Building iPhone Apps

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.

App Cooker little brother: App Taster

2011-11-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

After releasing a very capable and visually compelling prototyping tool earlier this year called App Cooker (see my review here), Hot App Factory released a companion application to App Cooker named App Taster. This application is essentially a player for mockups build with App Cooker.

Mockups are imported from iTunes via document sharing. From the preview mode, the user is allowed to send feedback via email with a screen shot of the currently shown picture. Nice. App Taster is free on the App Store. Bon appétit.

Who tried Linguan for iOS application localization?

2011-11-12T08:24:00.001-05:00

Just found out about Linguan on the Cocoanetics web site. This Mac OS application allows a developer to simplify the localization of his application (Mac OS or IOS). Anyone tried it? Any comments? I may try it myself and post a review of it.

Building my first iPad app - looking around for inspiration

2011-11-12T07:54:00.000-05:00

In my last blog post on building my Tumblr client, I have stated what would be part of the first release of this application. Now it is time to search the App Store for great applications with similar objectives and see how they are visually presented.

One of the web service that I like is Dribbble, a web service for graphic designers to let them present their work. You can find amazing stuff made by great designers there. I really like the visual look of this web site which is very clean. There is one iPad app made for browsing the content on Dribbble which I like: Dribbblr. the design of this Dribbble client is inspired by the web site design.

Dribbblr is something I like to use myself. The design of this application is very inspiring me for my Tumblr client. Basically, this is a very standard iPad application using a toolbar at the top of the screen, the rest is for the content. This kind of application is easier to create than a customized split view like the Twitter client.

Here are a few things that I like in this Dribbblr client:

Content is king, controls are few;
White borders around each pictures (would prefer to see rounded corners though);
Nice background (white borders around pictures could also allow a darker background which I think I would prefer);
The page navigation at the bottom is also very nice (except for the colour of the handle which comes from the Dribbble visual signature);

But, I feel the pictures layout is not really what I like most from this application. This week, I came across a new application called Mixel. After playing a few minutes with it, I found many things that I would like to re-use in my own application for Tumblr.

In Mixel, the density of content is higher, three times more pictures are displayed compared to Dribbblr application. They both uses shadows from elevated pictures corners to add some depth. Mixel presents pictures with rounded corners albeit with very small radius. Under each pictures you'll find the author, comments counter, like counter, favourite counter and the date. Browsing in this view is done by sliding the finger from the bottom to the top.

The other very interesting view is the single picture view shown next. It is presented when the users is taping on a single picture.

This single and centred picture view with previous and next partially shown pictures is very interesting to me. First, browsing is done horizontally and the users get a visual cue of what will be the next picture and what was the previous one. Next, pictures are bigger and actions can be done on them by tapping one of the icon at the bottom. This could be pretty much the same layout principle that I could use for my Tumblr client. But, for the 1.0 release, comments at the bottom wouldn't make it as I see that less relevant for picture browsing.

Another design cue that I could take from Mixel comes from the use of the Share button at the bottom right of the icon row. Pressing this button makes the picture flip in order to reveal social networks where the picture can be shared to others.

This view could be done differently though. Why not just dim the picture and present the controls over? If the picture is dimmed very low and the controls very dark with a little white surrounding this could be a nice way of acting on the picture which would be in line with one of my design principle for this application: make the content the centre of the user experience. The user could still see the picture while executing actions on the them.

The other thing about Mixel is the use of space in the layout. There is large and unused space surrounding pictures. I would increase the picture size for better content presentation.

Together, Dribbblr and Mixel applications seems to embody visual design principles that could be the basis for my own Tumblr client. In my next blog post on this subject, I'll try to come up with a design myself.

UINavigationBar customization under iOS 5 problem

2011-11-10T21:30:00.001-05:00

Apple changed the rules with iOS 5 and UINavigationBar customization. Apple now required to do drawRect when subclassing the UINavigationBar instead of implementing a protocol as it was done under iOS 4. See this question on StackOverflow.

I'm putting the final touch to the next release of Ultimate Password Manager but I found out that doing the UINavigationBar customization only works partially. The Apple's proposed way like shown in this small tutorial is very simple: http://www.mladjanantic.com/setting-custom-background-for-uinavigationbar-what-will-work-on-ios5-and-ios4-too/. Here is my UINavigationBar subclassing.

// MyCustomNavigationBar.h

// uPasswords

// Created by Martin Jean-François on 11-11-09.

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface MyCustomNavigationBar : UINavigationBar

@end

#import "MyCustomNavigationBar.h"

@implementation MyCustomNavigationBar

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {

UIImage *backgroundImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"NavigationTitleBackground.png"];

CGContextDrawImage(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(),

CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width,

self.frame.size.height),

backgroundImage.CGImage);

}

@end

In Interface Builder, I made the change to all the UINavigation object properties to change it to my newly defined subclass like shown in the following screen shot.

The solution is working fine. Mostly. My problem is simple. My application is using a Tabbar with nine (9) tabs. The UINavigationBar is effectively customized for the first four (4) only! So it seems that for the "More" tab and the following one, the subclass's method is not being called so the customization isn't done. Why?

Building my first iPad app - beyond the initial idea

2011-11-09T21:23:00.004-05:00

One on the thing that Steve Jobs helped us to understand is to try to build products that we would like to use ourselves. So, what could be part of my own Tumblr client?

In my quest to create a very simple Tumblr client, the next step is to define what this simple client should do on the 1.0 release. We cannot start the next design steps without a very descriptive application description. So, what this 1.0 release should be able to do? What goals should I try to achieve?

Put the content (the pictures) at the centre of the user experience (pretty much like QuickTumblr or Dribbblr);
Browse only pictures (skip blog posts with media type other than pictures because I want to create a Tumblr image browser);
Browse Tumblr without user authentication (without authenticating the user, the application could still allow browsing of Tumblr blogs in general something the API seems to allow);
Authenticate the user to the his Tumblr Dashboard;
Logoff the currently logged in user;
Think that at some point the application could support to show one picture in full screen mode;
Design the application in a way to allow more interaction features with other Tumblr functionality eventually in a future release (liking blog posts, rebloging to followers, saving pictures the the camera roll, seeing blog post comments, etc.)
Support all iPad orientations;

As you can see, this will be a very basic Tumblr client. By making it this simple, I'm aiming to be honest with how much work I can put into this as I'm not a full time iOS developer. My resources are also very limited.

Effects of adding the TestFlightSDK on the IPA size

2011-11-06T09:31:00.003-05:00

You want to add the TestFlightSDK to your iOS app in development and wonder how much the IPA size will increase? Expect to see about one megabyte size increase.

Finally, starting the application on a iPhone 4S takes 4 seconds without the SDK but once the SDK is added the launch time stays the same.

Building my first iPad app - refining the idea

2011-11-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

So Tumblr is cool. To refine the idea of building an iPad application based on Tumblr service, we need to know what Tumblr is all about.

Tumblr is very simple. You create a blog then you start to post things like texts, pictures, videos, links, sounds, quotes. People can become subscribers to your blog and you can become a subscriber to theirs. As you subscribe to other Tumblr blogs and as people of those blogs posts new things, this become part of your Dashboard (The Twitter equivalent is the Time Line). The more people posts, the most you see stuff in your Dashboard. This is very basic social networking stuff.

The idea of building a Tumblr client for the iPad comes in part because of the lack of beautiful and well designed apps. Take for example imgTumble. This client offers more than just browsing. You can also like pictures and reblog them. You can see pictures that you liked. It makes the application a bit more complex than I would like. Also, the design is quite poor as the content is squeezed in a three columns view which fails to put content at the foremost of the user experience.

Another example is QuickTumblr client. This one is quite nice as it uses a two panes view inspired by the Twitter client (See more on the subject of using split views on the iPad: Building iPhone Apps: Beyond the UISplitViewController). The user can toss aside the left pane to see more on the left.

There is a few things that I don't like in QuickTumblr. I don't like the tile view, the colour theme and the choice of the font. I would like the pictures tiles to use rounded corners to make things easier on the eyes (see why rounded corners are better then square ones: New Switch Control in IOS5 and Why Rounded Cornors are easier on the eyes).

These observations on the state of affairs of the Tumblr clients for the iPad will help better refine the idea of building my own. On my next blog post I'll explore what could be part of a great Tumblr client that I would like to build myself.

Writing my first iPad app - ideas

2011-11-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

I've been writing iPhone apps since 2009. Since then, the iPad came out. The reason I first started to write iOS apps was that I was curious about how things worked behind the scene. So I created three apps (search "ultimate password manager" on the app store for more details). Now, I'm a bit blasé about my current apps. I'm still working on them to make incremental improvements but I'm looking for ideas for the iPad platform. I don't won't to port my apps on the iPad because the market for password managers is way over crowded and my time is limited. So I have to pick and choose something less crowded and in line with what I think I can achieve.

I'm a big fan of Tumblr. I love their wed site and their iPhone client. I know they love the iPhone and Apple market in general by looking at their http://engineering.tumblr.com/ page, I know for sure they are iPad fans too.

Tumblr is already available on the iPhone but not on the iPad. The idea is that I don't want to create an iPad version of the Tumblr client. There are a few available on the iPad but they really sucks big time. So, this is it. I would like to build a very simple yet beautiful Tumblr client for browsing their content. The kind of thing I would like to achieve is something close to this Dribbble client called Dribbblr. In my next post, I'll explore in more details how I started to look into this matter and what the Tumblr browser for iPad could have in version 1.0.

Symbolicate crash reports in real time

2011-11-01T20:44:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on an increasingly powerful web service for iOS devs, TestFlightApp: TestFlightApp is getting better and cooler!

Now, they push the service even further: what about the possibility of having real time symbolication of application crash reports? Yep, they now offer this possibility for all of their users.

By uploading the application's .dSYM file on their servers, TestFlightApp will be able to symbolicate any crash happening in your apps provided that the TestFlightSDK is build into the application.

Reminder, symbolication is the process of translating addresses in crash reports to function names, method names, file names and line numbers. Raw crash reports received from users via email or downloaded from iTunes Connect.

Xcode 4.2, iOS versions and ARMv6, ARMv7 build architectures

2011-10-22T09:36:00.001-04:00

Today I want to share my discoveries about compiling an iOS app under Xcode 4.2. With every major release of Xcode and iOS SDKs comes a few surprises. With Xcode 4.2 and iOS 5 SDK, the problem is that under Xcode 4.2, the new default build architecture is ARMv7 only. The ARMv6 is no longer part of the default settings. So, this may be a problem is your application needs to run on older devices. In my case, a few build and linking errors prevented a successful build of my app.

But, which device is using ARMv6 and which one is using ARMv7 ? Here is a list.

ARMv6 is for original iPod, iPod touch second gen, original iPhone and iPhone 3G.
ARMv7 is for iPhone 3GS and up, original iPad and up.

Also good to know, the original iPod supports only iOS 3.1.3. The iPhone 3G is capable of running up to iOS 4.2. So, plan accordingly. See this table for maximum supported iOS versions for each iOS device: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices

If you want to re-add the ARMv6 architecture to your build settings, follow these instructions: Warning iPhone apps should include an armv6 architecture even with build config set?

For example, if you want to support iOS 4.2 and still support iPod touch second generation or the iPhone 3G, you'll have to set architecture to ARMv6 and deployment target to 4.2. The original iPhone, the original iPod touch won't be supported. You should also set the UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities in the info.plist of your app.

Update: thanks for pointing me that iPod touch second gen was missing and about the wrong link to the article on StackOverflow.

Çingleton 2011 Symposium - a brief summary

2011-10-18T20:40:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, the Çingleton 2011 Symposium was held in Montréal for the first time. This two day event was very enlightening and refreshing. It was about mobile application development and general trend in that field.

I attended this symposium and here is a brief summary of things that I've heard at the event.

First, the most striking thing is that as iOS developers with ideas and a desire to push limits of mobile applications, we are all part of something really big that is going on since 2007. Nobody knows if we are at the tipping point yet. It is clear that things we do now with our mobile devices is very different from things we will do in five or ten years from now. Nobody really knows.

Second, Apple legacy will be felt for a long time even after Steve Jobs passing away. What Apple does is provide users with great products and great user experience with them. And to achieve this, they are not afraid to take risks and try new things. We should too, as iOS developers do the same thing. Think design, think about the users, think about the experience should all be driving our development efforts.

Third, we should feel grateful just to be in the middle on all these technical advances and be able to make a difference. Even small ones.

Here is a few things that I've have heard on the floor at the event:

Applications discovery is still a major problem for indie iOS developers. How do we get noticed in a 500 000 applications store?
Android presence in the market is very real. Developers starts to think about the business value of porting iOS apps to the Android Market. Fragmentation is a real issue. More than 650 devices to test against.
The iPad potential in story telling application is way under utilized. A few good apps exists in that area but their cost of development make them rare beasts.
The analog world is more and more numerical. The use of natural user interaction models will help make the numeric nature of this world more approachable.

Finally, here is a few photo sets from this event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/sets/72157627919287660/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cingleton/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/foobar/6252403530/in/set-72157627786395573

Recovering some space with Xcode Organizer

2011-10-17T18:53:00.001-04:00

When opening projects, Xcode create an index of the project content for later searching. Compile logs are also accumulating fast and compiling. Same if you created snapshots on those projects. These files tend to accumulate on your hard disk.

Here is a simple trick to recover some space on your hard disk with Xcode Organizer. Open Organizer, then click on the Projects tab. On the left pane, see if there is project name in red. If this is the case, those projects are no longer on your hard disk so there is no need to keep those in organizer. Right click on them and select "Remove from Organizer".