First, download the source for Cocos2D. If your UIKit project is using ARC, you’ll need to download the “bleeding edge” version from GitHub, as this is currently the only version in which the header files are all ARC friendly. If you are not using ARC, the latest stable version should be fine (currently v1.0.1). Once you have the Cocos2D source, locate the file “cocos2d-ios.xcodeproj”. Open up your UIKit project, and drag this file into your file navigator. You should end up with something like this:

Next, go to the Build Phases settings for your project, and add the Cocos2D library (libcocos2d.a) as a linked library. You’ll probably also need to add OpenGLES.framework, and libz.dylib, like so:

You’ll also need to modify your Build Settings. Set Always Search User Paths to YES, and add the Cocos2D source directory to the User Header Search Paths (as a recursive path):

At this point, you should be able to import the “cocos2d.h” header into one of your source files, and compile your project. If you are using ARC and get some build errors, make sure your Cocos2D source is the development (bleeding edge) branch. Even though Cocos2D itself is not ARC enabled, it’s no problem to combine it with an ARC enabled project, provided you are using the correct version.

Now that Cocos2D is part of your project, it’s time to write some code. I only needed Cocos2D in one small part of my application, so I decided to limit it to a single UIViewController. This is the code that I used:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
	[super viewDidLoad];

	CCScene *introScene = [CCScene node];
	self.introLayer = [IntroLayer node];
	[introScene addChild:self.introLayer];

	if(![CCDirector setDirectorType:kCCDirectorTypeDisplayLink]) {
		[CCDirector setDirectorType:kCCDirectorTypeDefault];
	}

	CCDirector *director = [CCDirector sharedDirector];
	EAGLView *glView = [EAGLView viewWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1024, 768)
			pixelFormat:kEAGLColorFormatRGB565 depthFormat:0];
	[director setOpenGLView:glView];
	[director setDeviceOrientation:kCCDeviceOrientationPortrait];
	[director setAnimationInterval:1.0/60];
	[self setView:glView];
	[CCTexture2D setDefaultAlphaPixelFormat:kCCTexture2DPixelFormat_RGB565];
	[[CCDirector sharedDirector] runWithScene:introScene];

	[self.introLayer setupScene];
}

- (void)runRippleAnimation {
	[self.introLayer runRippleAnimation];
}

- (void)endRippleAnimation {
	CCDirector* director = [CCDirector sharedDirector];
	[director end];
}

I won’t go through the details of how to create a CCScene and CCLayer – there’s plenty of Cocos2D tutorials out there. The code that you’ll be most interested in is this:

if(![CCDirector setDirectorType:kCCDirectorTypeDisplayLink]) {
	[CCDirector setDirectorType:kCCDirectorTypeDefault];
}

CCDirector *director = [CCDirector sharedDirector];
EAGLView *glView = [EAGLView viewWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1024, 768)
			pixelFormat:kEAGLColorFormatRGB565 depthFormat:0];
[director setOpenGLView:glView];
[director setDeviceOrientation:kCCDeviceOrientationPortrait];
[director setAnimationInterval:1.0/60];
[self setView:glView];
[CCTexture2D setDefaultAlphaPixelFormat:kCCTexture2DPixelFormat_RGB565];
[[CCDirector sharedDirector] runWithScene:introScene];

This basically sets up the Cocos2D environment, and starts running your CCScene. And that’s it! I presented this UIViewController modally, but I expect you should be able to use this method within a subview just as easily.

Combining UIKit and Cocos2D does suffer a performance hit, but I’m not doing anything overly complex here, so it wasn’t a problem. I’m also not sure if this is entirely the correct way to do things, but again – it works, so I’m happy.

Cocos2D has a heap of really nice effects, with a great community behind it. If you need some extra pizazz in your app, it might just be the way to go.

Hours Per Week

This was one of the first things I looked at – total hours worked in 2011, and how that worked out as an average per week. It turns out that I worked an average of 31.2 hours a week in 2011. The standard Australian work week is 38 hours, so I was pretty happy with this. Those 31.2 hours were spent doing real work – anytime I opened up Facebook or read the news, I stopped the timer. This average also includes holidays, days off, etc. I dare say that I’m working more real hours than the average Australian, but I’m also working more efficiently. Recording what I’m working on and for how long has really helped me cut down on wasted time spent pretending to be working, or waiting until 5pm rolls around. If I can churn out the same amount of work in less time than the average employee, that’s a win in my book.

Hours Worked – In-House vs Contract

The primary reason I started tracking my time was that I wanted to split my time 50/50 between contract and in-house app development. I’ve always felt that although I enjoy in-house app development the most, this got pushed aside for contract work, especially when deadlines were approaching. I ended up spending 38% of my time on in-house apps, so while I didn’t quite achieve my goal, this was actually more than I expected.

Hourly Rate – In-House vs Contract

The really interesting part of this exercise for me was to be able to compare income gained from different sources, and how that converts to an real hourly rate. Though I generally charge a fixed price for all contract jobs, this is still based off an hourly rate. Being able to see how long a project actually took gives a really solid picture on how good you are at estimating time required, which clients are too demanding of your time, and projected income for the future. One satisfying thing I found was that by the hour, I earned pretty much the same amount on contract jobs as I did for in-house apps. In my opinion this is a pretty good justification for turning down contract jobs if I wish to concentrate on in-house work.

iPhone and Android

Though I’m not an Android developer myself, I have outsourced a few projects. Outsourcing isn’t free, and it also comes with a number of overheads – managing the process, explaining how the projects work, documentation, answering questions – it all takes time. As raw data, it looks like I actually earned about 60% more per hour from outsourcing projects than I did by developing the iOS counterparts myself. However, once I include the actual development costs of outsourcing, this figure drops dramatically. It turns out doing things myself might still be the way to go.

Keeping track of how I spent my time has turned out to be invaluable. It took very little effort, and has given me a real insight into my business. I’ll certainly be continuing the process for 2012 and beyond.

Keep track of everything, you say? That’s crazy! Don’t worry, I hear you, and it did take a little getting used to. However, it’s really not that hard, and I believe the benefits are many. But we’ll get to that.

The software I use is called On The Job. You start off by defining a client (eg. myself), a project (eg. an app), and a task (eg. v1.1 update). You then hit the record button and get to work! Whenever you stop working, you hit the stop button – easy. In case you forget to hit stop, the app also has a timeout feature, where if you stop using your computer for a few minutes, it will throw up a prompt and ask what you’d like to do.

So what actually counts as work worth recording? The main thing I think is that it’s important to be honest. If I’m not sure, I pretend for a minute that I have a boss who has just come up become me unannounced – would he think I was working or slacking off? If I open up Facebook, I stop the timer. Reading blogs doesn’t count either, unless it’s for a specific purpose. If I’m on the phone with a client though, it’s all recordable – even if we’re just having a chat. For me, this counts as client interaction time. If I head out of the office for a meeting, I count the meeting time, but not the travel time – unless I’m working off my laptop on the train. Food breaks, toilet breaks, afternoon naps – all timer stoppers!

But why bother? That’s a lot of timer stopping and starting throughout the day. Now that I’ve been doing it for almost a whole year, I have some solid statistics about what I spend my day doing. I can see exactly how long I spend replying to support emails, chatting to clients, doing paperwork, and creating apps. I think it also helps to keep yourself focused – if I’m working on a particular task and an interruption occurs (eg. an email arrives), I’m much more likely to ignore the interruption, as I’m recording time against the first task. Where this gets really interesting though is comparing the hours to income – I can now see what my real income per hour/client is, and compare this to in-house development as well. Every client has overheads which you can’t charge for, so it’s very handy to see which clients have more overhead than others.

I think this post is getting long enough, so I’ll save some actual figures for next time. The new year is fast approaching though, so think about giving this a shot for 2012. It’s a fairly easy habit to get into, and you’ll gain a much better understanding of you, your business, and where you should focus your time.

As is usually the case, Photo Academy has dropped off the main charts, and has settled down into bringing in lower, but fairly decent and consistent sales. I’m certainly not unhappy with the income, but I enjoy the business side of iOS development, and business means making more sales. Almost anyone who makes apps is generally seeking out the answer to the age old question – how can I get my app into the hands of more users?

When the App Store was first opened to third party developers, the first answer to that question reared it’s head almost immediately – the “race to the bottom”. All of a sudden we were in a world where quality software was being sold for the bare minimum, a measly 99 cents.

It wasn’t long before the next strategy became commonplace – the Lite version. Developers would release two versions of their app, the full paid version, and the free cut-down version. All of a sudden we were in a world where you could try out the app for free, and upgrade to the full version for a measly 99 cents.

Fast forward to today, and freemium rules the App Store. Today we live in a world where you can try out the app for free, use it as much as you want, and if you’re really keen, buy a few add-ons for a measly 99 cents. But only if you’re really keen.

The future is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple one day introduces full version trials, at least in the Mac App Store.

So where does this leave Photo Academy and me? Although I priced it at 99c for a small period of time, Photo Academy is now priced at $2.99, and I’m unlikely to ever drop the price again. I stand behind my product and believe it to be of a high enough quality to justify this price as a minimum. I also don’t believe the app is well suited to the freemium market – I think you need mass appeal to be a success in that arena.

This leaves us with the Lite version. The problem is, Lite versions always seem so tacky. Too many restrictions, ugly icons covered in messages proclaiming their free-ness, and user content which doesn’t transfer to the full version. As you may have guessed, I’m releasing a lite version of Photo Academy in the near future, but I wanted to reduce that icky feeling – I want my users to be just as pleased than if they had paid for the full version. Here’s the things I did a bit differently:

1. I named the app “Photo Academy: Orientation”. This fits in well with the educational theme, and doesn’t scream “hey I’ve got a cut-down feature set!”. It also means users won’t be stuck with an app called “something something lite” on their phone, even after upgrading.




2. I chose an icon which looks just as nice as the original:

   Photo Academy

   Photo Academy: Orientation

3. I gave users an easy upgrade path. They can unlock full functionality right within the app, without needing to download the full version from the App Store. All user content and settings naturally remain without needing to be transferred, and users aren’t left with an app covered in Lite stickers.




4. I’m overly generous with the amount of content. Using analytics from the full version, I can determine which are the most popular sections of the app – and I give a decent amount of them away for free.




5. As well as upgrading to the full version, I also allow users to purchase only the items they’re interested in (yes, for a measly 99 cents).

So is there still room for a Lite version? I think so. People like myself will just buy the full version straight away, while those who are a little more cautious now have some options as well. I’ll report back to let you know how it goes.

Photo Academy: Orientation launches on December 15, 2011.

Exercise

I personally think this one is so important that it comes first – both in this blog post, and in my day. Every morning I wake up at 6.30am, and head off to a CrossFit session. I’ve tried a lot of things in the past, but I absolutely love CrossFit. Sessions are typically run by a trainer with a group, and usually involve a high-intensity workout with a variety of exercises (we even get to do handstands). The beauty of it is that everything can be scaled, so it really doesn’t matter how fit (or unfit) you are. Now that I’ve been doing this for a few months, not only do I feel great, but I’ve made some new friends, it gets me out of the house, and no matter what else happens for the rest of the day, I can at least feel good about having done some exercise. Of course, you don’t have to join a CrossFit group to get the benefits of exercise – go for a bike ride, join a running group, or just go for a walk. If you can, do it first thing in the morning, so you don’t have a chance to avoid it. Your mind will be clear, you’ll feel good, and you’ll be set for a full productive day.

Your Environment

Lately I’ve been making an effort to keep my desk clean, and my room tidy. I put away all my test devices when I’m not using them, paperwork gets filed quickly, and the room is dusted and vacuumed once a week. This helps to avoid the mental drain that can come from being surrounded by clutter. I find it’s really nice to have a full desk to work on as well, rather than the little square that’s leftover if I leave stacks of books and papers around.

Some Character

Just because you don’t work in an office doesn’t mean you can’t spice up your space a little. Some people collect figurines, some people put up posters – me, I like to have a fish tank. I recently purchased a Fluval Edge tank, which is a neat little self contained aquarium. It looks great, and fits really nicely on the desk next to my iMac. Yes, I really am brave enough to put a box full of water next to my computer. Aside from giving me something interesting to look at every now and again, a tank full of fish makes for a great session of rubber duck debugging. If you don’t like what the first fish had to say, move on to the next one!

Regular Hours

I believe that keeping to a routine is a key factor in being a successful independent worker. Whilst I’m not super-strict about it, I generally work weekdays from 9.00am until 12.30pm, break for lunch for an hour, then continue working until about 5.30pm. At which point I stop. There are occasions where I’ll work longer hours, or work on the weekend, but this is the exception rather than the norm. This helps to give some normality to life, and also helps to avoid that “always at work” feeling that can creep in pretty quickly if you’re not careful.

Take Breaks

I’ve never liked the idea of sitting at my desk for many hours at a time, but it’s very easy to do, especially if you’re deep in some code. That’s why I installed Time Out, a free app on the Mac App Store. I have it setup so that every half hour I’m told to take a 10 second break – just enough to jump up from my chair, stretch my legs, and sit down again. Then, every hour I’m told to take a 5 minute break. I always try to make sure I walk around during this break, whether it’s to take the garbage out, check the mail, or just go outside for a moment. Rather than breaking my concentration, I’ve found on many occasions that these little breaks help me to have an “aha” moment, so I actually end up being more productive rather than less.

Work Isn’t Everything

This is a big one. Have you read The Top 5 Regrets People Have On Their Deathbeds? I’m particularly interested in point number 2 – every dying male patient in this article regretted working so hard. Every single one. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, but don’t let it come at the expense of your family and friends, because it’s very easy to do.

Know When It’s Time To Quit

Independent work isn’t for everybody. If you’re not happy, try and figure out whether it’s the work, or the work environment. If it’s the work environment, try some of the things above – or think about renting an office, or look into a co-sharing space. If it’s the work that makes you unhappy, you can always go back to a regular job – there’s no shame in trying something that didn’t work out.

Find What Works For You

Everyone is different, and on one can tell you the best way to live your life. However, I do hope that some of these things got you thinking. If you have any other suggestions I’d love to hear them!

Clean Up Your Source Control

I’ve had my own source control repository for around 6 years, which initially started off as just a personal store, and eventually grew into the main repository for all my independent company development projects. You probably know as well as I do that after several years of use, repositories get messy. Every time I created a new project, I found myself not really knowing the best place to put it. I’m using Subversion, but most types of source control can handle moving around folders just fine, so there’s really no good reason not to do it. I’ve restructured mine so that the top-level folders are the platform type (eg. iOS, Android, Mac, etc). Inside the platform folders is a folder for each relevant client I do work for, including one for Personal projects, and one for in-house projects. This is probably not the way you want it, so spend 10 minutes thinking about how you’d really like your repository structured before you go ahead – as they say, “plan twice, move once”. Or something like that.

Clean Up Your Local Storage

Got a whole bunch of projects named “test2″ and “deleteMe”? Still got some old Xcode betas installed? Everyone has junk lying around on their local system, and spring cleaning is a great time to remove it. For bonus points, restructure your local project storage so it’s in the same structure as your source control.

Start Using Xcode 4

It seems every week I read another blog post, or see another tweet, about someone who has tried Xcode 4 for a few hours, didn’t like it, and proclaimed “Xcode 3 or GTFO”. Well, good luck with that. Xcode 4 is the future, and you better get used to it. Personally, it probably took me nearly a week to really get back to being productive. Keyboard shortcuts have changed, your workflow is different, and let’s face it, early builds were buggy. Now that I’ve bothered to learn the environment though, I really feel that Xcode 4 is a huge leap forward. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you upgrade while you still have the choice, instead of being forced into it when Xcode 3 is discontinued and you’re in the middle of a big project.

Get Your Backups In Place (and test them)

How would you feel if you woke up one morning and your computer wouldn’t turn on? Heck, how would you feel if your computer caught on fire? Well, probably pretty bad, but hopefully that’s only because you don’t have a fire extinguisher, and not because you don’t have adequate backups in place. I basically have a 3-layer backup system:

• A nightly clone of my entire drive using SuperDuper!, which I boot up from once per month to ensure it’s working (I have an event in iCal to remind me to test this).
• All code stored in an off-site source control repository. When you finish coding for the day (or stop for lunch), check in your code.
• Real-time backups of selected folders using CrashPlan, both local and off-site. CrashPlan is insanely good, and very cheap – $50 a year for unlimited, real-time, off-site backup. It’s free if you don’t want real-time backup and have your own storage space, too.

Overkill? Probably. But for a couple hundred dollars of initial outlay, and only $50 in annual costs, why not?

Try That Software You’ve Been Dreaming Of

For a long time I’ve been using Versions as my Subversion client, and there’s always been a few things that bug me about it. Still, they were just little annoyances, and I was able to get my work done – that’s all that really mattered, right? I finally got around to trying Cornerstone recently, and my only disappointment is that I didn’t switch a long time ago. If you suspect the tools you’re using aren’t the best they could be, it’s well worth giving some others a shot – your tools should step out of your way and let you do your job, not bug you every time you use them.

Tidy Up Your Desk

Yep, this one matters too. Put away all those files you have to push aside every morning, get rid of those dirty plates from last week, and go on, do a bit of dusting as well.

Hop To It!

Nobody likes cleaning, but the hardest part is getting started. Make a promise to yourself to spend one day this week not coding, but cleaning your digital life. Once you’re done, you’ll feel more productive, and more importantly, you’ll be more productive.

Over the last few weeks though, I’d been increasingly getting the feeling that this release was going to be evolution, not revolution. The penny dropped for me upon reading a post over at Daring Fireball, titled Teardrop Skepticism – the basic gist being that the rumoured teardrop design made no sense, as it would feel wrong in landscape mode. I’m amazed that no one else had pointed this out earlier, and from that point forward I was positive that today would see the announcement of only the iPhone 4S.

As I watched the announcement, I couldn’t help but feel a growing disappointment. A better camera, better internal performance – even the worst analyst could have figured those things out, which have been rumoured for months. Despite my gut feeling, I was still hoping for the unlikely. Even Siri was pretty much all but confirmed before today, and whilst it looks really cool, I don’t know how much I’ll use it after the first hour of experimentation.

Now that everything has settled and the world has gone back to work, I’ve been thinking about the flow of the announcement, and the message that Apple is really trying to send here. Yes, the iPhone 4S was the finale, and the piece that everyone was waiting for, but a substantial amount of the presentation was given over to other aspects of the eco-system – notably iOS 5, and iCloud. Most of the details we already knew from WWDC, but the difference here is that these are no longer a work in progress – iOS 5 and iCloud will be with us in just over a week. If there really was an iPhone 5 announced today, it would take the gloss off iOS and iCloud. Make no mistake about it, these two components are going to drastically change the way things work in our ecosystem, and Apple has done an amazing job bringing them together. You get the feeling the company has been incredibly hard at work since WWDC.

So while the iPhone 4S might not be the new hardware that we were all hoping for, I think that’s ok. I’m still super excited for October 14, because damn – the iOS 5 and iCloud combination is going to be truly awesome.

I’d previously heard a few things about 360iDev, which this year was being held in Denver, Colorado. To be honest, I’d never really given it much thought. If I was going to fly halfway round the world for a conference, I always figured it would be WWDC. All of a sudden that option was gone, and 360iDev became a lot more attractive.

After about 5 minutes of reading all the positive comments on Google and 30 seconds of thought, the decision was made. Flights were booked, my ticket was purchased, and my hotel room was reserved. Fast forward to the middle of September, and I’ve just attended the best conference I’ve ever been to. If you’re an iOS developer, you should seriously give some thought to attending. If I can sit in a plane for 18 hours, spend the week being jet lagged, and still get so much out of it – anyone else can too. But enough of the feel-good positivity – why should you go?

Compact Learning

Ever since the WWDC videos were released, I’ve been making my way through them. So far, I’ve managed to watch about half of the ones I’m interested in – in fact, probably about the same number of talks that I saw at 360iDev. Reading a book or watching videos is great, but if you’re anything like me, it’s pretty hard to set aside an entire day (or two) to do this. A conference is a fantastic opportunity to concentrate on improving your craft for a few days.

Connections

One of the reasons often mentioned for attending a conference is networking, and for good reason. I’m not much of a social person, and I work independently from home, so it’s no surprise that I don’t regularly come in contact with other iOS developers. It was a joy to tell people about what I do, listen to what they’re working on, and just have a chat about iOS life in general. There’s a number of people I met that I plan to keep in touch with, whether it’s for a joint project, or just to say hello.

Inspiration

This one comes in two parts. Many well known members of our community attend conferences just like 360iDev. Chart-topping game developers, ex Apple employees, book authors – they’re all there. Hearing these people talk is a huge inspiration in itself. The more important part though comes in realising that these people are just like you and me. I lost count of the number of times I sat next to someone only to find out they developed some very well-known app, or authored a book I’d read, or wrote a fantastic blog I follow. And here they were sitting right next to me. This does wonders for motivation and self-belief.

Parties

This might not appeal to some of you out there, but hear me out. Developers are generally introverts, and don’t do well in social situations. So if you’re in a room full of developers, it’s pretty easy to find someone to talk to who’s feeling just like you. Say hello, and all of a sudden you’re playing arcade games and drinking beer at The 1 Up Bar with your new friend. Or enjoying an all-you-can-eat meat fest. 360iDev had seriously awesome parties, but not the type you might be used to – these were parties for developers.

Useful Tidbits

This one is a bit of a hidden benefit for me. I read a lot of developer books, watch a lot of videos, and write a lot of code. I feel like I’m a pretty good iOS developer, with experience across a large chunk of the SDK. Even to the point where I’ve read a couple of iOS books recently, and learned almost nothing new. This was not the case at 360iDev. The large range of sessions meant that I picked up something useful from almost every talk. Awesome keyboard shortcuts, handy tools, or a great open source framework – the sorts of things that make your job easier, faster, and better.

In Summary

If you haven’t guessed the punch line yet, here it is – 360iDev has made me a better developer, gave me the chance to meet some amazing people, and quite simply was a tonne of fun. I feel incredibly inspired, and you can be sure that I’ll be there again next year. And so should you.

Sales of PhotoCaddy have always been decent, and I’ve been very fortunate that an app I created for fun whilst learning about both photography and iOS development, has helped to give me the freedom to pursue an independent lifestyle. The natural thing to do with any product that sells well is to try and make it available to more people (does Angry Birds have Commodore 64 support yet?). So, over time I’ve ported the iPhone version of PhotoCaddy to iPad, OS X, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Today, I’d like to share some numbers with you, in the hope that this might help you decide what other platforms interest you.

So, here’s the sales for the month of August (with all dollar values in US dollars):

I’m not going to go into a deep analysis of those numbers, but I do have some random tidbits which I think will be of interest:

• Many people like to claim that Android users don’t buy apps, but in my experience this is not the case. An interesting thing to note is that I often receive emails from ex-iPhone users telling me how glad they are that the app is available for their new Android phone. Even if it turns out that all my Android sales can be attributed to ex-iPhone users, I think that’s irrelevant – Android users do buy apps.
• The OS X, Android and Windows Phone 7 ports were carried out by freelancers, cost roughly US$1000 each and required about 5 hours of my time.
• Revenue for Windows Phone 7 is $0, as several months later they still claim I haven’t submitted my tax details, and I can’t find any actual sales figures in the portal. I may pursue it one day, but for now I have better things to do.
• The design is pretty much the same across all platforms. Android users consistently say how much they love the UI, whilst at least a few iPhone reviews have mentioned that the content is great but the design is lacking.
• On all platforms I’ve seen a decent boost in sales once the star ratings appear. I know Apple doesn’t like us including “Rate This App” style prompts, but I think you’re crazy not to.
• In the month of August, I also had 29 additional cancellations or refunds of Android sales. I used to get emails from Google every single time this happened, which was really annoying. Now I only get emails sometimes…and it’s still annoying. I don’t need to be told when I haven’t made a sale.
• I never had big hopes for the Windows Phone 7 port, but I think as an actual platform, it’s much better than Android. I really hope the Nokia deal brings some love.

So, in summary, would I port an iPhone app to another platform again? Actually, I’m in the middle of porting another app (Photo Academy) right now. As a more general answer though, it really depends. If the original app sells well, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t port to iPad or Android, or even OS X if it suits your app. There are plenty of freelancers who can do the work for you if you’re that way inclined, at a cost that will allow your app to become profitable fairly quickly. Unfortunately, Windows Phone 7 is off my list for now. It was a good experiment which I’m glad I ran, but I won’t be going there again anytime soon.