I just activated iCloud on my iPod Touch. It came with upgrading to iOS 5. Apple’s tagline is “all your content on all of your devices” is pretty much realized by using the iCloud. I did experiments on taking pictures on one device and checking if they would appear on another device without doing anything and there they are after a few seconds. 
nice. Both devices should be iCloud enabled and connected to the internet via WiFi or 3G/4G network. This is also true for music and video.
Apart from iCloud features on the device you can also log on to the web app at http://icloud.com. The screenshot at the beginning of this post is what you will see. I love the simplicity of the mail app and calendar. The contacts app is just really pretty and very functional. Something you would just expect from Apple. The Find My iPhone app is well only good if your device is online or connected to the internet. You can send a message to your device or play a sound on it. This really worked. You can even remote lock or wipe it for security in case you lost it.
Lastly there is Apple’s answer to Google Docs and Microsoft Office: iWork. It includes iCloud for Keynote (PowerPoint), iCloud for Pages (Word), and iCloud for Numbers (Excel). The downside is that you will have to buy the apps for your device.
So there you have it. Five good reasons why the iCloud might be the stuff you need to enjoy your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch even more.
Not all of us are into the fun stuff such as learning Objective-C. Some developers are just happy where they are right now developing HTML-CSS-JS websites. PhoneGap is interesting because it lets exactly those developers to develop for the iPhone or iPad without even having to touch a single line of Objective-C code. Below is PhoneGap’s promise:
- Build your app once with web-standards
Based on HTML5, PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best… HTML and JavaScript.
- Wrap it with PhoneGap
Using the free open source framework or PhoneGap build you can get access to native APIs.
- Deploy to multiple platforms!
PhoneGap uses standards-based web technologies to bridge web applications and mobile devices.
So I tried this personally to see if it works. I created an iOS app using PhoneGap. The app did a simple job: allow the user to change his password in Windows Active Directory from his iOS device. It worked great. No Objective-C code. Only HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery.
Then I took the same code and pasted it into an Android project that also uses PhoneGap. Did it work? Not quite. Yes Android launched the UI but could not send the command to the server. This is due to the ‘same origin policy’ that is implemented in the Android browser. I have solved it but that is for another post.
The best thing is that in iOS I did not have to bump my head against the wall to make it work. It just works. Just one of the reason’s why I like iOS.
I learned a little bit of information today. Apple has changed the policy on provisioning profiles expiration. Instead of expiring after one full year the expiration now happens in the year 2079. I think this is good since you would not want to create a new provisioning profile every year. Whatever triggered this change (the new iCloud?, iOS5) must be something that is coming soon to the iOS universe.
What is a provisioning profile?
A Provisioning Profile is a collection of digital entities that uniquely ties developers and devices to an authorized iOS Development Team and enables a device to be used for testing. A team can be just a one man team or several developers and QA testers. A Development Provisioning Profile must be installed on each device on which you wish to run your application code. Each Development Provisioning Profile will contain a set of iOS Development Certificates, Unique Device Identifiers and an App ID. When a user downloads and installs an app from the AppStore iOS does this automatically for them. But if you distribute apps ad hoc the profile must be installed manually.
Devices specified within the provisioning profile can be used for testing only by those individuals whose iOS Development Certificates are included in the profile. A single device can contain multiple provisioning profiles.
So I paid USD100 for the Apple iOS developer license. The license only lasts for 12 months. After 12 months you will have to renew and pay the license fee all over again if you want to keep on developing new apps for the iPhone and selling them yourself.
The next app on my list is actually the first app on my list. It became second on my list when I decided that I did not have time to finish it in two months. Since my first commercial app is now on sale and earning $$ I think it’s time I started my second app.
The app I am developing right now uses Cocos2D since it is a game. Cocos2D is a framework for
Continue reading »
My game is one week old and 38 users have downloaded the app so far. But if you download and play the game the number of players in the Game Center leader board is not nearly as much. The Lite version has enjoyed almost 200 downloads in 2 days but there are only 5 players on the leader board. This mystery leads me to the following hypothesis:
1. The leader board is per country.
If the LB is per country naturally a player will only see scores of other players in his or her country.
2. Not all who downloaded actually played the game.
I would like to assume that sometimes people download the app but never open it.
3. Not all who downloaded have Game Center enabled devices.
Game Center requires iOS 4.1 and will only install on iPod Touch 2nd Gen and iPhone 3GS and later.
Conclusion: The Game Center Leader Board is not indicative of the number of users of an app.
First of all, what is Game Center? In a nutshell Game Center is Apple’s social gaming network where you can play with friends and strangers, compare scores and achievements and meet new gamer friends. “Friends soon to be opponents” and opponents soon could be friends.You can find out more about Game Center here.
What I would like to share to you here is the peculiarities of Game Center. I created an app / game which takes advantage of Game Center. It has three leaderboards: Victories, Victories Less Defeats and Winning Streak. It also has achievements. For its multiplayer feature we used Bluetooth for close proximity players and Game Center via Wifi or 3G. To play in multiplayer mode via Game Center the player has two options: One, invite a friend and auto match.
Continue reading »
April 28, 2011 is the date the white iPhone 4, others fondly call the “unicorn” will be on sale. The white iPhone is already 10 months overdue but the buzz around its appearance is still aplenty. Coincidentally the App Store also went down today. Maybe it is not even coincidence. Apple may be doing some last minute preparations for the next wave of app purchases to be triggered by the new iPhones. Continue reading »
Wow! I wasn’t expecting a quick approval of the app I uploaded but I am very impressed at how the Apple Review Team quickly reviewed the app. They must be doing something different and very good at Apple. Stories abound about the App Approval Process being slow and long but this is clearly not the case anymore. This is really awesome! Below is the status history of the app:
April 27, 2011 14:37 Apple Ready for Sale Continue reading »
April 27, 2011 14:34 Apple Processing for App Store
April 27, 2011 10:29 Apple In Review
April 21, 2011 04:08 Apple Waiting For Review
April 21, 2011 04:06 Apple Upload Received
For those who asked me about adding a Git repository to an existing Xcode project here is how to do it. I am using Xcode 4. Xcode 4 has a built in capability to create a corresponding Git repository when you create a new project but what to do if you have an existing project which you probably created in Xcode 3 and would like to connect it to a Git repository. Here are the steps. Continue reading »
One of the bugs I recently discovered in my app is where an object I am allocating in viewDidLoad of the UIViewController gets allocated twice. I have a timer that is allocated in viewDidLoad event and it is responsible for decrementing a counter. Double allocation in effect decrements the counter twice as fast as I intended it to do. So why is is this happening?
Continue reading »
Recent Comments