Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browser and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or as defined by AT&T coverage...) Collison will be presenting a talk on how he did it at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Convention at the end of July, and he spent some time talking to me about it recently.  read more

One of the most common questions from the iPhone workshops we held recently is: "What is key value coding and why the heck am I getting this error?"  read more

Josh Clark, author of O'Reilly's Best iPhone Apps: The Essential Guide for Discriminating Downloaders says he waited three decades until the iPhone finally arrived in 2007. "Apple's fabulous device is the only thing that's ever resembled my childhood notions of the 21st century, the first time the future got here," writes Clark. "A computer. In your pocket." And for his new book, Clark scoured the App Store to find the best apps that will make your iPhone shine and you more productive, more creative, more happy. The PDF of Clark's Best iPhone Apps is available now. Check these excerpts to find some of the cool apps Clark recommends.   read more

I have written about Apple's inevitable assault on the Tablet market before. What I hadn't factored until recently is how symbiotic such a device would be for Baby Boomers. Why Baby Boomers? Well, for the same two reasons that this demographic is unlikely to embrace the palm-sized iPhone en masse. One, such a bookish-sized tablet device -- I'll call it the Boomer Tablet -- would be tailor-made for home Wi-Fi setups, thereby obviating the mobile access costs associated with iPhone, a significant barrier for a generation that is programmed to keep mobile bills within a tight spending range. Two, because a larger-form factor device would offer Boomers a bigger viewing screen and "lifestyle" settings, like fatter keys and a more forgiving keyboard to ease input, and wizard-like shortcuts to simplify recurring tasks.  read more

How an Indie Musician Can Make $19,000 in 10 Hours Using Twitter -- as Zoe Keating pointed out: "cash made by @amandapalmer in one month on Twitter = $19,000; cash made by @amandapalmer from 30,000 record sales = $0". The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics (Wired) -- And not only can we...  read more

The TableView is a common way to display data on an iPhone. Combining a tab bar with a table view and navigation bar isn't very difficult, but it took me forever to figure out how to do it properly. In my screencast, learn how to avoid common beginner errors and enjoy a practical follow-along exercise to build an app with a tab bar, navigation bar and table view controllers.  read more

There's a chart I've been meaning to put together for a while to explain why I'm expecting the iPhoneOS to be the dominant mobile platform for at least the next decade. I've been thinking of the role third-party applications played in helping Palm maintain its mobile platform dominance for about that same period, from 1996 to 2006. If you believe...  read more

I just started learning how to develop for the iPhone. After helping to put together an iPhone workshop with my friend Joe Heck, I got really excited about this new platform. I've dabbled in Cocoa and Objective C before, many years ago, and figured it was time to relearn Mac development so I could write my own apps for the iPhone.  read more