Although the iPhone 4 has been on the market for over a year now it is still proving to be wildly successful, easily outselling the majority of its rivals on a like for like basis. Apple announced this month that in the three months from the start of April it shipped over 20 million iPhones across the globe, proving that this is one brand that is not going to be ousted from the top of the market in the near future.

It has also emerged in recent days that the fifth iPhone is likely to arrive at the start of September. Delays due to component shortages which were caused by the Japanese earthquake back in March have forced Apple to exchange its usual June launch for a new iPhone for a later date.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer was quoted as saying that while revenues dropped 12 per cent year on year in the third quarter of 2011 the firm is hoping that a new product launch in September will help it to recoup any lost income.

The reason for the drop-off was of course as a direct result of the iPhone 5 having its release date rescheduled . While Oppenheimer would not explicitly say that the firm`s revenue will increase in the autumn as a result of a new iPhone arriving, it is being seen as heavily implied by many in the media.

The iPhone 5 is likely to bring a handful of new features to the table when it eventually does launch, although few can agree on what precisely this might entail. A dual core processor is almost a cert given that rivals including the Samsung Galaxy S2 and HTC Sensation already have dual core chips onboard. A larger four inch display is also being rumoured to be a key feature, bringing the Retina Display of the iPhone 4 onto a larger form factor.

There are counter-rumours which suggest that Apple might be launching an iPhone 4S this September, with only a few minor changes made over its predecessor, rather than completely reimagining the handset that has won them millions of sales.

Part of the inspiration behind this move might be problems with overheating processors which were rumoured in the last few days. Apple is not exactly in a rush to get the iPhone 5 to market given the continuing dominance of the iPhone 4. However, it is clear that the iPhone forms a key part of its revenue stream and that a real boost could be gained by launching a new handset on the same annual schedule as it has kept since the original arrived back in 2007.

Hi All,

Big news in the iPhone world today with Apple revealing the iPhone 4. As usually I am updating you all with the full conference as posted by the lovely people over at  live.gdgt.com

So without futher hesititation, here goes

10:01AM – Okay, that’s different — tons of applause coming from behind, and standing up. “What a Wonderful World” just came on the PA significantly louder than the other tracks.

10:01AM – The lights are going down, here we go! Steve’s up, huge applause.

10:01AM – Standing O — “It’s great to be here. Thank you.” Screams — we love you Steve! “Thanks. I think.”

10:02AM – “We have got a great conference for you guys this week. … we sold out in 8 days. We apologize to those folks who wanted to be here, we didn’t have room. This was the biggest place we could get.”

10:03AM – Steve’s reviewing the conference agenda, basically. Over 1k Apple engineers on hand, blah blah. A few updates, “I’d like to start with the iPad. An incredible success.” Big applause.

10:04AM – “It’s changing the way we’re experiencing the web. Things like email, photos, maps, you name it — it’s a whole new way to interact with the internet, with apps, with our content and media, and it’s going over really well. And it IS magical. I know it, because I got this email…” Guy apparently got a girl interested in him with his iPad.

10:04AM – “We’ve sold over 2m iPads. That’s one every three seconds. iPad is now in ten countries.” International press reel time! Set to New Order, no less!

10:06AM – “We’re going to be in 19 countries by the end of July — we thank everyone for their patience, we’re making iPads as fast as we can. There are now 8.5k native iPad apps in the App Store… they’ve been downloaded 35 million times. That’s about 17 apps per iPad. That’s a GREAT number.”

10:08AM – “Let me show you some of these great apps…” Pulse, Gowalla, eBay, webMD, Iron Man, the list goes on. Showing off Elements… email: “I earned more on the sales of Elements for iPad the first day than on the past 5 years of Google ads on periodictable.com” Heh. Steve: “This is what we LOVE to hear from you guys.” Chuckles.

10:09AM – “I’d like to tell you about one of our apps we’re updating today: iBooks. … I’ve got a few stats for you. In the first 65 days, users have downloaded over 5m books, that’s about 2.5 books per iPad, which is terrific.”

10:09AM – “And five of the six biggest publishers in the US tell us that the share of iBooks is up to about 22% — in about 8 weeks! We’re really thrilled with that. So, we’ve got some enhancements.”

10:10AM – “As you know, you can create highlights, you can also make notes. Now you can make notes. In addition, we’ve added a control to just tap and bookmark a page — under ToC you’ll see all the notes, highlights, and bookmarks.”

10:10AM – “We’ve added another big enhancement — the ability to view and read PDFs. So we’ve built that in.” Big applause. “You can now view PDFs. We’ve put a little selector at the top — books and PDFs. You get a whole new bookshelf just for PDFs, they just look gorgeous.”

10:11AM – “So that is my update for the iPad.” Big applause. “Next, I’d like to talk about the App Store, something near and dear to all of us. Now, I want to make something really clear.”

10:12AM – “We support two platforms at Apple. Two. The first is HTML5, a fully-open, uncontrolled platform that is forged and defined by standards bodies. We fully support HTML5. Apple’s browsers are in the lead in terms of supporting the full HTML5 standard, and we are behind this 100%. It is fully open.”

10:13AM – “The second platform we support is the App Store. It’s a curated platform with 225,000 apps. It’s a vibrant community — there’s nowhere else you can find this many apps.”

10:13AM – “We get about 15k apps submitted every week. They come in up to 30 different languages. Guess what: 95% of the apps submitted are approved within 7 days. What about the 5% that aren’t? Why don’t we approve them? Let me give you the three top reasons.”

10:14AM – “The number one reason: it doesn’t function as advertised. It doesn’t do what the developer says it does, so we tell the developer to change the app or the description. The second reason: the developer uses private APIs. … If we upgrade the OS and the app breaks, we won’t have a happy customer.”

10:15AM – “And the third most frequent reason: they crash. If you were in our shoes, you’d be rejecting apps for the exact same reasons. I just wanted to give you the facts — sometimes when you read some of these articles, you may think other stuff is going on.”

10:15AM – “Now, I’d like to highlight one of these: eBay.” 10m downloads, $600m in volume in year 1, $1.5b in volume in 2010. Steve: “Wow. Should we all be this successful.”

10:16AM – “I’d like to show you three new apps.” Netflix! Reed Hastings is on stage. Reed: “Two months ago we launched Netflix on the iPad. It’s been one of the top 10 most downloaded apps in the App Store…”

10:17AM – “There is one feature request we’ve consistently gotten… and I’m happy to announce Netflix for the iPhone coming this summer for free.” Woops, Steve slipped and mentioned Netflix for iPhone right before Reed got on stage.

10:18AM – Demoing the app. Uses adaptive video playback — seamless switching between networks. Reed: “Thank you everyone, Netflix for iPhone coming this summer!” Applause. Steve: “Next up: Zynga.”

10:19AM – Pincus is up: “Thank you Steve and Apple, we’re honored and excited. Today we’re introducing farming for the iPhone. Farmville is our most popular game, and we’re excited to be bringing it to the most popular mobile gaming platform in the world.”

10:20AM – “Every day more than more than 35m people play our games.” Demo time! Oh hey, it’s not Flash.

10:21AM – “Say goodbye to withering crops, we now have push notifications!” Pincus: “I’d just like to say, if you don’t regularly farm… well, you should.” Har.

10:24AM – Guitar Hero time!

10:24AM – By the way, if you’re not already a gdgt user you should go sign up and join the discussion!

10:25AM – Showing swiping strum mechanics, looks crazy. I’m not feeling dextrous enough.

10:27AM – Guitar Hero now in App Store for $2.99 “Go download it!” Steve’s back. “He was playing that lead in real time, that was really cool! Three great entertainment apps… I’ve got a few great pieces of information to share with you.”

10:27AM – “Just last week, we crossed five BILLION downloads.” Big applause. “This next thing is my favorite thing is my favorite stat of the whole show. As you know, 70% of revenue goes to the developer. How much have we paid you to date? Just a few days ago we crossed a BILLION dollars.” Big, big applause.

10:28AM – “It is one of the greatest things we get to do. And that’s what makes the App Store the most vibrant app community on the planet. 5b downloads and a healthy ecosystem, and we’re thrilled with it. Now, I’d like to talk about the iPhone.” Some cheering.

10:28AM – “There have been a lot of stats floating around — market research, market share studies, some are ok and some are questionable. I’d like to give you two pieces of data to help you make your own judgments.”

10:29AM – “The first is a report that just came out from Nielson: what is the marketshare in the US? RIM is #1 with 35%. iPhone is #2 with 28%, WinMo #3 with 19%, Android 9%. Nielson says iPhone is over 3x that of Android.”

10:30AM – US mobile browser usage in the US — 58.2% of US mobile browser usage. “That’s almost 2.5x that of #2, Android. This may help you put things in perspective. So, back to iPhone.”

10:30AM – “In 2007, iPhone reinvented what we think of as a phone. It’s hard to remember what it was like before iPhone!” Heh. “There were a few apps, but there was no free market for apps, there was no App Store. We started to change all that in 2007. In 2008, we added 3G networking and the App Store.”

10:31AM – “In 2009 the iPhone 3GS was twice as fast. For 2010 we’re going to take the biggest leap since the original iPhone.” Huge applause.

10:31AM – “We’re introducing iPhone 4.”

10:31AM – “Now, this is really hot. There are well over 100 new features, but I’m going to cover 8 new features of the iPhone 4. The first: an all new design.”

10:32AM – “Now, stop me if you’ve already seen this.” Huge laughter and cheering.

10:32AM – “This is one of the most beautiful designs you’ve ever seen. This is beyond a doubt one of the most precise and beautiful things we’ve ever made. Glass and steel… its closest kin is like an old Leica camera. And it’s really thin.”

10:33AM – “This is the new iPhone 4.” Huge applause.

10:33AM – “It is just 9.3mm thick, that is 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS. A quarter thinner in something you didn’t think could get any thinner! In fact, it is the thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

10:34AM – “We have a front-facing camera, microSIM, camera + LED flash, headset, and a second mic for noise cancellation. Now, because there have been a few photos around, people have asked, what’s this?” The edge of the phone. “What are these lines? These don’t seem like Apple.”

10:35AM – “Well, it turns out, there’s not just one of them, there’s three of them. And they are part of the structure of the phone — the stainless steel band is the structure of the phone. These is some brilliant engineering — we use that stainless steel band as part of the antenna system.”

10:36AM – “It’s got integrated antennas right in the structure of the phone — it’s never been done before and it’s really cool engineering.” Big applause. “Stainless steel for strength. Glass on the front AND back. Integrated antennas, and extraordinary build quality.”

10:36AM – “There’s not another consumer product like this. This is our all new design for the iPhone 4. That’s the first point.” Big applause.

10:36AM – “Second: this is a biggie. Something we call the retina display. What’s that?” Chuckles. “In any display, there are pixels — here’s four of them. We start off by dramatically increasing the pixel density, 4x in the same amount of space.”

10:37AM – “Why’s that important? We get far more precision… and we play tricks like adding some gray pixels to help fuzz it for the eye. When you zoom out, you get REALLY crisp images. It has 326 pixels per inch. There has never been a display like this on a phone.”

10:38AM – “People haven’t even dreamt of a display like this. It turns out there’s a limit around 300px per inch that the human eye can’t differentiate between the pixels — text looks like you’ve seen it in a fine printed book, unlike you’ve ever seen on an electronic display before. It’s extraordinary.”

10:39AM – “Let me give you an example of the ordinary display on the left and a Retina Display on the right.” Hard to tell from back here. “Once you use a Retina Display, you can’t go back.”

10:39AM – If you haven’t already, go add the iPhone 4 to your gdgt list!

10:40AM – Demo time: iPhone 3GS “with our widely-praised display on it” vs. the iPhone 4. “Look at that difference. We had to get special projectors for this because most can’t display all the dots we put in the Retina Display!”

10:41AM – Interestingly, they haven’t scaled any of the interface elements and targets — it looks the same, just sharper.

10:42AM – Uh oh, network troubles up on stage. Steve: “You could do me a favor by getting off of WiFi.” Nice hat tip to the Google IO keynote foibles. Switched to backup iPhone 4, errored with: “Could not activate cellular network.” Laughs. “Yeah, I know…”

10:44AM – Steve’s given up on web pages — showing photos now. “It kinda comes down to what do you want to be looking at all day long? … I’ll try one more time here. Well, I’m sorry guys, I just don’t know what’s going on. Scott, you got any suggestions?” Someone shouts “Verizon!”

10:44AM – Demo over. Steve is clearly not too stoked.

10:45AM – “3.5-inches, but 4x more pixels than the iPhone 3GS. 326px per inch. 800:1 contrast ratio, 4x that of iPhone 3GS. IPS — provides much more accurate color and much higher resolution. You can’t make an OLED display with this resolution, we think it’s quite superior.”

10:46AM – “Again, the Retina Display has 78% of the pixels on an iPad right in the palm of your hand. iPhone OS 4 makes it so your apps automatically run on the Retina Display — but they look even better, because we render your text and controls in the higher resolution. Your apps look even better without doing any work!”

10:47AM – “But if you do a little work and put in higher resolution artwork, they’ll look stunning — so we suggest you do that. … We think this is going to set the standard for displays for years to come. It may be the most important single component of the hardware, and we’ve got something here now that’s like the best window on the planet. So that’s the Retina Display.”

10:47AM – “Third: the iPhone 4 is powered by the A4. It’s designed by our own team, and it’s wonderful to have on the iPhone.”

10:48AM – “Let’s take the back off: the first thing you’ll notice is the iPhone is packed to the gills. We went to micro SIM because it’s smaller — we need the space. The biggest component in the phone is the battery — we could make it a little bit bigger.”

10:48AM – “Now, because we’ve made the battery bigger and the A4 is so good with power management, we’ve improved the battery life! 7 hours 3G tlak, 6 hours 3G browsing, 10 hours WiFi browsing, 10 hours music, 40 hours of music, and 300 hours of standby.” Big applause.

10:49AM – “Our environmental report card is strong. Arsenic, BFR, mercury, and PVC free… we’re doing great there.” Review: “A4, 32GB, quad band HSDPA / HSUPA, dual mics, 802.11n” and the rest…

10:49AM – So wait, quad band? T-Mobile? We’ll see!

10:50AM – “We’ve got another cool piece of hardware: we’re adding a three-axis gyroscope.” A few people in the audience just completely lost it.

10:50AM – “We’ve tied the gyro, accelerometer, and GPS for 6-axis motion sensing. It’s perfect for gaming — and one of the reasons it’s perfect is because it’s built into every iPhone 4, so you know it’s there.”

10:51AM – Demo time! “Since this demo doesn’t require the network…” laughter “we should be ok.”

10:52AM – Showing a Janga-like game and did a quick bit of real-space rotation with the gyro. Big applause. This is pretty impressive.

10:52AM – Now Steve is actually playing the Janga game. “I practiced this a little bit.”

10:53AM – “The gyro joins the four other sensors… these phones are getting more and more intelligent about the world around them. So that’s four. Number five. This is a great one. A whole new camera system built into iPhone 4.”

10:54AM – “Everybody loves to talk about the things that are tangible when it comes to photography, like megapixels. But we tend to ask the question: how do we make better pictures?”

10:54AM – “Megapixels are nice, but what cellphone cameras are really about is capturing photons and low-light photography. So we’ve gone from a 3 to a 5 megapixel sensor with a backside illuminated sensor.”

10:55AM – “It’s a way of getting more light to the sensor… also, when most people increase the megapixels, they make the pixel sensors smaller. We’ve kept them the same size so they capture more photons. We’ve got a 5x digital zome, tap to focus, and LED flash.”

10:56AM – “The pictures are marvelous.” Showing photos: “These were taken right off the iPhone 4, shows you what kind of quality we can get.” Applause.

10:56AM – “But that’s not all: the camera records HD video.” Big applause.

10:57AM – “It records a full 720p at 30fps — it’s REAL HD. Tap to focus video, built-in video editing, one-click sharing, and the LED flash will stay on to illuminate scenes for video. Record and edit HD video right on your phone. It’s pretty remarkable. But we’re going even further than that…”

10:57AM – “We’ve written an application ourselves.” iMovie for iPhone!

10:58AM – Demo time! Randy Ubillos, Apple’s chief architect of video apps. “This is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever worked on. Record HD video and edit with beautiful transitions and titles, all on the device you carry with you every day.”

11:01AM – Showing edits, transitions, bringing in music from iTunes. Geolocation information can be imported to titles. This is all looking pretty amazing. There’s nothing out today that is remotely comparable to this in terms of mobile video editing.

11:03AM – Showing final HD video that was recorded, edited, and rendered on the phone. Pretty unreal.

11:04AM – Demo over! Steve’s back. “Isn’t that awesome? iMovie for iPhone. You can buy this right on your phone for $4.99 right on your phone. If we approve it.” Laughter. Number six!

11:05AM – “Before I begin, our guys are running around backstage trying to figure out what’s up. Why? There are 570 WiFi base stations in the room… would you like to see the demos? All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations, put your notebooks down.”

11:05AM – Wait, Steve is seriously asking everyone to stop liveblogging? They’re serious!

11:05AM – “If you want to see the demos, there’s no way to do it. Set ‘em on the floor.” This is really awkward.

11:06AM – “I’ve got time…” laughter. “This is a testament to how far we’ve come, isn’t it?”

11:06AM – People are jeering… “come on guys.” Oooookay. “Are we done? So, number six: iPhone OS4. The most advanced mobile OS in the world.” Big applause.

11:06AM – And yes, we’re still here. Sorry Steve.

11:06AM – “We’re renaming it! We’re taking away the phone! iOS4.”

11:08AM – “And we’re going even further and giving it some metal.” Heh. “It’s our most ambitious release to date — over 1500 developer APIs. Over 100 new user features, the biggest being multitasking. Some people were saying you weren’t first with multitasking — the same was true with cut/copy/paste. But we took some time to figure out how to do it right.”

11:09AM – “I’d like to demo just a few things today.” Demo time! Showing multitasking – Pandora, now switching to Mail. “We’ll see if we really did turn off all those WiFi devices.” Page loads, huge applause. “Thank you!”

11:11AM – The engineering team at gdgt HQ just made a good point: the “iOS” name is already taken by Cisco. (It’s what runs most of the internet, as a matter of fact.) Then again, Cisco owned the “iPhone” name, too, as you might recall.

11:12AM – Showing the meta media controls in the multitasking tray, unified inbox with threading, folders, and lots of other new stuff. “So, iOS4: Multitasking, folders, Retina Display integration, unified inbox and threading in Mail, lots of enhancements in camera and photos, deeper enterprise support, and tons of new features everywhere.”

11:13AM – “I wanted to hit for a moment on the enterprise integration — our customers are thrilled. Better data protection, wireless app distribution, multiple Exchange accounts… another thing we’re adding on the consumer side, today we have Google and Yahoo search.”

11:14AM – “We’re adding a third option, which is Bing! Google will stay the default, but now you have another choice, if you like. Each one takes a unique approach to how they search and format results. You decide.”

11:14AM – “Microsoft has done a really nice job on this, it’s an HTML5 presentation, it’s great. So, iOS4: we’re going to put a golden master candidate in developers’ hands today. Our final candidate will be in your hands today, and it will be out soon.”

11:15AM – “Now, there’s another major milestone we’re about to hit: this month we will sell the 100 millionth iOS device.” Applause. “That’s iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, 100 million. There is definitely a market for your applications.”

11:15AM – “So no one even comes close to this. That is iOS4. Number seven: iBooks. We are bringing it to the iPhone.”

11:16AM – “The same controls, the same highlighting, the same bookmarking, the same PDF reading. If you get a PDF in Mail, tap on that and you’ll go right to iBooks. And, of course, the iBook Store right on your iPhone. We’ll have it on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. This gets interesting.”

11:17AM – “What can we do with all these products together? Well, the first is you can download and purchase a book to any of these products, and it’ll be wirelessly downloaded right to the device. Now, you can download the same book to all your devices at no extra charge.”

11:18AM – “You only have to buy it once. And, iBooks will automatically and wirelessly — and for no charge — sync your place, notes, and bookmarks across all your devices.” Big applause. Sorry Kindle!

11:18AM – Demo time!

11:19AM – “Partly just because I want you to see how beautiful this looks on our amazing Retina Display.” Showing selections, highlighting with colors, notes, bookmarks. This is all pretty true to the iPad version.

11:21AM – “Pretty cool, huh?” Applause. “So that is iBooks. As you know, it has the iBookstore, which joins the App Store and iTunes Store as the third store on the iPhone. We have over 150 million credit cards on file ready to purchase your apps. We think we’re number one on the web.”

11:22AM – “Number eight: iAds. Why are we doing iAds? For one simple reason: to help our devs earn money so they can continue to create free and low-cost apps for users.” So Steve DOES acknowledge the deflationary nature of the App Store.

11:22AM – “As you know, we’re trying to combine the emotion of video with the interactivity of the web. … iAds keep you in your app.” If you saw our iPhone OS 4 keynote coverage, a lot of this is just recap.

11:24AM – “Apple hosts and sells the ads, so all you have to do is tell us where you want them and make the money.” Chuckles. “We’ve only been selling ads for 8 weeks, and I’d like to just show you about some of the brands that will be advertising with us during the second half of the year…”

11:25AM – “Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico — they want you guys to have insurance! — Sears, JCPenny, Target, Best Buy, DirecTV, TBS network, and Disney. Those are some of the brands, and we couldn’t be happier. We’re so excited.”

11:26AM – “I wanted to pull an ad, Nissan is working on one for their fully electric car… they were hesitant to show it, but I really wanted to show you, so I convinced them.” Laughter.

11:27AM – Showing the interactive Nissan Leaf iAd. Steve registered on the ad with his sjobs email address — laughter.

11:30AM – Steve’s talking display ad numbers. They’re looking at $60m of ad dollars in the second half of the year — “We think it’s going to be 48% of the entire US mobile display ad market. We think we’re off to a pretty great start!”

11:31AM – “I think it’s a lot more than people thought it was. What do you think?” Applause. “Well, we’re really pleased with it. But there is one more thing…”

11:31AM – “I think it’s best if I just show you.” Steve’s walking over to the demo.

11:32AM – “I really want your WiFi devices off, are they off? Please turn ‘em off if you’ve turned ‘em back on.”

11:32AM – Steve’s seated, and about to make a call to Jony Ive on the iPhone 4.

11:32AM – FaceTime — video calling.

11:33AM – “In 2007 when we launched the iPhone, I got to make the first public call on the iPhone…” Jony’s face shows up on the screen. “Hey Jony! This never freezes up, so you haven’t turned off all the WiFi — let’s get it off please!”

11:34AM – “Hey Jony how you doing?”

“I’m doing okay — except for these guys who aren’t turning their WiFi off. You know, this is amazing… I grew up with the Jetsons and Star Trek communicators. I grew up dreaming about this stuff…”

11:34AM – Jony: “I did, too — I used to love the optimistic view of the future. And it’s real now, isn’t it?”

“It’s real now. Especially when people turn off their WiFi.”

11:35AM – Big applause. Guess that FaceTime calling wasn’t over the cellular network!

11:36AM – “We call this FaceTime — video calling. It’s… it’s great. It’s iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 anywhere there is WiFi, and there is no setup required.”

11:37AM – “You can switch from the front or rear camera automatically. It’s WiFi-only in 2010, we’re working with the cellular providers to get things ready.”

11:39AM – Video demo time! Super intimate moments –babies, sign language… tearful!

11:40AM – “This is one of those moments that reminds us why we do what we do. FaceTime: iPhone 4 to iPhone 4, anywhere there’s WiFi, zero setup, front or rear camera, amazing video and audio quality. It’s based on a lot of standards, and we’re going to take it all the way… we’re going to make FaceTime an open industry standard.” Big applause.

11:40AM – “FaceTime… that’s number nine. That’s iPhone 4, and we think it’s the biggest leap we’ve taken since the original iPhone. I think you’ll agree there’s more to it than met the eye.” Sound like a vague Giz reference.

11:40AM – “Price and availability! iPhone 4 comes in two colors, black and white — price is $199 in the US for the 16GB model, and 299 for the 32GB model.”

11:41AM – “I’m thrilled to announce AT&T is going to make an incredibly generous upgrade offer. If your contract expires any time in 2010, you are immediately eligible for a new iPhone 4 at the same 199 or 299 prices if you top up your contract 2 years.”

11:42AM – “So you can get up to 6 months early eligibility to upgrade. We’re thrilled about that. What’s our lineup look like? Yesterday it was the 3G for 99, and the 3GS for 199.”

11:42AM – iPhone 3G is gone, 3GS now 99, on sale June 24th.

11:42AM – “Pre-order start a week from tomorrow. We’ll be hsipping in five countries, US, France, Germany, UK, Japan — in July, we’ll be doing 18 more countries.”

11:43AM – “In August we’ll add 24 more, and in September we’ll add 44 more — we’ll be shipping in 88 countries. This will be our fastest rollout ever.” Accessories!

11:44AM – “A real nice dock.” $29. “Just like the iPad, we took a crack at doing a case ourselves, we call it a bunker.” Colors, $29.

11:44AM – “We will be offering iOS4 upgrades for the 3GS, 3G — but again, not all features will be supported in the 3G — and iPod touch… upgrades for all these products will be free on June 21st.”

11:45AM – “We’ve finally found a way to get these upgrades for free to our iPod touch customers, and we couldn’t be happier. We’ve put together a video to summarize all the features of the iPhone 4, and I’d like to run that now…” Video time.

11:46AM – Lusting after the iPhone 4’s insanely high-res display? Discuss here!

11:47AM – Going over all the stuff from the presentation… FaceTime, Retina Display, all the stuff we’ve seen. (Don’t worry, these videos usually end up on Apple’s site.)

11:50AM – Still reviewing iOS4 features, now talking A4 and the 40% increased call time.

11:51AM – “This is going to change everything. All over again.” Big applause for the video. Steve’s back.

11:52AM – “I put up this slide earlier this year, and to me it represents what Apple is all about. It’s not just a technology company, even though we have and invent some of the highest tech in this industry. It’s more than that. It’s the marriage of that and humanity.”

11:52AM – “It’s the hardware and software working together. It’s not just a great new camera, it’s the built-in editing software and iMovie. It’s not just a front-facing camera, it’s a front-facing camera and 18 months worth of work to create software you’ll never even notice when you want to make a video call.”

11:53AM – “I am so proud of the team that created this product. It’s really extraordinary. Before we end today, I’d like to say thanks to the teams who’ve worked their tails off to create the iPhone 4. Mark Papermaster, can you please stand up?” Big applause in the room.

11:54AM – “Jony Ive and the design team… the A4 team… Scott Forstall and our remarkable iOS software team… all of this wouldn’t make any difference if we couldn’t build a ton of them. Tim in our operations team…”

11:54AM – “All the rest of the Apple family that supports us in a thousand ways, I’m really proud of all you guys. Awesome job.” Applause.

11:55AM – “Thank you very much for coming. This is our new baby, I hope you love it as much as we do!”

11:55AM – Huge thanks to the always awesome team at the Rackspace Cloud for powering today’s live coverage!

So there we have it, I know that is on my wish list

Thanks again to gdgt.com for the live coverage

Hope you enjoyed the read.

Hi All,

Thanks to the loverly people over at live.gdgt.com I bring to you the full break down on the latest iPhone OS, and may I say that it is absolutely amazing. Thank you Apple for listening to what people want
So without any more hesitation here is the full conference as posted on gdgt.com

10:03AM – Steve!

10:03AM – “Good morning. Thanks for coming this morning, we’ve got something to share that we’re pretty excited about: iPhone OS 4.”

10:04AM – “Before we get to that, though, we’ve got a few updates. First, the iPad: we just started shipping it on Saturday. We got some really great reviews. … Walt’s a tough critic.”

10:05AM – “On Saturday, we’ve sold 300k iPads. As of today we’ve sold about 450k.” Applause. “I’m told Best Buy is out of stock, we’re getting them in and selling them right out. We’re making them as fast as we can, but evidently we can’t quite make enough of them yet, so we’re going to have to try harder.”

10:06AM – iBooks: 250k book downloads. As of today: over 600k. “We’ve gotten tremendous positive feedback on iBooks.” First day iPad apps: over 1m downloads. As of today: over 3.5m Applause.

10:06AM – “Beyond all the numbers, what it was really about, was this…” Laughter. “People are just loving this product. You know, when you create something, you have butterflies in your stomach before you put it out in the world, you don’t know if people will love it.”

10:07AM – Update on the App Store: over 4 billion (with a b!) apps. Over 185k apps in the App Store. Over 3.5k iPad apps in the store. “This is also accelerating — these apps are just amazing. I just want to show you some screenshots of some of the apps — you’ll be surprised at just how great they are.”

10:09AM – Showing off some apps, like Zillow, Marvel, MLB, ESPN, Epi, E-Trade, IMDB. Yeah, these are all pretty good apps! “ABC turned out a phenomenal app for the iPad! You can just turn it sideways and watch these shows in incredible resolution, it’s fantastic.”

10:10AM – “Netflix: this app has been very highly praised. And… where would we be without an accordion?” Laughter. “That’s just a few of the iPad apps… let’s get to the iPhone.”

10:11AM – “We had a really nice thing happen recently: we won the JD Power award for customer satisfaction… we’ve won it three years in a row. If we take a look at market share, one way to look at that is share of use. iPhone has a 64% mobile browser user share.”

10:11AM – “How many iPhones have we sold to date? Over 50 million. If you add iPod touches into that, it’s over 85 million. If you’re a software developer, that is a plum market to go after. Today, we’re giving a developer preview of iPhone OS 4, the next major release of the iPhone OS.”

10:12AM – “We’ve been working on this for a while, it’s pretty great. We’re going to ship it this summer, and release a dev preview today.”

10:12AM – “iPhone OS 4 delivers over 1500 new APIs for devs. They can access calendar, photo library, still and video camera data…” Quick Look, SMS, Full map overlays, automated testing.

10:13AM – “… and one called Accelerate, itself over a thousand math-related APIs for accelerometer.” New user features: 5x digital zoom, playlists, tap to focus video, places in photos, home screen wallpaper, file and delete mail search results, Bluetooth keyboards!

10:14AM – Gift apps, persistent WiFi, iPod out, search SMS/MMS, wake on Wireless, CalDAV invitations, web search suggestions. “These are just a few end user features. Of those, we’re going to talk about seven today.”

10:14AM – “Let’s start off with the first one, the biggest: multitasking!”

10:15AM – Big applause. “We weren’t the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best. Like cut and paste — it’s better than any other implementation. It’s really easy to implement it in a way that really drains battery life. And, it’s really easy to implement it in a way that reduces the performance of the foreground app and makes your phone feel sluggish.”

10:15AM – “If you don’t do it right, your phone will feel sluggish and your battery life will go down. We’ve figured out how to avoid those things, and that’s what took us a little longer, and I think we’ve nailed it.” Demo time! “We’ve got a great UI for it, I think you’ll like it.”

10:16AM – Steve launches mail, opens a message, clicks a URL into the browser. “So far this is what we already do every day on the iPhone.” Double click home button, window raises, shows app s that are running right now.

10:18AM – “Very simple, very very simple.” Applause. Opens eBay app, “I’m right to where I left off.” Tap Tap Revenge: “Alright, I’m not winning here.” He’s moving back and forth between apps fairly quickly, but we’re not seeing how this is actually multitasking though — what Steve is showing right now is just app switching.

10:19AM – “Very easy to use, very efficient, we think users will love it. That’s our multitasking UI, it’s really wonderful. We’ve been using it a lot, and it really changes the way you use the iPhone. So, to explain how we did this while preserving battery life and performance, I’m going to turn it over to Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software.”

10:20AM – Scott’s up: “How are we adding multitasking while preserving battery life and performance. We looked at tens of thousands of apps in the app store, and we’ve distilled the services those apps need to run in the background. So we implemented those services, and we’re providing those services as APIs to developers so they can add multitasking while preserving battery life.”

10:21AM – “We’re providing seven multitasking services. First: background audio streaming.” Talking about Pandora — exactly who should be getting this first! “Pandora is great, but until now if you left Pandora to go to another app, the music would stop.” Not anymore!

10:22AM – Pandora demo time from Tim Westergren. “It’s not exaggeration to say the iPhone has singlehandedly change the trajectory of Pandora. … it was a transformative moment for us. Our growth rate almost doubled overnight, and we add almost 30k new listeners a day on the iPhone.”

10:23AM – “It took our developers just one day to make Pandora fully background aware.” Showing Pandora playing while the phone is in Safari, as well as locked.

10:26AM – “Until today, navigating away meant I’d go offline. In iPhone OS 4.0, when I leave the app, it goes into the background, and I’m still able to receive calls.” Oh, I can absolutely see using this.

10:28AM – David is talking on Skype in a live call while loading up some dinner spots in OpenTable. “I’ll send you the details in a few minutes, I’m just with some folks right now.” Har har. Demo’s over.

10:29AM – Scott: “The next is background location. There are two classes of apps that want to use your location in the background. One is turn by turn directions, like TomTom. The problem is, until now, if you left an app like TomTom, you’d stop getting directions.”

10:30AM – “Now it can continue to track your location with GPS in the background. Now, GPS uses a fair bit of power…” mentions making the best use for this in the car. “There’s another class of application, like social networking services like Loopt.” Uses this positioning system with cell-based A-GPS.

10:31AM – “With all these location services, we take privacy very, very seriously. We’re taking it several steps further in iPhone OS 4.0. First, we’re adding an indicator to the status bar if something is tracking your location. Next: we’re adding fine-grained settings so you can enable/disable location on per application.”

10:32AM – “If anything has asked for your location in the last 24 hours, you’ll se a check there, too. Next: push notifications. We’ve had these for about 9 months now, incredibly popular. Great for things like score updates, news alerts… in fact, in just 9 months we’ve pushed over 10 billion notifications.”

10:33AM – “Building on push notifications, we’re building on the service and adding local notifications: they’re like push notifications, except there’s no server, they’re all done ON the phone.” This is hot, and definitely needed.

10:33AM – “The next is task completion. One is like Flickr: sometimes photos can take a while to upload. With task completion, Flickr can continue to upload those photos in the background when you browse away. Our last service: fast app switching.”

10:34AM – “This is the easiest to implement.” All of the state is stored and preserved instantly, the app no longer uses resources. “These are very deep, and they add a lot of power for developers to add to their apps. I’d like to hand it back to Steve!” Steve’s back up.

10:35AM – “Thank you Scott. So, our second tent-pole: Folders.”

10:35AM – “As people are downloading more and more apps, you’re having to flick from page to page to find them. People want a better way to organize them — instead of talking about them, I want to show you, it’s beautiful.”

10:36AM – Drag and drop apps onto one another to create folders — the name auto-populates but you can edit it. This is pretty hot.

10:37AM – By the way, if you’re not already a gdgt user you should go sign up and join the discussion!

10:38AM – Folders can live in the dock, too. “So, that is folders!” Applause. “An incredibly great drag and drop UI with intelligent naming. You used to be able to see 180 apps in your phone over those 11 pages. If you replaced every one of those with a folder, it’s over 2,000!”

10:39AM – “Let’s go to tent-pole number three: an enhanced mail. We’ve added a lot of great features to mail.”

10:39AM – “The first: a unified inbox. Customers have really wanted this.” Yeah, like this guy right here! “And, we’ve made it so you can have more than one Exchange account, as well. If you want to focus on just one account, we’ve added fast inbox switching.”

10:40AM – “In addition, we’ve added the ability to organize by thread.” Can I just say… finally? “Follow that conversation all along by looking at the prior messages bundled in one place. And open attachments. Tap on it, open with an app downloaded from the App Store.”

10:41AM – “There’s more, but these are the biggest ones.” Applause. And if you live in mail like I do, this is definitely one to applaud. Next: “We’re adding iBooks.”

10:42AM – “We’re really excited about this. Just since rolling it out on the iPad, we’ve had so many requests to bring this to the iPhone — of course, we were already doing that. We think customers will really enjoy this on their iPhone or iPod touch.”

10:43AM – “Buy your books once and read them anywhere. We’re wirelessly syncing pages and bookmarks automatically. And just like on the iPad, we’re supplying a free book: Winnie the Pooh. You know, we labored over that choice, which to include!”

10:44AM – Scott’s up: “Our fifth tent-pole is some great features for the enterprise. Already over 80% of Fortune 100 companies are using the iPhone. First: better email encryption. We’re making APIs available to allow developers to encrypt all the data INSIDE their app, too.”

10:45AM – Mobile device management, helps manage deployment. Gets some applause, but I’m not entirely sure why! “Next: wireless app distribution. With iPhone OS 4, a company can wirelessly distribute an application anywhere in the world with their own servers. Next, as Steve mentioned, we’re adding support for multiple Exchange accounts on the same phone. We’ve also added support for SSL VPN.”

10:45AM – “That is our fifth tent-pole!” Applause. “Our sixth is Game Center. This is a dev preview in iPhone OS 4.”

10:46AM – “Gaming is extremely popular on the iPhone and iPod touch. In fact, we have over 50k titles… let’s look at the competition. If you look at dedicated gaming devices like the PSP and DS, this just blows them out of the water.”

10:47AM – “We wanted to make this even better — we’ve added a social gaming network. We do automatic matchmaking, we’ll find others with a similar ability and match them against you. You can see how you’re progressing in a game with achievements.” Wow, so Apple just totally knocked off Xbox Live (and PSN) in the iPhone.

10:47AM – “Our seventh tent-pole: iAd. It’s mobile advertising. So, what’s this about?”

10:48AM – That’s Steve, by the way. “”Well, we’ve got a lot of free apps — we like that, users like that, but these developers have to find a way to make some money, and we’d like to help them.”

10:48AM – “What some of them are starting to do is put mobile ads in their apps… and most of this advertising sucks. We want to help developers make money with ads so they can keep their free apps free.”

10:49AM – “On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re spending all their time on these apps — they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.” Steve is basically just talking to Google, now.

10:49AM – “The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day — about the same as a TV show. We’re going to soon have 100m devices. That’s a billion ad opportunities per day!”

10:50AM – “This is a pretty serious opportunity, and it’s an incredible demographic. But we want to do more than that. We want to change the quality of the advertising. We’re all familiar with interactive ads on the web. They’re interactive, but they’re not capable of delivering emotion.”

10:52AM – “We want to be even more interactive than the ads on the web, and we want to get some of that interactivity from video. The ads keep you in your app…” People don’t click on ads because you get yanked out of your app. “Because iAd is in the OS itself, we’ve figured out how to do interactive and video content without ever taking you out of your app!”

10:52AM – “The user can return to their app any time they want. We think the user will be much more interested in clicking on these things because they won’t pay the penalty for doing so. You can add iAd opportunities in an afternoon — we’re going to host and deliver the ads, and we’ll give developers an industry standard 60% of the revenues.”

10:54AM – Demo time! “What we’ve done is mocked up a few ads.” Toy Story 3 ad. “It’s a Disney movie coming out this June… I’ve seen it, it’s really good.” Laughter.” All this stuff is done in HTML5, by the way.” Bigger laughter. Ouch, Adobe.

10:55AM – Showing off the interactivity of the ad presence. It’s pretty good — kind of like an integrated microsite in a window. “They even included a game in this ad! Well… we included the game.” Chuckles.

10:56AM – Steve’s winning the little game. “Yeah, this is good.” Heh. Shows theaters it’s playing, uses location. Also has in-ad purchases. Alright, we got the point. And as far as ads go, this is pretty short of revolutionary.

10:57AM – “Have you ever seen an ad like this?” Silence. “… anything even close?” Laughter. Showing a faux-Nike demo with a nice, high res video.

10:58AM – Showing Dunks progressing through the years. Nike ID: “shake your iPhone to get another.” So they’ve done some serious OS-level integration with these ads, which is clearly a huge, huge difference from where things are today.

10:59AM – Faux Target ad, Steve: “I’m going to build my dorm room. I am a duuuude… I’m going to Michigan.” Seriously, can you imagine Steve in college?

11:00AM – Demo’s over. “That’s an example of 3 ads that are very easy to make. In addition to ad agencies being able to make these things, there are hundreds of thousands of iPhone app devs who know how to make these things. Emotion plus interactivity. The ads keep you in your app, so you’re much more likely to click on then and explore.”

11:01AM – “So that is iAd, and that’s our seventh tent-pole.” Applause. “Let’s review: multitasking, folders, iBooks, GameKit, iAd… these are just some of the over 100 user features, and over 1500 new developer APIs in iPhone 4.”

11:02AM – “Now, we’re releasing a developer preview today. You can get it today at developer.apple.com. We are releasing it to end users this summer, and that’s for the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd gen (last fall’s). They will run pretty much everything.”

11:02AM – “For iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen, they will run many things, but not everything — they will not support multitasking, the hardware just can’t do it.”

11:03AM – “iPhone OS 4 to the iPad this fall. So, that’s iPhone OS 4, and I really want to thank you for coming today. What we’re going to do now is have a short break and I’d like to ask the press to remain for the Q&A starting in about 5 minutes. Thank you for coming, I think you’ll be very pleased with iPhone OS 4. Thanks!”

11:03AM – Don’t go anywhere, Q&A with Steve in just a minute!

11:05AM – Steve and Scott are up on stage, one more stool. Assuming that’s going to be for Phil.

11:06AM – Phil’s up, looks like we’re starting Q&A now.

11:07AM – Steve: “Okay, we’d love to answer some questions you might have!”

11:08AM – Q: How is AT&T prepared to compensate for greater data usage?

Steve: I’m not sure the assumption that it’s going to use more data is correct. Well, we’re not multiplying the number of minutes of usage. It might be accurate, but there’s nothing to suggest there is going to be more data used.

11:09AM – Q: Does wireless app distribution open an avenue for distributing apps not through the app store?

Scott: No, we have a program for enterprises to allow them to sign their applications. It doesn’t open additional devices they can run on.

11:10AM – Q: Will iPad’s success impact its international launch?

Steve: No, we said we’re launching internationally later in April, and we’re launching later in April,

11:12AM – Q: Apple is hosting ads, will there be an approval process like the App Store?

Steve: I think there will need to be some boundaries. Like, you can’t run just ANY ad on ABC. There are some ads you can’t run. But these advertisers are paying to run ads… I’m hoping there won’t be anything other than a light touch.

11:13AM – Q: Any change in Apple position on Flash and Java?

Steve: No.

11:15AM – Talking about ad agencies. Steve: the ad agencies we’ve talked to, like our own, have been super excited about this. For the first time, they’re seeing how to bring their storytelling skills to digital ads. They’re really excited about hiring technical people to create these kinds of ads to combine them with their storytelling.

11:17AM – Q: Is there a reason why you can’t keep track of a timeline in the API?

Scott: We believe a lot of things like Twitter work better with push notifications where you get what’s relevant for you. In terms of saving your state, the technology is deep… you’re told where you’re being pulled back in. It’ll be far better than what it is today, because today the app quits.

11:19AM – Q: Apple has pioneered glanceable info like widgets. Why have you veered away from widgets or glanceable information? Isn’t that possible?

Steve: We shipped on Saturday, and rested on Sunday. [laughter] Anything possible… [very non-committal!]

11:22AM – They’re talking a lot more about iAd right now. Steve: “Why is this so different? These 185k apps don’t exist on computers. This is a new phenomenon, this is the first time this kind of thing has ever existed. We never had that on the desktop, so search was the only way to find a lot of things.” The man has a point, the web (and web ads) are the mechanism of choice on PCs.

11:23AM – Steve: We do not have plans to be a worldwide ad agency. We don’t know a lot about advertising, but we’re learning. We tried to buy AdMob, but Google snatched them up because they didn’t want us to have them, so we bought another smaller company, Quattro. But we’re babes in the woods.

11:26AM – Q: Can you talk about compatibility with earlier devices? Will apps degrade gracefully?

Steve: We didn’t make decisions, there were none to make — earlier hardware just couldn’t support it.

Scott: We allow developers to see what the hardware can support and enable features based on that. It’s really up to the developer.

Steve: This isn’t a problem, just that some of the older products won’t be able to support multitasking.

Phil: We’re sensitive to this, we want to make everything simple and able to run on the widest number of devices possible.

11:27AM – Q: What are you guys doing to make these phones more safe so people won’t use them [while driving]?

Steve: I think we do more than most to connect our phones into cars’ control systems. I think we’ve done a great job so users can have hands-free calling, they’ve got controls on the steering wheel. I think we’ve probably done a better job on that than anywhere else because of the momentum of the iPod.

11:29AM – I asked whether Apple will enable unsigned applications like Android and Palm OS.

Steve: There’s a porn store for Android… you can download it, your kids can download it. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to.

11:31AM – Steve on the iPad: You still have butterflies in your stomach, you’re nervous because you never know what people are going to think. People seem to think this is a profound game changer. We think when people look back on this years from now, they will think of this as a major event in the history of personal computing devices.

11:32AM – Phil: What’s surprised me the most is not that they get [the iPad] — we hoped they would — it’s the speed that people are getting it. It’s happened at a remarkable rate.

Steve: If our competitors ever introduce a competitive product to the iPad, they’ll be HOPING they’ll get 3.5k apps in the first year. And we’ve seen that in the first week — it’s happening fast, and because it’s standing on the shoulders of 85 million people who already know how to use it, and they’re just taking to it like a fish in water.

11:39AM – Steve continues: Remember, the relatively small window to the store can only do so much, so we’re seeing web sites that feature iPhone apps outside and around the iPhone in other mediums that provide some of that recommendation.

Phil: I think it’s important to mention that we do more to promote applications than any other company in history has. We do TV ads, print ads, direct emails… [You know, Phil is right, Apple does do a pretty good job of promoting (a small number of) 3rd party apps.]

Q: Discoverability and organization are becoming an issue in the App Store. Is that something that will be improved in OS 4?

Steve: A few things: number one, the App Store is not part of OS 4 or any release, it’s a service and it’s programmed on the server side, and we can enhance it without waiting for a major release. … We’re constantly interested in improving that, and do so fairly frequently. In terms of discoverability, we’ve added things like Genius recommendations, but I also see an infrastructure evolve to help users find apps.

Q: How do you close apps?

Scott: You don’t even have to worry about closing apps.

11:40AM – Steve: “It’s like we said on the iPad: if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager, they blew it. Users shouldn’t have to ever, ever, EVER think about that stuff. Well, thank you very much, we appreciate your coming this morning and hope we’ve answered most of your questions!”

So there we have it, hope you like the new features soon to hit our iPhones

And one again thanks to gdgt.com (I know I keep mentioning it but without them, this wouldn’t be here with the nice pics )

Hi All,

Now here is what I’ve been waiting for, Apple are having another talk on April the 8th, this time about OS 4.0. I will be trying to watch the talk via a live feed, if that isn’t possible I will post the conversation about 10-15 after it finished (or in sections during the talk) based on the live comentary from live.gdgt.com.

So what has currently been confirmed so far about OS 4.0, well, rumours about the Multitasking support seems to becoming more of a reality now which is great news. The thing that makes me wonder is how exactly will they enforce the quality of applications with multitasking. At present some apps take up a lot of memory and some even have pretty bad memory leaks. If these apps were allowed to run in the background, think of the effect on the iPhones performance in all the other areas. I personally think they are going to run more stringent tests with the App submissions if the app is going to support multitasking to ensure stability and performance.

My guess is that the multitasking support won’t be available to all apps unless approved by Apple (therefore all existing apps won’t be multitasking compatible). Along with the performance factors there is also the security issues of allowing apps to run in the background. One of the reasons why Apple didn’t include multitasking supports is due to the effect of malware and virus, such as bluetooth sniffers etc. This is why I think there will be more enforcement on application approvals (so possibly expect longer times getting apps approved).

I have also heard word of higher screen resolutions in the pipeline, not sure if this will be possible with the current iPhones on the market but definately for the next model (the 4g).

Hopefully OS 4.0 will see some improvements to the way Push notifications are handled to make them more user friendly. At the moment you have the issue of not being able to end calls if a notification is on screen and if you don’t respond to the notification with a set time (when your phone is locked) it doesn’t always seem open the application it is related to. Plus if you miss what a notification said, tuff, there isn’t anyway of viewing it again.

People are still hoping on a revamped interface (nice homescreen etc) and the one thing that I have seen mentioned around the place is the support for folders and grouping icons. This will make things much easier to manage and find (even if it does take a few extra second to navigation in a few folders, better than scrolling 8 screens )

Leave a comment if you’ve heard anything I’ve not mentioned or just say what you are hoping makes it in.

Anyway, let’s all get ready for the big chat on Thursday when all will be revealed

Hi All,

Apple have officially invited developers to start submitting their apps to the AppStore to have the reviewed in time grand opening of the iPad App Store  on the 3rd April.

If you want to get your app ready for the launch make sure you submit your app to Apple by the 5pm (PDT) on the 27th March or you will miss the launch date.

Here are the basic rules to ensure your app is ready for launch day.

• Build and test your app using the iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 5. You will not be able to submit your app if you use an earlier version of the Beta.
• Submit your app by 5pm (PDT) Saturday 27th March.
• If your app is selected for inital review you will recieve an email with more information about the final review.

So get testing if you want to hit the launch day, only 5 days to go.

*NOTE*    Make sure you submit your app early as you will probably only have access to the simulator, which will mean you won’t be able to hardware test, so prepare to fix bugs that may appear on the iPad version.

Hi All,

The latest iPhone/iPad SDK (version 3.2 beta 4) has added some nice new features to the XCode system. The latest feature sees the implementation of the ‘Validation Application’ function within the XCode Organiser that will run all the tests that Apple run when reviewing your application. This will allow you to run any tests for bug fixes before you submit your application.

Along with this comes the ability to share applications by converting the project into a .ipa file. This will allow you send a version to another user and all they have to do is double click the .ipa file to install the app using iTunes. The other user does need to have their device ID added to your development profile that signs the app or it won’t install.

3.2 will also see the implementation of the Submit Application feature that will allow you to submit your app to the App store from inside XCode. Now doesn’t this makes things a whole lot easier, no longer will you need to package your binary files. All you need to do, is select ‘Build and Archive’ from the XCode menu and the apple will be bundled into the Organiser for you, from here you can even chose to resign the app with your deployment profile if you built it using your development one.

Some nice features added there, definately makes life easier for me.
What do you think XCode is currently missing or would make your life easier?

Feel free to leave a comment
Matt

Hi All,

New rumours have emerged stating that the iPhone OS 4.0 (due for iPhones this summer) is set to allow multitasking; according to AppleInsider

The iPhone hardware already supports the ability of multitaskings, such as sending e-mails and SMS in the background and handling the phone system. The nike application also supports use in the background along with the obvious iPod functionality.

The reason why it has never been implemented so far is due to the security protocols set in place in the current OS. Background application support was never enabled to protect users for installing apps the could potentially install Malware and viruses onto the device (makes sense really).
Gizmodo states that the iPhone multitasking system may look similar to the expose system on Mac OSX. Personally I can’t quite see that happening due to the size of the screen on the iPhone, could work on the iPad mind (which is due for release on the 3rd April for you Apple users over the seas in the USA, over here in the UK we are set for a late April release). I reckon the iPhone version will look more similar to the simple ALT + Tab version or if they do go for the expose style, it will probably just display icons of the apps.

There is also talk of an improved gesture system (according to the SDK diggers out there) that will support long taps and 3 finger taps, however there is not word on the uses for these features. Not like the 3 finger tap is something new, it is already in place on the iPhone at the moment, just enable the zoom feature from the accessibility menu in settings.

What features are you hoping for in the new OS 4.0?

Leave a comment so we can get a little discussion going on

Matthew

Swapping between landscape and portrait views

In this tutorial we will be covering:

Creating an app that allows for iPhone rotation from side to side, as well as creating functions that take multiple arguments and writing a custom class, additionally we will be adding segments to our segmented control and making the various segments act differently based on which one is clicked.

Setting up for the rotation:

So, we have finished the first tutorial, but what now? Well, the one common thought would be to add landscape view mode into the application.

If you are wondering why someone would want to put their application into landscape view here are a few reasons:

• Wider screen
• Increased zoom without having to scroll horizontally
• Easier on the eyes (because most of the information on the screen will be larger than it was in portrait mode)

To start off working on this modification (yes, we are going to be modifying the previous program) we will need to butcher it a bit. This is because we did all the previous code within the AppDelegate class, which is really only meant to delegate the initial memory needed for the application then hand control over to another class. It also cleans up after the application has finished (by releasing the class that had control).

In the last tutorial we left off with this code:

 #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
        UILabel* myLabel;
        IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
   // Override point for customization after application launch
   [window makeKeyAndVisible];
   myLabel = [[UILabel alloc]
                initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 15, 310, 200)];
   myLabel.text = @"Hello World";
   [myLabel setAlpha:0.5];
   [window addSubview:myLabel];
   myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
     initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"Click to release myLabel"]];
   myButton.momentary = YES;
   myButton.center = CGPointMake(160,400);
   [myButton addTarget:self
             action:@selector(ButtonPress)
             forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];
   [window addSubview:myButton];
}

- (void)ButtonPress
{
        if (myLabel != nil) {
                 [myLabel release];
                myLabel = nil;
        }
        UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc]
                    initWithTitle:@"Event"
                    message:@"The button was pressed."
                    delegate:self
                    cancelButtonTitle:@"Okay"
                    otherButtonTitles:nil];
         [alert show];
         [alert release];
}

- (void)dealloc {
         [myButton release];
        if(myLabel != nil){
                 [myLabel release];
        }
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

Start off by implementing the new class (which will be holding all we are about to cut out of the old one). That can be accomplished by using some code like so:

@interface myAppView UIViewController{
        UILabel* myLabel;
        IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;
        IBOutlet UIScrollView* myView;
}
@end

That takes care of defining all the variables we will be using in this class.

NOTICE – One of the variables is a UIScrollView. This allows us to add subViews to it and it will scroll them when the output is outside the bounds of the view, we don’t have to worry about making the scrollbar work it just does.

Now let’s implement that class (myAppView):

@implementation myAppView

The next function is used to load the view of the UIViewController, which is a required function, and is also the standard one for outputting things to the ViewController. Given that we will be setting up all the variables in here:

- (void)loadView{
  myView = [[UIScrollView alloc]
             initWithFrame:CGMakeRect(0, 20, 320, 460)];
  [myView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(320, 480)];
  [myView setScrollEnabled:YES];
  [myView setClipsToBounds:YES];
  myLabel = [[UILabel alloc]
              initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 20, 310, 200)];
  myLabel.text = @”Hello World”;
  [myView addSubview:myLabel];

  myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
    initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@”Click the release myLabel”]];
  myButton.momentary = YES;
  myButton.segmentedControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyleBar;
  [myButton insertSegmentWithTitle:@”Or click me to alert”
            atIndex:1 animated:TRUE];
  [myButton setWidth:120 forSegmentAt:1];
  myButton.center = CGPointMake(160, 400);
  [myButton addTarget:self
            action:@selector(ButtonPress:)
            forControlEvents:UIControlEventChanged];
  [myView addSubview:myButton];
  [self setView:myView];
}

This goes through creates the scroll view, sets its size to 320 wide and 460 tall with a 20 pixel offset from the top (to not overlap the info bar). Then it sets its content size to 320 by 480 (the max screen size available), and tells it to allow scrolling while still clipping the view at its own bounds.

After that we initialize the label again with the exact same way we did before, but we add it to myView instead of window.

Once that is completed we set up the buttons. While it starts off the same we modify it to have a different style (UISegmentedControlStyleBar) which makes it smaller, and we add a second segment (which will make an alert fire when clicked). The animated:TRUE makes the bar of buttons appear in a wiping tween. This is followed by setting the size for the second segment and the rest is pretty much the same (with the exception of ButtonPress:, which has been changed (added the : ) to allow for send the segment ID to the function.

Now that we have completed this lets set up the button press function:

- (void)ButtonPress:(id)sender {
        if([sender selectedSegmentIndex] == 0){
                if(myLabel != nil){
                        [myLabel release];
                        myLabel = nil;
                }
        }
        else{
                [self makeAlert:@”Title” message:@”Message”];
        }
}

This checks the segment that was clicked, if it is the first it releases myLabel’s memory, if the second it calls makeAlert with 2 parameters.

At this point we should set up makeAlert:

- (void)makeAlert:(NSString*)title message:(NSString*)msg{
        UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc]
                 initWithTitle:title
                 message:msg
                 delegate:self
                 cancelButtonTitle:@”Okay”
                 otherButtonTitles:nil];
        [alert show];
        [alert release];
}

Now, that does exactly the same thing it did before, but it uses the parameters sent into the function instead of hard-coded variables.

The only thing left with this implementation is to finish implementing the required (standard) functions:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:
              (UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
        return YES;
}
- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning{
        [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
}
- (void)viewDidUnload{
}
- (void)dealloc{
        if(myLabel != nil){
                [myLabel release];
        }
        [myButton release];
        [myView release];
        [super dealloc];
}
@end

This tells the UIViewController to auto rotate to all available screen orientations (top, left, right and upside-down). If the class receives a memory warning it sends it up the chain. If it is the top of the chain it will just release all available (it pretty much calls the dealloc function).

The entire class looks like so:

 @interface myAppView: UIViewController{
        UILabel* myLabel;
        IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;
        IBOutlet UIScrollView* myView;
}
@end

@implementation myAppView
- (void)loadView{
    myView = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 20, 320, 460)];
    [myView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(320, 480)];
    [myView setScrollEnabled:YES];
    [myView setClipsToBounds:YES];

    myLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 20, 310, 200)];
    myLabel.text = @"Hello World";
    [myView addSubview:myLabel];

    myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
     initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"Click to release myLabel"]];
    myButton.momentary = YES;
    myButton.segmentedControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyleBar;
    [myButton insertSegmentWithTitle:@"Or click me to alert"
              atIndex:1 animated:TRUE];
    [myButton setWidth:120 forSegmentAtIndex:1];
    myButton.center = CGPointMake(160,400);
    [myButton addTarget:self
            action:@selector(ButtonPress:)
            forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];
    [myView addSubview:myButton];
    [self setView:myView];
}

- (void)makeAlert:(NSString*)title message:(NSString*)msg{
        UIAlertView* alert = [
         [UIAlertView alloc]
         initWithTitle:title
         message:msg
         delegate:self
         cancelButtonTitle:@"Okay"
         otherButtonTitles:nil
         ];
         [alert show];
         [alert release];
}

- (void)ButtonPress:(id)sender {
        if([sender selectedSegmentIndex] == 0){
                if (myLabel != nil) {
                         [myLabel release];
                        myLabel = nil;
                }
        }
        else{
                 [self makeAlert:@"Title" message:@"Message"];
        }
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:
            (UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
        return YES;
}

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning{
        [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
}

- (void)viewDidUnload{
}

- (void)dealloc{
        if(myLabel != nil){
                 [myLabel release];
        }
        [myButton release];
        [myView release];
        [super dealloc];
}
@end

The only thing left to do is remove all the extra code from the previous program. Once you strip it clean it looks like so:

 #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
        // Override point for customization after application launch
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

- (void)dealloc {
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

So, now we have the shell of our old application. It is now time to insert all the updated code into it so we can see everything working out nicely as the application runs. To do that we actually have very little code to add, in fact all we really need to do is four lines of code to the shell, which changes this code:

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {
        // Override point for customization after application launch
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

- (void)dealloc {
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

To this:

 @interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
        IBOutlet myAppView* app;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
        // Override point for customization after application launch
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
        app = [[MyAppView alloc] init];
        [window addSubview:app.view];
}

- (void)dealloc {
        [app release];
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

That wasn’t too bad. Now it is time to combine it all and show the final code:

 #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface myAppView: UIViewController{
        UILabel* myLabel;
        IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;
        IBOutlet UIScrollView* myView;
}
@end

@implementation myAppView
- (void)loadView{
    myView = [[UIScrollView alloc]
           initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 20, 320, 460)];
    [myView setContentSize:CGSizeMake(320, 480)];
    [myView setScrollEnabled:YES];
    [myView setClipsToBounds:YES];

    myLabel = [[UILabel alloc]
               initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 20, 310, 200)];
    myLabel.text = @"Hello World";
    [myView addSubview:myLabel];

    myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
      initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"Click to release myLabel"]];
    myButton.momentary = YES;
    myButton.segmentedControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyleBar;
    [myButton insertSegmentWithTitle:@"Or click me to alert"
                atIndex:1 animated:TRUE];
    [myButton setWidth:120 forSegmentAtIndex:1];
    myButton.center = CGPointMake(160,400);
    [myButton addTarget:self
            action:@selector(ButtonPress:)
            forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];
    [myView addSubview:myButton];
    [self setView:myView];
}

- (void)makeAlert:(NSString*)title message:(NSString*)msg{
        UIAlertView* alert = [
                  [UIAlertView alloc]
                 initWithTitle:title
                 message:msg
                 delegate:self
                 cancelButtonTitle:@"Okay"
                 otherButtonTitles:nil
         ];
         [alert show];
         [alert release];
}

- (void)ButtonPress:(id)sender {
        if([sender selectedSegmentIndex] == 0){
                if (myLabel != nil) {
                        [myLabel release];
                        myLabel = nil;
                }
        }
        else{
                 [self makeAlert:@"Title" message:@"Message"];
        }
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:
          (UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
        return YES;
}

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning{
        [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
}

- (void)viewDidUnload{
}

- (void)dealloc{
        if(myLabel != nil){
                 [myLabel release];
        }
        [myButton release];
        [myView release];
        [super dealloc];
}
@end

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow* window;
        IBOutlet myAppView* app;
}
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow* window;
@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate
@synthesize window;
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
        app = [[myAppView alloc] init];
         [window addSubview:app.view];
}

- (void)dealloc{
         [app release];
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}
@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

Congratulations, you have officially created an application that works with multiple orientations and allows for content that doesn’t fit on a single screen!

About this post

This tutorial is a repost of the original located on dream.in.code written by fellow developer BetaWar.

BetaWar (AKA James) is currently a student at CU interested in learning programming and working with computers. James started off with simple HTML and web based languages (Javascript, PHP, etc.) then quickly moved on to desktop languages (C, C++, Jython, and Java). Now he is pursuing a major in Computer Science, specializing in Software Engineering.

Introduction to xCode and Objective-C

Requirements before starting this tutorial:

You need an Intel based Mac (most of the new ones are Intel based, so if you got it with say OS X you should probably be fine here)
Internet connection

Downloading xCode:

First off, go to http://www.developer…ne/index.action and log into your Apple ID. This will allow you to see the more link required to download the iPhone SDK and xCode bundle.
Once you have logged in scroll to the bottom of the page (you should once again be at the index.action page). Select the appropriate download for your Mac and wait for it to finish (this can take a little while, it is about 2.3 GB file for the Snow Leopard download.

Installing xCode:

This is a very simple step. Click on the iPhone SDK desktop icon, then the iPhone SDK and Tools for <Snow Leopard/ Leopard> and follow the onscreen instructions.

Finding xCode, and the other Development tools on your Mac:

This step seems like it would be very simple, but it took me a little while to figure it out (never mind that I had only owned a Mac for about an hour at this point in the process…). Click on the documents icon in the system tray, then say “Open in Finder”, once the window opens click on “Macintosh HD” under “Devices”, if you followed the standard install paths and options there should be a folder here labeled “Developer”, click on that to open and then open the “Applications” folder under that to find the tools we will be using to develop iPhone applications.

For the basis of this tutorial we will be using xCode only and programmatically creating our user interface (UI), this is not to say it is the most correct way of doing things, but I just prefer having all my control objects stored in the same place instead of having everything scattered across multiple files and having to get them working together. The other option is to build your UI in Interface Builder and then only place the code for functionality needed in your Objective-C files.

For the moment just fire up xCode.

Creating a new project:

Now that you have xCode fired up on your machine select the “Create a new Xcode project” option from the welcome screen. This should pop up a list of premade templates. While it is fun to look through some of the more interesting ones just select iPhone OS -> Application -> Window-based Application. This will go through the required steps of creating the initial code for you.

If you want to see what the template has done for you click the “Build and Run” button at the top of the window, if it is not available you can also access it through Build -> Build and Run, or through Option + Enter.

As you can tell, this is a bare-bones project; but it won’t stay that way for long. We will now start the fun part – coding.

Merging files [optional]:

I find it best to merge all the working files into a single source file when learning a new language so I can mess with everything in one nice and simple place without having to know what part of a file goes where, or messing around with the requirements, so the first thing to do is get rid of “<project name>AppDelegate.h” and “<project name>AppDelegate.m”.

NOTE – Don’t just delete the files, they are still in the project, and are also responsible for doing everything that it currently does (showing the white window)!

Instead of deleting them, open each (starting with .h, then the .m) and copy its contents into “main.m”. Once you have copied the source code over select each of the two files and hit Delete (on the keyboard) then select “Delete References” and “Don’t Save”. The final “main.m” file should look like so:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
        // Override point for customization after application launch
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
}

- (void)dealloc
{
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

To make sure you copied it over correctly build and run the program again.

NOTE – If you haven’t closed the previous version running on the iPhone Simulator the compiler will give you some problems. To close it just press the home button at the bottom of the iPhone (it is not labeled, but is the button with the white square in it outside of the window we made).

Writing our own code [Adding a label]:

For the first part of this we will be adding a new variable to the <project name>AppDelegate interface. Now, for those of you C++ programmers it will be a pointer, but act as if it was a reference (dot notation instead of the arrow).

Add the following code to @interface <project name>AppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>:

UILabel* myLabel;

Now, go to the function lower down called – (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application and add (to the end) this line of code:

myLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 15, 310, 200)];

That is just saying “make myLabel a new UILabel, and bind it to a rectangle starting at x = 5, y = 15, and give it the width of 310 and height of 200”.

Now, you will of course want to put some text in it, so the easiest way to do so is with the following code:

myLabel.text = @“Hello World”;

And, to make it visible:

[window addSubview:myLabel];

So, the final code looks like so:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
        UILabel* myLabel;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
        // Override point for customization after application launch
        [window makeKeyAndVisible];
        myLabel = [[UILabel alloc]
                          initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 15, 310, 200)];
        myLabel.text = @”Hello World”;
        [window addSubview:myLabel];
}

- (void)dealloc
{
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

Now, it is also important to make sure that you deallocate the memory used by each object upon ending the application. This is done with the release function, which you can call like so:

[myLabel release];

WARNING – Only use release when you are done with a variable. After you release a variable you will not be able to access it anymore and its memory will be returned to the system. However, the object will remain visible until you draw over it.

Adding some interactivity:

Now, it is time to add some interactivity. We have a nice little text box on our screen, so let’s add a button to change something about myLabel.

The first thing to do here is add the actual button. The easiest way to accomplish this is like so:

IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;

Now, remember to add that to your AppDelegate function so the whole class has access to it.

NOTICE – The button is using another identifier, IBOutlet, which is used (as far as my understanding goes – please inform me if I am wrong) for telling the application that this variable takes and dispatches events.

NOTE – UISegmentedControls can have multiple buttons attached to each other even though we aren’t doing that for this tutorial. If you wish you should be able to use UIButton with all the same properties.

Next, we need to initialize it, so place this code in your applicationDidFinishLaunching function:

myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
                  initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@”Button”]];
myButton.momentary = YES;
myButton.center = CGPointMake(160, 400);

This makes the button with the label “Button” on it, then tells it that it should return to its normal state after being clicked (myButton.momentary = YES;), and then tells it to center itself at point (160, 400).

To make the button listen for an action add this function call:

[myButton addTarget:self action:@selector(ButtonPress)
              forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];

Which tells the button to pay attention to itself, when it is pressed call the ButtonPress function and also say that its value changed.

Writing ButtonPress:

If this is your first time looking at Objective-C functions will be very alien to you. That is okay, they are fairly simple to understand once you get the hang of them.

Starting off we will need to declare the function ButtonPress, which will return no value. In addition to not returning a value we want the function to be an instance function, and not a class function (I am still looking into the differences between the two…), this is accomplished by placing a “-“ in front of the function declaration.
- (void)ButtonPress is the first line of this function, but since we are going to be writing it inline just add to the end with a curly bracket and we will continue writing the function.

This function will be responsible for releasing the memory used by myLabel (to demonstrate the point I made earlier about how the object will remain drawn on the screen even after deletion). To accomplish this we will need to take a look at an if statement for comparison and then act based on the value the statement sees.

- (void)ButtonPress
{
        If (myLabel != nil)
        {
                [myLabel release];
                myLabel = nil;
        }
}

That tells the program to look at myLabel and see if its value is nil, if not it will release the memory and set myLabel = nil (so that it doesn’t try to release non-existent memory in the future).

Now, how do we know if the button is even calling ButtonPress upon multiple clicks? Well, luckily there is an easy (though a little annoying) way of checking.

Creating an Alert:

We will accomplish this little button click trial by alerting each and every time the button is clicked to make sure that the event is being heard. To do so you simply need to create an alert, show it, and release it, which is accomplished like so:

UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc]
                        initWithTitle:@”Event”
                        message:@”The button was pressed”
                        delegate:self
                        cancelButtonTitle:@”Okay”
                        otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alert show];
[alert release];

Now, add that into your ButtonPress function (at the bottom) to see it in action. The final ButtonPress function is as so:

- (void)ButtonPress {
        If (myLabel != nil)
        {
                [myLabel release];
                myLabel = nil;
        }
        UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@”Event”
                              message:@”The button was pressed”
                              delegate:self
                              cancelButtonTitle:@”Okay”
                              otherButtonTitles:nil];
        [alert show];
        [alert release];
}

Final Code:

The final code for this tutorial should look similar to this:

 #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface Hello_world_tutAppDelegate : NSObject <UIApplicationDelegate>
{
        UIWindow *window;
        UILabel* myLabel;
        IBOutlet UISegmentedControl* myButton;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIWindow *window;

@end

@implementation Hello_world_tutAppDelegate

@synthesize window;

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application
{
    // Override point for customization after application launch
    [window makeKeyAndVisible];
    myLabel = [[UILabel alloc]
              initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 15, 310, 200)];
    myLabel.text = @"Hello World";
    [myLabel setAlpha:0.5];
    [window addSubview:myLabel];
    myButton = [[UISegmentedControl alloc]
        initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"Click to release myLabel"]];
    myButton.momentary = YES;
    myButton.center = CGPointMake(160,400);
    [myButton addTarget:self action:@selector(ButtonPress)
             forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];
    [window addSubview:myButton];
}

- (void)ButtonPress
{
        if (myLabel != nil) {
                 [myLabel release];
                myLabel = nil;
        }
        UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc]
                initWithTitle:@"Event"
                message:@"The button was pressed."
                delegate:self
                cancelButtonTitle:@"Okay"
                otherButtonTitles:nil];
         [alert show];
         [alert release];
}

- (void)dealloc
{
         [myButton release];
        if(myLabel != nil){
                 [myLabel release];
        }
        [window release];
        [super dealloc];
}

@end

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{

        NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
        int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, nil);
        [pool release];
        return retVal;
}

Well, hopefully you learned something from this tutorial, check back soon for the next installment.

About this post

This tutorial is a repost of the original located on dream.in.code written by fellow developer BetaWar.

BetaWar (AKA James) is currently a student at CU interested in learning programming and working with computers. James started off with simple HTML and web based languages (Javascript, PHP, etc.) then quickly moved on to desktop languages (C, C++, Jython, and Java). Now he is pursuing a major in Computer Science, specializing in Software Engineering.

Hi All,

Time for another tutorial to show you how you can use an instance of a class to share data across multiple class files and instances. Think of it as a similar effect to using sessions in languages such as PHP or ASP.

The following system works by creating an instance of a class and passing the same instance to any class that requires use of the classes features. You can/probably will use this style for more advanced systems when you want only one instance. Good examples of this used on a larger scale is the Cocos2d system which uses a shared instance for handling the whole game framework.

So here goes:

The header file

The first file you will create will be the header file, for this example we are going to create temporary settings file for remembering details such as form variables (such as login names) or in game volume levels etc. (note this example is hypothetical and there are much better ways of saving settings information such as NSUserDefaults, this just makes for an easy to understand example)

Settings.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface Settings  :  NSObject

{

//Declare some public variables that you may want to save

NSString* username;

NSString* email;

float gameVolume;

}

//setup the properties for the variables above

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString* username;

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString* email;

@property (nonatomic, retain) float gameVolume;

// declare a couple of methods such as resetting the settings or saving the settings to a file

-(void)  resetSettings;

-(void) saveSettings:(NSString *)fileName;

// declare the important method that will returned the shared instance

// the + means that the method is a class method and is called when the class is called

+(Settings *)sharedSettings;

@end

The header file can contain as many variables or methods that you require, just remember that everything declared will be retained unless you manually remove it

Now on to the implementation file

The implementation file

Settings.m

#import “Settings.h”      //include the header file

// create the getters and setters for your public variables

@synthesize username;

@synthesize email;

@synthesize gameVolume;

static Setting*  _sharedSettings = nil; //declare a private variable to assign the instance to

// Setup your class method to return the shared instance

+(Settings *) sharedSettings

{

// create the instance using synchronized to lock the instance from being modified by anything other than where you are calling it from

@synchronized([Settings class])

{

// if the instance does no exist yet, create it

if(!_sharedSettings)

[[self alloc] init];

// return the instance;

return _sharedSettings;

}

// do a return here so you do not get any compiler errors

return nil;

}

// overide the default alloc method

+(id) alloc

{

@synchronized([Settings class])

{

// if _sharedSettings isn’t = nil then for some reason the instance has tried to be created again

// so throw an NSAssert error to let you know a serious issue has happened

// A NSAssert  error is thrown if the check (_sharedSettings == nil) returns false

NSAssert(_sharedSettings == nil, @”Attempted to allocate a second instance of the settings.”);

_sharedSettings = [super alloc];

return _sharedSettings;

}

// do a return here so you do not get any compiler errors

return nil;

}

// now all the important stuff is done, just implement your public methods we declared in the header file

-(void) resetSettings

{

username = @”";

email = @”";

gameVolume = 1.0f;

}

-(void) saveSettings:(NSString *)fileName

{

// write your code to save you settings to a file, plist or database etc.

}

@end

And that is it. Your shared instance is now setup and ready to be used.

Examples of how to use

When ever you want to use your shared instance, just include the header file in your code and called the method of variable directly by referencing the shared instance, nice and simple

//example of use

#include “Settings.h”

//… other includes and the rest of your code

// later in some method where you want to access your settings

{

//Retrieve the username by calling the username variable from the shared instance

NSString* localUsername = [[Settings sharedSettings] username];

//or maybe reassign the username

[[Settings sharedSettings] setUsername:@”A User”];     //the setUsername method is created by the synthesize function

//and then you might even save the settings

[[Settings sharedSetting]  saveSettings:@”mySaveFile.plist”];

}

So now you can see just how easy it is to access shared variables and methods, you do not even have to manually create an instance of the class or allocate it, it is done as soon as you access [[Settings sharedSettings] …. ]

Hope this little tutorial help.

Leave a comment if this helps you or if I have made a mistake (wordpress blogs don’t check Objective-C code for errors very well )

Matt