June 2008 Archives

A short while ago, I discovered that Wii Fit could be used to track my progress as I walked on a treadmill. Wii Fit has a game where you jog in place in front of your TV to travel through a virtual landscape. Instead of bouncing up and down on the floor, I put my wiimote in my pocket, hopped on the treadmill and had a much better virtual exercise experience. And of course this got me thinking: if the wii can track movement, why can't the iPhone do the same?... read more

The App Store is coming soon, presumably with the iPhone 2.0 OS update. By making the App Store the exclusive method for widespread distribution of software, Apple is controlling the means through which software is obtained on the iPhone. This...... read more

Here is a quick tip for non-US iPhone developers who want to sell their apps through the Apple App Store: (UPDATE: To make it absolutely clear I am not intimately familiar with the US tax laws. This tip is only...... read more

When Apple announced iPhone's Core Location a lot of people got really excited. Since then, I've heard from any number of developers who would like to use core location and other iPhone-specific features in web-based applications and were wondering how to approach this. This has got me to thinking for a few days, especially since I'm not much of a web developer.... read more

I was just perusing some of the iPhone entries on Hackzine.com, and I figured that you might want to know about these. The current post is how to scrub private data from your phone. And there's lots more too, such...... read more

On the Mac, there's a fair range of prices for software, from simple free applications to high-end software costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Among many full-time independent software vendors (ISVs), there's a consensus that selling applications for much...... read more

Steve Weller (bagelturf) posted a handsome photo gallery from WWDC, complete with captions. So, not only do you get to see the faces at the event, you learn who they are.... read more

Hype, 2.0, WWDC's, July 11th and complex NDA’s aside, there is still a lot of stuff out there people! An awful lot of developer’s time and effort has been thrown in to the iPhone, and there are only supposed to...... read more

I've looked closely at the announced iPhone, and I've decided that I want to upgrade. That was the easy part. My question is: what am I going to do with my current iPhone?... read more

The iPhone development excitement continues on as a consequence of WWDC and the possible 11 July launch of AppStore (and Firmware 2.0). So let me point out a huge business opportunity. If you're an audio or graphics designer, now would be a great time to hit the market with your wares. iPhone developers are crying out for good button and background designs and high-quality audio beeps, bings and clicks.... read more

Apple took some abuse when their original iPhone SDK was "just webapps." Now that I'm digging into the SDK, I'm looking at what iPhone provides to webapps and wondering if we weren't too hasty and too harsh. iPhone webapps may be a lot cooler than we thought.... read more

Hey Everyone! My Name is Rich Thally and I'm honored to be a part of Inside iPhone. My primary gig around here will be moderating the Inside iPhone forums. A little about me: I'm a recent switcher and the proud...... read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood in front of a sold out crowd at Apple's WWDC and told them that Apple is about to release phones that are better than the ones in their pocket and will cost half of what theirs cost. The developers responded with sustained enthusiastic applause. That reaction makes perfect sense. Jobs' keynote wasn't about products -- it was about a promising future, especially for developers in the audience.... read more

Yes, the NDA is still there. So here is the fix, without revealing anything about what I'm talking about. It will either be helpful or not needed.... read more

The WWDC 2008 Keynote hat a number of good messages for iPhone developers. Among others: Developing for the iPhone is easy and it is a more pleasant experience than on any other mobile platform. Attendees were given an iPhone Developer...... read more

What was announced in the iPhone-heavy WWDC 08 keynote, and a few things that were noticeably absent.... read more

When Apple unveiled the iPhone SDK, they announced that developers need to be accepted into their iPhone developer program in order to release software for the device. Prior to acceptance, software can't be tested on the iPhone itself, nor can...... read more

Most iPhone classes presume you'll be using them in portrait orientation. Without going into actual code details (hopefully those will be allowed next week), I thought I'd review the basics of landscape interface math.... read more

O'Reilly has created a place where all things related to the iPhone can call home. Here you'll find technologists passionate about the iPhone platform offering blogs, articles, code and forum chat about the iPhone SDK, web apps and Dashcode, and cool iPhone related innovations.... read more

Hi! I'm really rather excited (one may even go as far as to say wickedpsyched) to be part of this unique weblog, working with our good friends over here at O'Reilly. When Derrick and Erica asked me if I would...... read more

With its multi-touch interface, accelerometer and integrated multimedia support, the iPhone platform provides an exciting space for third party development. Now that Apple has stepped up to the plate and released its SDK, it's growing ever richer. Xcode and the official SDK offer new worlds to explore while the thriving Open Toolchain SDK community continues its forward progress.... read more

Embedding data, particularly text-based data back into an mdbackup file isn't just a matter of setting the value in the dictionary for the @"Data" key. Instead, you need to serialize your output. The code that follows demonstrates a simple way to serialize property lists into an mdbackup-compatible format... read more

I am Oliver Breidenbach, CEO of Boinx Software from Munich, Germany, where we make excellent Mac Software that's fun to use for the creative users. Since the OS X platform that powers the iPhone shares a lot of concepts and...... read more

Mdbackup files are property lists and are created in a compressed binary format. These files are just as readable from your Foundation Cocoa programs as any other property list. The key to recovering data lies in de-serializing the data stored in that property list dictionary.... read more

To back up an attached device, you must specify its target ID. This is the name used for the folder in the MobileSync/Backup directory. The target ID also appears in the Info.plist file. Issue the following command using the target ID for your device.... read more

Well hello! Welcome to O'Reilly's new Inside iPhone blog. To start, a quick introduction. My name is Paul Kafasis, I'm the CEO of Rogue Amoeba Software. Hopefully, you know of us and our work. We make audio software for Mac...... read more