Building iPhone Apps

A mostly complete iPad app description

2012-02-22T21:26:00.001-05:00

Along the lines in my previous blog post: Preparing a full description my first iPad App, here is a mostly complete description of my first iPad app that I'm planning to build and sell on the App Store.

Application goals
The goal of this application is to browse pictures on the micro blogging platform Tumblr.

Design principals

Pictures are at the centre of the user experience and occupy all the space available.
Look at other iPad photo browsers for inspiration.
Prefer a dark theme to make it look like a dark room experience and make pictures stand out.
Design the application toolbars or spaces for later feature expandability (like allowing the liking of posts, re-bloging to followers, etc.).
Provide a quick browser mode and a closer view design mode and think about the way the user will switch between modes.

Interaction metaphor

One display mode: a grid view but each picture will allow a close up view for each picture.
By default, in the grid view, pictures are shown with a 4 x 3 grid with rounded corners and nothing else. Tapping with two fingers to toggle buttons or overlaid picture's metadata.
A variant of this grid view could be added later: grouped view: all pictures organized by image's source instead of the timeline).

Application features

Support the two basic iPad orientations (portrait and landscape).
User will be able to browse pictures only (the application will skip blog posts with other media types);
User will be able to browse Tumblr without being authenticated (if the API allows it, otherwise the user will be presented with a view background asking him to sign in).
iOS 5 only required to support integrated Twitter client.
Share picture link on social networks, send links by mail or save picture into the photo app.
Authentication process details starts from top toolbar (when application is first started, the app background will provide a visual cue to the user asking him to authenticate to the Tumblr service).
Authenticate the user to the his Tumblr Dashboard.
Users with multiple accounts is supported (sign off then sign in).
No settings available in Settings.app, only inside the application:
In-App settings: Configure Twitter sharing;
In-App settings: Configure Facebook sharing;
In-App settings: Configure Save image: as seen or full res
In-App settings: Configure a PIN
In-App settings: Allow grouping of picture by sources or timeline only (in a future version)

In the next blog post, I'm going to expose the visual details of this application textually and I may include one on my first application sketch. Stay tuned.

Cocoa plotting framework for Mac OS X and iOS

2012-02-22T21:08:00.000-05:00

Here is Core Plot 1.0 for those looking for a plotting framework in their iOS application.

Preparing a full description my first iPad App

2012-02-19T11:15:00.002-05:00

As you know, I'm in the process of creating my first iPad app. My current goal at this moment is to create a well documented application description which will state the following:

Application goals: why the application exists?
Design principals: what is behind the choices that will be made in designing the application visuals and interaction metaphor?
Interaction metaphor: a ten thousand feet above the ground description of the application interaction metaphor.
Application features: what the user will be able to do with the application?
Visual details: details, details and details about the application's visual elements.

The goal is to have a very complete application description that could be given to any iOS developers and designers so he could start building the application right away. My next blog post on the subject will be to provide each portion of this description. Stay tuned.

By the way, I'm following this very good article: From Idea to Market: How we built Gradient.

Want to start developing iOS apps?

2012-02-19T10:43:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting Quick Startup Guide from Apple: Start Developing iOS Apps Today. A must read if you are just starting your endeavour.

Interesting App Store stats

2012-02-19T10:33:00.001-05:00

According to an App Annie's blog post, here is a summary of interesting App Store stats.

Revenue per download: 37 cents in Norway, 22 cents in US, 4 cents in China
Fastest growth of downloads: China +298% with revenue +187%
Apps with In-App purchases monetizes at 2.2 times more than those without In-App purchases.
iPad download increases at +200% growth compared to iPhone at +70%
iPad generates 2 times more revenues than iPhone

In other words: build iPad apps with In-App purchases and make them localized for China and Japanese.

iOS App Cooker updated and feature complete

2012-02-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

Last week, App Cooker, an iOS prototyping and mockup tool from @HotAppsFactory has been updated with welcomed features. First and foremost, all the widgets of iOS are now available to the designers. Before this update, many iPad widgets were missing, this is no longer the case. You can now design fully featured iPad mockups and interact with them.

Also new in this release is a wireframe mode where you can choose from a palette of basic iOS interface elements in order to build mockups with content emphasis. Still missing from this update is a permanent fix for the colour picker which I find to be very badly designed and awful. HotAppsFactory promise a redesign of this in a future release. Finally, many bug fixes are on the menu with this latest release. For my complete review of App Cooker: Building iPhone Apps: EXCLUSIVE: App Cooker to become the best ...

Building an iPhone app is simple? Think again.

2012-02-10T21:38:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting article from Kent Nguyen on what it takes to make or build an iPhone app. Not an easy task.

Another WordPress Theme to promote your apps

2012-02-09T21:17:00.002-05:00

Remember about AppifyWP? I wrote a blog post about this really cool and nice WordPress theme to promote a single iOS application. For those without web design experience, I still think this is a really good kick start kit.

But today, I've got an email from Tapptics, a well known web resource for its iOS app design started kit. To time, she offering a really nice and functional WordPress theme for promoting your iPhone apps. This theme offers a lot of flexibility and is could with how-to videos to help you install the theme, customize it, etc. Pricing? Free. Go get it now. I'm seriously considering this free theme in order to move my MobileMe hosted web site at http://www.tinysofty.com to a place like FatCow while using this free theme. Thank you Jen, you made my day.

The only downside of these themes is that they only showcase one application. Many small developers would love to be able to showcase all of there apps. Maybe in a future version of the theme!

When designers can help developers

2012-02-09T21:00:00.001-05:00

Building iPhone or iPad apps is a lot of work and involves different skills and people, mainly designers and developers. Rarely you'll find great developers that are also great designers or vice versa. But how good designers can help or make developer's work easier? Look no further than Matt Gemmell's blog post on the subject. Very interesting, even for developers like us!

App Icon Template from an expert for beginners

2012-02-07T19:24:00.003-05:00

Wow, if your are looking for a really good application icon template in Photoshop, look no further than @flarup work at www.pixelresort.com. Very well done.

Cleanup Xcode project assets - here is a must have!

2012-02-01T21:06:00.001-05:00

You are working on big Xcode projects with a large quantity of assets and would like to do a spring cleanup? Which files are no longer referenced by your code? Is there any @1x graphic files missing for their @2x counterpart? enter Slender from Dragon Forged Software. Go check this out as the software is currently 50% off!

Paper and pencils - still the best

2012-01-31T12:44:00.000-05:00

Still the easiest and most flexible way of creating something... is to use pen and paper. Period.

Building my first iPad app - to share or not - that is the question

2012-01-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

Last november, I wrote a blog post about looking for inspiration to help me building my first iPad app: a Tumblr client for browsing pictures. Very simple idea. Since then, I've spent quite some time, on and off, not only about the idea itself but also on sharing to the world the process of building the application. What if someone steal my idea?

Well, this kind of thing can happen as soon as someone post about his or her work on the internet. Maybe someone is reading my blog and is waiting in the dark for my next blog post about this app so he can start coding and publish on the App Store. May be. May be not.

Building a Tumblr client is not really a novel idea. There are many available already. But the thing is they all suck. I don't like their design. I don't like using them. I want to build my own and love using it. This is exactly what I did with Ultimate Password Manager. I love using it. And many others do too!

So, I want to be proud of something that I've built. Sharing with others how I tackle the task of building this application is also useful. In order to build something and write about it, your ideas must be clear and well defined. Just the process of posting on the blog about it helps me think better about this application design and refine a lot of details. In the end, I'm winning and eventually my users will hopefully win too.

If someone is inspired by my work on this application and start on their own and eventually create a really cool and nice looking application for browsing pictures on Tumblr, then I would be more than happy to buy it and use it and tell the world how happy I am about it. In the end, whatever happens, I'll win. And remember, this is not always about money.

Keep reading my blog learn how I'm creating my first iPad app: a Tumblr client for browsing pictures! Comments are always welcomed too!

QuickLook plugin for provisioning profiles

2012-01-29T19:40:00.001-05:00

This is soooo cool. Quick look into any provisioning profiles. Easy. Fast. Useful.

Icons, lot of them for your iOS app design needs

2012-01-29T14:39:00.000-05:00

Today, I want to share with you three icon resources that I found out on the web.

The first is from Noami Atkinson.

The second set if from Symbolicons. The set is very interesting because very complete (400 of them in monochrome) and many are in colours. All vector based.

The third one is from UIParade.com where would not only find icons and glyphs but also all sort of UI design kits. There are available in standard formats for only 8$.

The last one is from http://geomicons.com/. Very nice and simple icons there too.

Another kind of application analytics

2012-01-29T11:08:00.001-05:00

Saw that this morning, heat maps applied to user interaction with iOS application design. Learn how users are interacting with your application. Where do they touch most, or try pinching. You could get clues about badly designed application. Really cool.

https://heatma.ps/

About making rounded rectangles

2012-01-28T08:56:00.002-05:00

Today I want to share this really interesting and well done blog post from Mike Rungle about making nice looking rounded rectangles in your iOS application interfaces: Making Round Rectangle Look Great. Mike's works is very impressive and I love everything he does graphically speaking. I wish I could be as good as this guy!

Small GitHub crash course from Cocoanetics

2012-01-27T08:41:00.001-05:00

I just read the Cocoanetics crash course on GitHub's Fork, Pull requests. For beginners, if you want to get an idea what GitHub is all about, head to Cocoanetics blog post.

How to influence your presence on the App Store

2011-12-21T19:39:00.000-05:00

This week, UPM 3.1.2 came out and I noticed something interesting. According to www.appannie.com, my application was being featured in 122 countries on the App Store in the Productivity category.

I did a little search in order to find an explanation for this. Before the update, my app wasn't featured at all in the App Store all over the world. Meh. By having a mere 175 updates downloaded by users on the first day and nearly 600 hundreds the following day, this seems to generate enough traffic on the Apple servers to trigger something. Could this traffic be influencing Apple algorithm for select which apps to feature on each App Store category? If yes, maybe I should plan smaller but more frequent updates for my application! What is your experience on this matter?

Need a backend platform for your iOS app?

2011-12-19T21:44:00.001-05:00

Just stumbled upon this today: www.parse.com. Parse offers a complete backend server platform for mobile apps. iOS and Android are supported. The feature set includes:

Data Storage in a schemaless format in the cloud;
Push Notifications Servers;
User management inside your app for easy signup features;
Social media integration for user sign in.

The service is currently in beta and free for that period. Seems very nice. The documentation is very well done!

Shameless plug - Ultimate Password Manager 3.1.2 is out!

2011-12-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

The latest release of my password manager for iPhone out! The app was less than 24 hours in queue (it was submitted on sunday!). This is a maintenance release.

Release 3.1.2

> iOS 5 compatibility fixes.
> Password Safe: you can now lock the safe on demand from the action menu at the top right.
> Password Safe: data entry is faster as the Done key of the keyboard now completes the entry instead of hiding the keyboard.
> Password Safe: longer delay when showing a password in password safe.
> Password Safe: Fixed application crash caused by an action on a tapped and hold password safe entry.
> Policies: Added a Save button at the bottom of the toolbar when creating policies.
> Tweaks in the About section to let the user send comments, feedback or feature requests from within the applications.
> In the Generate tab, selecting the type of password generation rules is easier.
> A security reminder will be randnomly presented to the user if the application's PIN isn't defined.
> Other tweaks and more robust code.

Invalid bundle - UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities - what to do?

2011-12-17T21:21:00.001-05:00

If you submit you application and you get the following error from the Application Loader, here is what you can do to resolve this issue.

Remove the key from the info.plist and re-submit the application binary. Why is that? According to this article, you cannot submit a new version of an application to the App Store that supports less devices than the previous versions. This is by design. In other words, Apple is telling us, developers, if you build an app, make sure it will work on all the devices that was originally worked on on day one. User experience comes first.

In my case, I never included the UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities. Submitting a new application binary with one, Apple state that I cannot restrict my application to fewer devices... But, you know what? Simply stating ARMv6 and ARMv7 doesn't reduce the amount of device supported... as this is the only two architectures currently supported on iOS devices. Is this a bug? Maybe.

No, we're not millionaires!

2011-11-26T09:08:00.001-05:00

Being an indie iOS developer means a lot. Some could say we are our own boss and this is great. Others would say that we get all the benefits for our app sales (minus 30% for Apple). I would say that being an indie means everything is hard work, nothing is a given. Some others think the same. See You Guys Are Millionaires Right?

For those Apple fans out there - Apple After Steve Jobs

2011-11-23T14:46:00.001-05:00

Many of us, iOS developers (full time or indie ones like me) are first and foremost Apple product lovers and Apple followers. If you are like me, when Steve Jobs passed away, you we're in a state of shock. But now, as time goes by, we start to look forward again. And we continue to love Apple's products and Apple in general. A few weeks ago, I started a new blog. A place where I can express myself on Apple After Steve Jobs. Today, I'm happy to report that this place is now open to you all, dear followers.

http://appleafterstevejobs.com

Come. Follow. Participate.

Enjoy.

A small but nice feature within the TestFlightSDK 0.8

2011-11-14T22:38:00.001-05:00

Today I was doing some testing within my app and found out a nice feature of the latest TestFlightApp.

If you leave your testing device running the application that is under control of the SDK and you happen to push a new update through the TestFlightApp web service, you'll receive an alert within the app.