get a good feel for what your icon will look like when displayed in iTunes. Both files are now combined in a zip archive, downloadable below.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Apps, Photoshop, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 7:39 PM

With all the recent iPhone and iPod Touch news, I was curious what the pricing distribution looked like for apps on the App Store, so I concocted a super-basic App Store pricing chart. While it only covers the 100 most popular App Store prices, it should give developers an idea of where the “sweet spots” for pricing lie.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Apps, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.