Alexandru Brie

Three Kinds of Photos

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:00:00 PDT

In his youth, my father supported himself during high-school by taking wedding and events photographs. He kept doing this until the fall of communism, since it was one of the few ways he could bring some extra cash to our family(people weren't allowed to open businesses or have second jobs). He had turned our closet-sized second bathroom into a photo studio, where he'd rush on Sunday afternoons to print photos of the local weddings, so that he could sell them at the wedding party in the evening. With a photograph in the family, all our anniversaries, picnics or holidays were heavily documented - as our overflowing family photo drawer is proof.

My Pictures folder is the equivalent of that family photo drawer: since I got my first digital camera, the number of photos in it has grown exponentially - tens at first, then hundreds and eventually thousands. Since my DSLR camera and iPhones, the folder size grew a lot as well. With over 19300 photos and an estimate of 55GB in photos, this situation had to be handled somehow.

One can group the reasons why people take and share photos in 3 major categories covering over 99% of the cases:

Short term Memories

Social gatherings, parties, get togethers, walks in the park, food plates at new restaurants or the occasional dish you've cooked. These photos are really fun to take and to look at in the day after; they are great for chatting with friends about ("man, that cocktail was really good - and did you see the look on that waiter?"). But you wouldn't want them to hang on your wall, and after a month or more they stop meaning anything to you.

Long-term Memories

You don't go on a holiday without your camera. You don't throw your son a birthday without it. You wouldn't dream of having your wedding without at least one photographer. These photos are the ones you come back to after a month, year or decade - in order to remember how you felt in the past, to refresh those memories and better connect with your old self.

These photos usually come in batches, many at once, depending on the events. I have almost 2000 photos from my wedding; over 1200 from the honeymoon; other thousands taken for each of my longer backpacking trips. I don't look at them often, but when I do I like to browse across the bunch and stop on one or two. There's no need for individual descriptions, titles or comments, and I usually know what they are and where they were taken. If I want to share them with others, I won't do it completely and fully but, instead, will select a couple of relevant tens.

Photography as art

When you buy your first DSLR, or visit a gallery, or browse an illustrated magazine or simply start reading more about photography, you inevitably start dreaming of taking similar quality photos. And, if you work towards it, slowly you start to do it. You have to look for the opportunities, find the best composition, make sure the light is adequate and capture the right moment, but, in time, once every hundreds photos at first - more frequently afterwards - some of your photos get pretty good - and you'd like to show them for others to appreciate and comment, or print them and hang them out.

Where?

99% of my photos belong to the above 3 categories. Usually, they are intermixed: when during my holiday I take photos of my food, I'd like to share them with friends, and comment upon, but wouldn't care to look at them again. In 20 years, I'll want to check out the photos I took of myself and my wife smiling to the camera with a nice mountain in the background. But, again, that's not what I'd like to print and hang on my wall; that will be the photo of a misty lake temple in the mountains of Bali, or of the crab fisherman in the sunset of the Pacific. Casual friends wouldn't care much about these photos, just like my photography-interested ones wouldn't care about the food pics.

To sum it all up: different pics, different purposes, different audiences.

I perceive Facebook and Instagram to be best suited for those short term memories pics. Easy comment system, easy to show your like, easier to ignore. Ideal for parties, and food pics, and maybe some candid shots. Not great for storing private memories or for deeper, more meaningful shots. Their issues regarding privacy and copyright are scary, but acceptable if you only chose to post meaningless food pics.

I have over 2000 of these photos stored on Flickr and, after renewing my Flickr Pro subscription, even considered uploading the rest of my 19000+ pics over there, for backup. With a bunch of pro-user features such as tags, grouping, descriptions, sets, collections, comments, sharing and even online photo editing, Flickr remains, 9 years since its inception, a very cool site. But it was obviously designed for the "photography as art" audience - those who want titles and descriptions and exif info about the pics, and like to comment and recommend photos and share them for the entire world to see. So, instead of uploading all my photo archive to Flickr, I started instead to delete all of them; and once I clear them up, I will start rebuilding that Flickr archive to only contain those pics I truly believe to be worth sharing with the world. I don't have a 500px.com account, but if I hadn't just purchased a new Flickr Pro subscription, I would have probably used them instead. They are the new Flickr, but focused on their core audience and not trying to be everything for everyone.

So what about my photo archive? Tens of thousands of memories that I should backup, group and archive?

I've discovered everpix.com - a great looking web app that convinced me to not only buy a $50 yearly subscription but, after a few days of uploading, to also put my entire photo collection in their hands. As a cloud photo drawer they are pretty close to my dream setup - they automatically grouped my photos by date of capture; they allow easy exploration of past moments and easy rediscovery of long-forgotten ones. Cool iOS apps for auto syncing(upload) and browsing from the iPhone and iPad; nice unobtrusive app for auto uploading from the Mac. Just start it and, a few days later, the entire photo collection is waiting for me in the cloud.

But there are also some big things missing - you can only select and share photos from the same moment. There is no way to select some photos from different moments, or to do anything as a batch. Because that's what's really missing - a way to temporarily or persistently group different photos together and do something with them - such as editing(the "only delete, hide or edit one photo at a time" part is really annoying) or sharing.

I paid for the service(since I really want them to succeed and survive and last forever), but I can't help but wonder what wold happen if ever they got purchased by Google/Yahoo/Facebook, or went bankrupt and closed the service? Their lack of batch processing (as it is now, I can only re-download my pictures one by one - something I obviously won't be able to do for 20k pics), together with the uncertainty of the future, is scary.

But maybe I'll be lucky and they will listen and grow and improve - I really like their app and would love to keep my pics with them forever.

It's all about tradition

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:00:00 PDT

I was skimming through this editorial discussing how the family of a dead priest didn't agree to have his organs donated to others in need. The author accused the priest's family of not following the church doctrine of praising life and trying to save others.

It dawned on me that this dissonance between the stated doctrine and the actual deeds is not a new thing, and has a very simple explanation:

Most entities with a life span long enough to be deemed "old" and "with history" - be they "secular" churches, bureaucracies, political parties (republicans in the US or socialists in Romania) become entrapped by this exact history. Their reason to be proud is exactly the fact that they've survived for years. And with every year that passes, they become even more proud of their history.

Now, being proud of one's history is not a problem per se. However, this triggers a side effect - conservationism: If our church/pope/party has lasted for so many hundreds of years, then we must strive to keep it exactly as such and fight change as much as we can possibly can.

Anything with history becomes a conservationist - not being a conservationist means change, and change means disrupting the history, which means that you won't be able to be proud of your history anymore.

In the case of church and organ transplants: churches might have been ok with this practice, if only it had been in place for the past hundreds of years. Heck, they might have even been ok with abortion, gay marriage or human cloning - if only they had been old enough practices to actually be written on their "ancient accepted things" list. Not the ethics of those things matters to the church, and not even whether they are deemed ok in the eyes of God. What matters is if they have been practiced by the church in the past or not. After all, in the past churches have been ok with burning people alive, cutting off their hands, killing them with stones or even crucifying them alive, only because "that's how we always did it".

So, you see, it's never about the stated doctrine, nor about good or evil. In the case of old enough institutions, it's always about old versus new. In their eyes, old things and customs are almost always fine, even if more trouble and less effective, with no reason other than "that's how it's been done for the past 20 years".

This ill-understood sense of tradition is also why french workers work fewer hours than most other europeans, even if it costs them their jobs, why the most powerful economies are either those of new-born countries(Singapore) or those who, via major efforts, managed to erase their perceived history and create a new one(past be damned), while the countries with lots of tradition and ancient customs have now struggling economies and rigid bureaucracies. And also why countries such as Romania, unbound by a feeling of history but unwilling to embrace the new, have been struggling with reforming everything while not really changing anything for the past 150 years. And just one of the many reasons why in some parts of the public Romanian administration you are still required to deposit your data on a 3.5 inch floppy disk, and why most official online forms must be printed, signed and deposited in person to a dedicated office reserved for the "online" requests.

And what better time to think of tradition versus progress than around Easter, in spring?

Admob mediation, iAd and House Ads for iPad

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:00:00 PST

… is an impossible trio, as I found after a lot of trial and error:

Specifically:

I want to use AdMob mediation to manage House Ads, iAd and AdMob ads for the same app.

For the iPhone this works great.

For the iPad, we have the following problems:

House Ads only seem to work for iPhone-format banners. You can’t even upload iPad banners. I haven’t tried the new House Ads campaigns mode, but I doubt it will work.
I eventually used iPhone-format banner(320×50) for the iPad also. This has a different problem though: on the iPad, iAd only gets triggered for Leaderboard-format banners (768×90). But, according to my discoveries above, if I use leaderboard banner, then my House Ads won’t get displayed instead.

Conclusion: Apparently for the iPad I can only have 2 of the above: either I use small banners and don’t use iAd, or large ones and don’t get to use House Ads.

Darn it.

About my iPad Mini

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:00:00 PST

On November 2nd, when the iPad Mini was launched worldwide, I was, together with Robert, one of the first people in Romania to own one. The nice guys at the store hadn’t even unpacked them, so Robert kindly unboxed his in front of them. Me, I unboxed it at home together with my wife.

I’ve owned an iPad 1 since April 2010, which I later sold in february 2012 in order to get an iPad 2. One month later, the iPad 3 came along and I got it as well. I now have the last 3 generations of iPads: iPad 2, iPad 3(retina) and the iPad Mini. I also own a Blackberry Playbook which I gifted to my father and a Kindle 4th gen. All this bragging so you understand that I’m not a tablet noob :)

About my Mini

The iPad mini is the best looking of the bunch, the lightest and cutest. People tell you it’s light but you really can’t imagine just how light it is until you hold it: 308 grams, almost double the small Kindle or the iPhone 4S – but, because it’s so slim and has a larger surface, it feels considerably lighter. Mine is the white model, which makes it feel even more weightless.

The form factor is great. I loved the comfort of holding the Playbook in one hand, and the Mini takes this to the next level. First of all, because Mini feels, as I said, weightless. Then, because Mini feels like almost entirely screen – the slim slide bezels make it more immersive – it doesn’t feel like holding a Tablet, the way I did with the Playbook, but rather like a Kindle – you get immersed in the content, instead of feeling the object around it.

The screen is (according to what people write online) exactly the same as in the iPhone 3GS. It looks different than the one in the iPad 1 or iPad 2, it’s brighter, and compared to the retina screen it feels a bit blurry for a second when your eyes try to adapt to reading small text on a white background. Still, it’s just for a second and only for this use case. When moving around the homepage, going inside apps, playing games or watching movies, you get used to it quickly and no longer notice anything different – everything feels extremely natural.

Speed-wise I couldn’t tell any difference from iPad 2 or 3 – since they share similar specs.

Why I think you should buy the Mini

Just as with my first iPad, it was hard at first to justify it. After all, I did have a computer for serious stuff and an iPhone for games on the go. But, slowly, the iPad got its place in my life and family, and we ended up fighting over who has it when browsing, playing, reading recipes in the kitchen or looking something up online before going to sleep. Two iPads solved this conflict but introduced others: compared to the iPad 3, the iPad 2 had a longer-lasting battery, was thinner and lighter and more comfortable to hold, and charged faster. On the other hand, the iPad 3 was incredible for reading anything, but as downsides it was heavier, thicker and also got hot when playing resource-hungry games.

In my Singapore+Bali+Gili trip I had taken the iPad 2 with me – its being lighter and faster to charge made it better suited for traveling. It was a good decision, and after a bit I no longer missed my gorgeous retina iPad at home. Now, if I were to go on a similar adventure anytime soon, my choice would be iPad Mini all the way. Its smaller size and lightness make it the perfect traveling companion. It’s easier to pack and store safely (no need for big protection covers while in the backpack, just store it inside the travel guide book); it’s also faster to charge than the iPad retina, and the battery seems to last at least as long. It’s also easier to hold, while just walking around. Plus, it can be stored in the inner pocket of most jackets and even in the back pocket of some jeans (not the best idea when you’re traveling, but it helps when you need your hands free).

When at home, I find myself waiting for my wife to be busy so I can watch movies on the Mini (streamed from my laptop using AirVideo ). I carry it with me around the house, so I don’t need to pause my movie when going to the kitchen for coffee or drinking it on the balcony.

Like I wrote above, it’s kind of hard to explain why you should get one. The difference between the Mini and the regular size iPad is similar to the one between the iPad and the laptop – they do similar things, but because one of them is lighter and smaller, it’s just quicker to grab and carry it around, instead of the bigger/heavier alternative.

The Retina screen Mini

… will probably never come. Or it might come, but I don’t think it will be any time soon. Yes, there are rumors that a retina Mini is on the way, spread probably by Apple’s competitors, but I don’t believe them. Here is why:

The non-retina screen allows a lighter and thinner device. And this is what Mini is all about – lightness and thinness. Had it been heavier or thicker it would be less tempting to use – you’d just use a iPad 3 instead. But because it’s not, you can just grab it effortlessly. If Apple offered a heavier, thicker Mini for the same price, I sure wouldn’t be tempted to get one – it defeats the Mini’s purpose – to be even more comfortable than the big-sized iPad.
Screen Resolution.
The greatest thing about the Mini is how it has the same screen resolution as the original iPads – 1024×768 pixels, allowing full compatibility with all the iPad apps on the store. A retina-display version would have to: either double that resolution and bring it on par with the retina iPad, or break this compatibility.
Breaking the compatibility is impossible – the one thing Apple shouldn’t do – it pisses off developers, increases the sizes of the Apps in the AppStore (since developers would have to pack even more graphic assets inside the bundle) and removes the main competitive advantage over Android – lack of fragmentation (or at least a very minimal one).
Using the same retina display resolution as the full size retina iPad means having the exact same screen type as the retina iPhone(326 dpi) – but 5 times bigger, and consequently powered by a 5 times more powerful battery. Extrapolating, it would have to weight at least 4 or 5 times as much as the lightest iPhone. The math matches what we see for the retina iPad, which weights 650 g compared to the iPhone 4S’s 140 g or the iPhone 5′s 112 g.
A retina iPad Mini would therefore need to weight almost as much as the retina iPad if it were to pack the same screen resolution – at least 450 g, according to the latest weight achievements of the iPhone 5. The bad news is that it’s still just a bit out of reach to get that retina iPad Mini to a decent weight of at most 350g. The good news is that weight+battery aspect seems to improve yearly, but we are not just there yet.

Now, I think I might have babbled a bit too much. So the short version of it would be:

I don’t think there will be a retina iPad Mini for at least another year. Most probably it will appear in 2 years from now; next year’s model will probably just improve the processor.
I think that it’s totally worth to buy the iPad Mini right now – even if, by miracle, a retina one will appear by next Christmas, the current iPad Mini will have found lots of great uses in your home – and you might not want to part with it, just as I find mine. And its resale value will be still good.

The Samsung vs iPhone eternal debate

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:00:00 PDT

I admire Samsung for what they did with Galaxy S3: a great featured smartphone that is, for once, not a clone of Apple’s design. So many years of copying Apple have finally started to show results. They are also clever in marketing. The anti-iPhone ads from last year were irritating. Their latest one is cute and and makes a point: Galaxy S3 is a nice smartphone(although too big for a decent use, IMHO), and for the price it probably has the most loud-sounding features in the market.

Mac owners have known this game since forever: feature-by-feature comparison; giga-herts versus giga-herts, megabyte versus megabyte. iPhone owners have just started to notice the stupidity of this feature comparison game: it’s not about the impressive sounding features, silly! What any sane person(hipsters excluded) really care is just the overall user experience, the ease of use, the learning curve.

iPhone 5 is not the gadget-filled geek wet dream it could be. iOS 6 is still not as feature-rich as other mobile operating systems; it doesn’t have bumb-photo sharing(unless you

install that app), because it’s a stupid feature; it doesn’t have a huge screen, because it’s hard to use. What the iPhone and iOS are, however, is harder to put into ads but infinitely more important for anyone who is not a gadget freak nor a tech blogger: they are intuitive, easy to learn, consistent to use. They use fewer user-interface metaphors and are easier to grasp.

I gave my mother my iPhone 3GS when I upgraded to iPhone 4S. My mom is the opposite of tech-savy. On the computer she barely knows to use Word(without tables or bullet lists, as they are too complicated). But on her iPhone she taught herself to use most of the features: she plays games, Skypes, takes photos, shoots videos, emails frequently, uses the maps, connects to wifi networks on her travels, browses the web. She does more things on her iPhone than she does on the computer. Because on the iPhone she knows how to do them and she knows it’s safe and there are no confusing messages, features or popups. Everything is logical and consistent. The metaphors are easy to understand and remember.
I gave my father my Blackberry Playbook – a great gadget. He barely uses it – mostly for reading ebooks on the Kindle app, shooting videos, taking photos or playing Angry Birds. He doesn’t quite understand how to connect to Wifi networks and almost never used its email or web browser. He also almost never finds the apps installed on it – they are either scrolled down below the fold, or on a different page or maybe inside an apps folder. As feature rich as a Playbook may be, it’s inconsistent and more difficult to use.

One great thing about Apple is the ecosystem – lots of apps, most of them free. But the greatest thing about Apple is that it gets updated. Upgraded, slow step by slow step. They correct the bugs in their operating system or core apps and improve them every couple of months – that’s too slow for some geeks, but it’s considerably faster than what most others are doing.

A few months ago, before the iOS 6 was announced, I wrote a list of annoyances that I had with iOS 5 and its predecessors. After using iOS 6 beta for a while I realise that, while Apple didn’t bring out new impressive features to iOS (I’m still expecting better typing, autocorrection and text selection), it silently fixed most others – though not in the way I was expecting. You can now attach photos and videos into emails, you can enable/disable Bluetooth faster, the shared Photo Stream feature is the great private photo social network you’ve always needed it to be, and the iMessage bugs seem to have been cleaned away. The “Do not disturb” mode is a great unforeseen way to fix notification annoyances, and the Guided Access feature is amazing and unexpected and bringing some long-needed peace to many parents.

I don’t know much about the state of Galaxy S3, but I have friends with Galaxy S. They are still on Android 2.1 or 2.2. They are stuck in the past. In the meantime, my mother’s iPhone 3GS has been upgraded to all iOS versions since – currently running 5.1 and, as soon as I’ll get my hands on it, to 6.0 (if it hadn’t been jailbroken I would have asked her to upgrade it herself – on the iPhone, upgrading is only 2 taps away).

Well, this sums it up, in my opinion. If you are a geek and like to brag with features you might never use, go for Android and the Samsung. If you like your phone to be easy to use and do 95% of what you’d need from it, I still think that the iPhone is the best device in town. Sure, there are annoyances and limitations(jailbreaking being one of them), but it still beats what most others are doing. Improvements are incremental and never revolutionary, letting even non-techies use their devices to the max.

But, obviously, if I didn’t make my living coding iPhone apps, my opinion might have been different. Yours might as well.

About Self Help Classics with voice and how to cherish user feedback

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:00:00 PDT

When you have an app as long-lived as Self Help Classics, you end up following a lot of the users’ advice.

The most updated of my apps(over 32 updates so far), it currently implements tens of features that were suggested, in time, by its users. Bookmarking, night mode, marking up favorite quotes, browsing them and sharing them on Facebook or Email, page-by-page navigation – they were all implemented following users feedback from the past 3.5 years.

Version 5.1, the most recent update, fixes a few typos, adds a few improvements to the bookmarks screen, redesigns the [What's new]/[Help]/[Store] screens and, most importantly, adds a great new feature – voice option (more on it in an instant).

The bookmarks screen improvements came because of suggestions from one user named Stephen Beasley, who complained that, with many bookmarks, their sort-by chronological order didn’t make sense. He didn’t want to scroll to the bottom of the bookmarks list – instead, the latest bookmarks should come first. He was, obviously, right – and I was glad to implement his suggestion.

But the suggestion with the most impact on Self Help Classics came from Mariam, a lady who, back in April, wrote the following:

“On a different topic: do you have the text to speech option with this app? If so, how can I activate it? Text to speech option if available would be fantastic allowing to read the book while driving. If it doesn’t come with such option then is there an app for text to speech that is compatible with this app and can be used to read the books on this app?”

I kindly replied that, unfortunately, there is no such option in the app – and that there’s no external app that could bring such an option into mine. Things could have stopped there.
But Mariam’s suggestion made so much sense that, even if I knew it was impossible to add text-to-speech to my mobile library, I still started to dream : “what if…“.

After two and a half months of hard work(minus one month of vacation), I finally did it: starting with version 5.1, Self Help Classics has a great text-to-speech voice option, working multi-threaded for the best responsiveness possible.

Sure, the voice is not perfect – but it’s a reasonable compromise, since data of realistic voices occupies hundreds of megabytes (just look at the Alex voice on your Mac, inside Apple’s /System/Library/Speech/Voices/ folder to understand what I mean). Voice synthesis being very processor-intensive, it works nicely on iPhone 4S and iPad 3, but slightly worse on older devices.

For this reason, users of Self Help Classics can try it for free with no cost and see if they like it. The free version reads the first two paragraphs on the page and stops automatically after, while the full option will keep reading until the end of the chapter, and can be activated from the “Store” popup (the one inside the app, off course) for a very small price, in my opinion.

In the end, apart from bragging that Self Help Classics is the best iOS dedicated personal improvement and success ebook library app(and the only one with a voice), what I really want to do is thank all its users since January 2009 for their constant support and encouragement and for their precious feedback and suggestions.

Thank you, guys and gals!

Apple, please fix iOS

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:00:00 PDT

What I want most from Apple’s WWDC.. and what I might never get is not a new iPhone. It’s not a new iPad. No, it’s not Siri integration. Not even an Apple TV. Not even new iOS SDK features.

What I want is for Apple to stop messing around with low hanging fruit and start fixing their operating systems.

You see, iOS was revolutionary back in 2007. But, SDKs and AppStore aside, most of iOS has remained the same in the past 5 years. 5 years is A LOT. But those minor issues in 2007 have become big frustrations in 2012. Good enough is not cutting it anymore, and Apple’s lack of interest in improving their flagship OS is.. disturbing.

I updated the post with some new thoughts

First of all, typing

On the iPhone, the keys are small – and I could live with that. On the new iPad, however, there’s a noticeable lag when typing which causes plenty of typing errors. Intelligent autocorrect is the easy solution to typing, but on iOS the tech is already 5 years old. One particular issue is that, if you want to mix two languages(for instance, Romanian mixed with English), you’d need to manually switch the keyboard – or else the autocorrect goes nuts. This is the reason why I, and most other Romanian iPhone users I know, always keep autocorrection disabled.
There are many ways to improve iPhone typing, as proved by this old video of Blind Type (who got acquired by Google, which is using their technology in Android). A low hanging fruit would be to let users chose, in the Settings, multiple languages they might use simultaneously. Autocorrect would just need to work with the combined dictionaries instead of individual ones – same correction algorithm, a simple sql table join.
PS. Don’t tell me that Siri dictation will replace iOS typing – you probably haven’t seen tens of students typing text messages and Facebook comments during class or in the subway. They are the power users of mobile typing, and I don’t thing they’ll switch to Siri dictation any time soon.

Playbook OS has a great UI for autocorrection suggestions, displaying an entire list of suggested words right above the keyboard instead of somewhere else, at the typing insertion point.

By displaying the suggestions nearby the on-screen keyboard, the eyes actually see it and fingers can quickly jump around to pick the right suggestion.

Text selection

Once again, I prefer the one on Playbook OS 2.0. In addition to the iOS loupe that emphasizes the text around the insertion point, there are also easy-to-touch handlers for moving the cursor and the selection margins. On iOS moving your selection one character to the left or right is often a game of luck and patience, which I always suck at.

Enabling and disabling Bluetooth (and other similar features)

One Settings app to set everything up is great and easy to learn and less confusing and manageable. Having to tap through 4 different screens just to start up Bluetooth (for instance to connect with your car’s audio system) and then do it all over again to disable Bluetooth(when you get off) is a pain no one should have to go through. Yes, I know Android has widget shortcuts for this. On iOS, I’d like this kind of customizable shortcuts somewhere in the Notification bar or the bottom multitask bar, near the rotation lock, for instance.

Notifications

Like a friend told me a few days ago: iOS used to be intuitive and simple. Notifications, for instance, were a 1-switch thing – you either accept them or don’t. Now, there are banner notifications, lock screen notifications, alert ones, badges, sounds and messages. For every damn app. And even with sound notifications disabled, I still get noise alerts in Facebook. I develop iOS apps for a living but can’t figure it out properly – what about the hundreds of millions of average users?

Speaking about intuitiveness, what about sounds

Remember the story of the iPhone at the Philharmonic, that wouldn’t shut up although muted? Who knew that the mute button doesn’t actually mute the phone? There must be a way to actually mute your phone when you actually want to mute it – after all, it’s a damn phone and not a nuclear power plant controller. What about a global widget that asks “are you really sure you want to totally mute the phone for the next… 3 hours?” On a side note, I remember having muted my phone from the mute button as well as by turning the volume at the minimum; yet, the game I was playing was still lound and clear. That’s not normal, is it?

Email

Hard to believe that one of the core features of the iPhone and iPad is still buggy five years after it’s introduction. More than once I sent an incomplete email to an important client because I accidentally touched the “Send” button that was right above the keyboard. Without even asking “do you want to send this email” it did just that, ignoring my desperate screams. Also, what’s the deal with attachments? Why hasn’t Scott Forstall been able to add a “attachment” button to the email app in over 5 years? Think about it: you write a long email to a client and decide to attach a photo or more to it. Currently you need to select all the text you’ve written, copy it to the clipboard, then close Email.app and switch over to the Photos.app, tap the action button, select those photos, tap the share button, then the Email option, and finally paste your message inside the new email that pops up. Surely, 5 years after the launch of the original iPhone, things can be better

Update: yes, you can copy and paste photos in an email. I never mastered copy-pasting of non-text right and it’s still convoluted. Instead, the attach button is an universal metaphor everyone can understand.

Photo Stream

The epitome of a potential killer feature that is half baked and therefore near useless. Think about what it could have been – the photo social network to share photos across multiple iOS devices and with your family and friends. But in order to achieve this you should be able to chose multiple apple ids that you want to share photos with, and pick photos that you want to remain private. Also, why can’t you extend your PhotoStream storage, access and manage your photos online (and share links to them), or why is that PhotoStream photo that I’ve deleted on my iOS 5.1.1 still visible on my mother’s iOS 5.0 phone?

Update2: iMessage and FaceTime

When Apple launched iMessage and FaceTime I was pretty excited. But I never got to use FaceTime (I prefer the better performing and platform independent Skype) and only use iMessage because I have to.
It occurred more than once: when I texted my wife, she didn’t receive her iMessages. She cooked me lunch although I had already eaten, got angry with me when I got home late without giving her a sign or annoyed because I didn’t buy those groceries she’d texted me about. To cut it short, iMessages is way less reliable than the time-proven mobile text message protocol. As a mobile device user, I should be able to chose when to send texts as SMS and what to send them as an iMessage, without having to toggle a system-wide setting that charges my monthly bill. Because each time I enable iMessage or FaceTime, a secret text message gets sent to Apple’s servers somewhere abroad(I believe to the UK); and since international SMS are costly and not included in my monthly plan, there is no reasonable workaround to let me send SMS instead of iMessage… when I really want to.

I think iMessage is a huge deal, but it’s unreliability(you don’t know when and on what iDevice exactly the message will arrive) manages to mess it up. I want to use SMS for one message and iMessage for the next with a simple accessible setting that won’t charge me extra.

The end

This was just my short list – but I can find more annoyances and bugs to report, and I bet you do too. AppStore app discovery, music browsing, the clock, calendar and reminder apps – all of them could benefit from more attention and developer care. Sadly, it seems to me that Apple has stopped their efforts, focusing on expanding their business instead of perfecting their existing products. I get why, but it’s still sad. I used to like the old Apple.

How to handle internet trolls

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:00:00 PDT

This post is not about software or apps. It’s mostly about politics and comment trolls. But there are some generic thoughts which might be useful for others also – hopefully not by inspiring you to troll competing companies or apps.

If you’ve been on the internet for a few years, you must have ran into them. Trolls. Haters. Crazies. Leaving out poisonous comments or reviews, preposterous lies or hidden insults. In my golden years of blogging I sure had my share – fewer since I’ve retired from daily blogging. Some were obvious – people with rude language and opinions. Some were subtle – I don’t even know if they were very weird fans or very subtle haters. Not that it matters, anyway.

2012 is a political campaign year, at least here. And since TV channels and newspapers side with their owner’s political party, it’s inevitably up to the internet to be the democratic discussion field, the agora of fair exchanges of thoughts and opinions. Only it isn’t. Because, you know, people aren’t stupid – not even those in power. There is money at stake with official or unofficial PR teams working non-stop to leave comments, reviews or forum posts to influence and persuade others. Which only proves that the internet is a democracy – and everyone has the freedom to say things, even the ones that get paid to do it.

Now, back to trolls. Paid or unpaid, they have a common result: to divert the discussion, distract and change opinions. And, from what I notice, they are successful. In Romania we call them “postaci” (a pun crossing “posting” a comment with “stupid” as in prostanaci, meaning they tend to comment blindly, on command, disregarding the subject discussed), and they have been a common presence on the sites of major newspapers or news websites. During campaign years they are more active on blogs than ever.

Take the case of Cristi Manafu’s post about Bucharest mayorship candidate Nicusor Dan (sorry, romanian). Plenty of positive comments, and two trolls(one of them having also spammed this other important blog. With only two comments, they managed to divert an entire discussion thread from discussing the candidate to discussing them. There’s a saying that “a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch” and, in the case of paid or freelance comment trolls, it’s true.

Or the case of another troll commenting on all the blog posts about the same candidate from a given period (1, 2, 3 – just search for mastic).

The easiest thing for a troll is come up with crazy accusations. There is no such thing as “too crazy”. Why? Because this sparks two kinds of reactions:

The vast majority will comment back in reply, telling the troll how absurd he is. They shouldn’t bother. He knows that – he also knows that by diverting the comments from the subject in the article to the subject in his comment, his goal has been achieved – also because it drives even more people towards the second kind of reaction.
A smaller section of the readers will start to believe. Not in all the absurd claim, obviously. But, you know, maybe part of it is true. Sure, there are no such things as green alien zombies trying to take over the world using this guy as a mind-controlled puppet, but.. hey, maybe he isn’t as spotless as he might look, since there are people believing monstrous things about him. And the troll wins big.

The second easiest thing for a troll is to look normal. An ordinary guy, just doubting things, with some minor hard to verify disinformation; answering replies, bringing somewhat logical arguments. Nothing weird in this – just a normal guy of different opinions – and that’s why it’s so hard to identify him as a troll or postac. One would need to look him up online, see if he’s the occasional reader of different opinions, or a paid guy infiltrating multiple comment threads.

The big illusion we all, sooner or later, fall prey to is that we can use the internet to convince people. We can’t, not directly. You can persuade people, if you do it in a subtle way. Just by force of arguments you won’t really change one’s mind, regardless of how polished and logical your words are. But by being subtle, by saying things like “I don’t know, this still seems fishy to me“, you can spread doubt. Because doubt is easy to spread, while conviction is hard(there are infinite levels of doubt, but only one level of absolute conviction – the 100%).

My point being that blogs are personal spaces of opinion. If a commenter has a different opinion than mine, there’s no point in him trying to convince me of his, or in me trying to change it. All we can try to do is exchange information – and let that information be processed by others as they see fit.

And if you don’t like a troll comment turning the discussion towards other topics, you should probably just remove it. The troll will be angry because of it, but he was probably angry anyways. Tough luck – maybe he should start his own blog instead of spamming others.

Singapore - days 1-3

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:00:00 PDT

Oh, how tiring these last days have been.
The Lufthansa flight from Bucharest to Singapore via Frankfurt was, well.. the longest flight we’ve ever had so far. It started with a 45-50 minutes delay in Bucharest, a 2.5 hour flight, then with us running through Frankfurt airport to make sure we don’t miss our flight to Singapore. We had the middle and isle seats, with the passenger at the window being a somewhat overweight Singaporean, bare-footed, with a half-emptied whiskey bottle in his hands, which he managed to finish during the flight(when he wasn’t staggering on his way to the bathroom – at one moment he actually fell over our seats – but we were luckily standing in the isle, waiting for him to find his place). Oh, and he was snoring and talking/shouting in his sleep. But he was cute, in a clumsy bear kind of way. The tipping point of the trip was when I (irony, indeed) managed to spill half a glass of water on my pants, his pants and the small bag where I kept the passports, iPad, Kindle and iPhone. Phew! Luckily, one heart-attack later, I learned that they had survived the incident.

Now, Singapore. The most modern and civilized city I ever laid eyes on. With Changi being the best airport in the world (according to airports awards it has got). We were nervous at first about entering the country, having read all those warnings concerning fines, jail time and even death penalty for various crimes, minor or major – but apparently there was nothing to be afraid of. Everyone was great, airport staff extremely friendly, signs aplenty, etc.

The hotel: turns out that what I had thought to be a hotel was in fact a hostel, with the smallest 2 bunk beds room I ever slept in – I have closets bigger than it. No window, no space for two people to stand up, no closet or wardrobe or even a coat hanger. But it was clean, had air conditioning, private bathroom(no towels, though) and two lockable drawers and had a reasonably central position. It cost double than the 4-star hotel I’ve stayed at in Bangkok two years ago, but was among the budget-priced ones in Sg. What else can I say: very minimalist yet decent looking, with very friendly staff and a good free wifi connection.

As I said, Singapore:
Impressive skyscrapers with great design. Lots of gardens everywhere, including terraces. Lots of heat and humidity. Tall trees, lots of equatorial flowers, almost everything was spotless clean, even around construction sites(where they were building more skyscrapers). Almost everybody speaks English – which is the second language on all signage(the first being Chinese, the others I don’t quite know). People were very polite, a young fellow even offered me his seat in the MRT(their subway), so I could sit next to Vio. Thanks, guy.

Did I say it is extremely modern and civilized? I mean it: 90 percent of all people had iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s or 4G iPads which they used all the time on the MRT, in malls or even on the road – yes, I once saw a guy crossing the street headphones in ear while typing an email on his iPad. I also saw a few HTC’s and one Galaxy Note. Singapore loves Apples :)

And the food. We ate a lot of food. Didn’t get to try the famous chili crab, but I had a great Soup Tulang on the first evening(if I get the name right – I can’t check it right now) in a nearby hawker center(a food court, only cheaper and less pretentious looking, and the kind of place where ordinary locals eat). Google it.

Other foods we ate include Laksa(somewhat similar to the hot Tom Yum thai soup, but different tasting), Hokkien Mee and many others whose names we didn’t catch.
What we did and saw? We walked all the way to Marina Bay, on a long route that also led to the front of the Parliament, took lots of photos with the Merlion and all the cool looking buildings, circled Marina Bay in a failed attempt to eat to the East Coast hawker center(apparently famous for the aforementioned crab) and instead got to the Marina Bay Shopping Center. Oh, and on the way we were asked(and agreed to) appear in the group photos of several Indonesian school students on a trip. They were all quite excited to take pictures with us(and we, like any celebrity couple, graciously agreed :-) ). They didn’t know, however, where Romania is, and the only European country they knew of was England – so I explained that Romania was around 2000 km to the east of it (I would have said 3000 but didn’t want to scare them) :)

By noon(after two sleepless nights) we were already dead tired and barely breathing from the equatorial heat, so we did a bit of mall-hopping in search of air conditioning. We also managed to see a bit of Orchard Road, the shopping center of this most incredibly shopping-passionate country. If only we had been less tired, and with fuller bank accounts :) What else? Little India, Arab quarter, Singapore Airport, eating at the cheap and really great airport staff cafeteria(thanks to Lonely Planet for the tip), some rest in the great free lounges and .. that was it with Singapore.
Indonesia, here we come!

All packed and ready to go

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:00:00 PDT

For the next few weeks I probably will blog a bit more, but not about technology, apps, Apple or iOS development. Instead, I’ll switch to personal/travel blogging mode, trying to narrate as much and as well as possible my vacation.
Because in a couple of hours from now, me and my dear wife are starting yet another backpacking adventure in South East Asia(long term readers might remember our one month in Thailand from two years ago).
This time we’re trying an experiment even more difficult. We’re planning on spending a comparable amount of time(26 days, give or take) in Singapore and Indonesia – actually a couple of days in Singapore, followed by a few weeks in Indonesia, in the Bali and Lombok islands, to be exact.
Why the more difficult experiment?

First of all, because both countries are usually more expensive for the average backpacker than the backpack-friendly Thailand. Also, the flight to there cost more. Yet, we’ll be trying to have as much fun as possible given our not-so-generous budget(which I’ll disclose at the end of the trip).
Secondly, we’re packing lighter – the two tiny backpacks above are all we’re taking with us. It’s an experiment I hope won’t give us too much trouble.
Last but not the least, this time I won’t take my laptop with me. It will be the first time since 1997(when I got my first desktop computer) when I’ll spend more than 4 days in a row without a computer. Actually, scratch that. I’m lying – I’m taking with me 3(!) computers: my iPhone 4s, my iPad2 and my Kindle 4. But no laptop. And that’s the first time since 2003 when I won’t have a laptop around for more than 3 days in a row. That still counts, right? Welcome to the post-PC era.

I said I won’t talk about iPhone app development, but I’m lying again: there’s one extra reason this trip frightens me: for the past month I’ve worked hard to develop the most awesome update yet to my flagship app, Self Help Classics. It has a great new UI(inspired slightly by Instapaper and iBooks), a great reading experience due to new fonts and cleaner Interface, awesome new features, extra content (some free, some available as in-app-purchases) and is designed for retina devices. You can read more about it on selfhelpapp.com.
What it doesn’t have yet is an approval from the AppStore review team. I really tried to submit it earlier than my leaving on the trip, but it was way too big a project. So, here I am, waiting for this update to be approved and praying it won’t get rejected because of a stupid bug or Apple policy change. Like I said above, I won’t be carrying a laptop with me – so I won’t be able to fix any bug for a long, long time.

That was it. A too long post for any human to bear reading. So, sorry.
PS. This post was written from my iPad – as a trial run.
PPS. Future posts might have some Romanian fragments inside – to make it easier for my parents to follow.

BlackBerry PlayBook review

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:00:00 PDT

Updated: I totally forgot to mention Flash capability in the browser – it’s great. Sure, I would have liked Flash to be a thing of the past, but it’s not and having it working properly on a tablet is neat. I tested it with vplay.ro (sort of a youtube/hulu pirate clone) and trilulilu.ro (also a youtube/spotify clone) and it worked fine. Now back to the story.

Last summer I had played with Android development, coding a small free quiz app. Since Google is too lazy or unwilling to let Romanian developers distribute paid apps in the Android Market, that app could only be monetized by Admob – and has brought, therefore, a total revenue of 35 US cents in over 7 months.
Back in February I learned about BlackBerry’s awesome marketing gimmick – to give a free PlayBook to each developer who submitted a PlayBook app to BlackBerry’s app store, before a deadline. It was the second take of a similar previous offer of theirs, only this time with a twist – because of the Android Player built in the new PlayBook OS 2.0, one could actually submit existing Android apps.
Porting my quiz app to PlayBook and submitting it to AppWorld took around 5 hours, including testing it in the provided PlayBook simulator, changing the UI to make it more visually appealing and creating the marketing material.
The tablet arrived a few weeks later, delivered to my door by FedEx, all expenses paid. I’ve been playing with it occasionally for the past 3 weeks, whenever my new iPad was otherwise busy. It’s now time for a review.

Hardware

Pros:
Against my expectations, a 7 inch tablet is quite useful for many scenarios. It is a great form factor for handheld gaming (comfortable enough to be held in one hand, yet large enough to be able to hold it in both hands), watching videos by yourself and reading ebooks in the Kindle app(more about that later). The 9.7 inch of the iPad is way better for most other uses: also watching videos, reading Pdf books, browsing the web, using any other screen-hungry apps.
Casual use is comfortable, the 1GB or RAM, 16 GB of storage space and the 1GHz processor are pulling their weight.
Cons:
Although Wikipedia says it’s lighter and almost as thin as the iPad(at least the 1st gen), it certainly doesn’t feel so. It seems heavier – but it might just be denser.

Operating System

Pros:
The OS is elegant and, as weird as it seems at first, you get used quickly to the bezel gestures(swipe down from the top bezel to reveal the app’s contextual menu, swipe up from the bottom one to see the app switched and the dock, swipe from the right/left ones to switch among opened apps). It IS a good mobile OS and, although my experience with Android is limited, I prefer it – it’s an OS that my parents will be able to understand and maybe even get comfortable with (yes, this is my usability benchmark).
Cons:
Booting up takes ridiculous amount of time – even longer than Windows booting up. I prefer never to have to shut the tablet down.
UI still needs good designers – apps icons are too large, there is not enough text and icon aliasing, some interactive elements are difficult to touch(the Browser’s address bar, for instance). Also, on occasions, WiFi will disconnect and won’t reconnect until I reboot the router. It might be caused by an incompatibility with some settings in the router, but it’s still a bug.

Software

Pros:
The tablet came with several great apps bundled on, in addition to the pretty good ones included in the OS(the Weather app and the Calculator are quite good) – Facebook and Twitter clients. There are also some great full games which are free on the AppWorld(a promotional offer from BlackBerry, from what I understand) – Need For Speed Undercover, Asphalt Adrenaline or Modern Combat. I’m not a hard core gamer so I only opened them briefly, but as far as I’ve seen they look great.
Now that there is Android compatibility of some kind(developers still need to convert apps from the .apk to the .bar format), the number of apps on the AppWorld is booming. There already are versions of Cut the Rope, Plants vs Zombies, Angry Birds, Machinarium or Carcassonne, and probably more will appear.
Cons:
However, there are some big apps missing, and no sign of them – Skype and Yahoo Messenger being the most notable absents. What use is the pretty good front-facing camera(3MP), when you can only use it for video chatting with other PlayBook owners? I really wanted a cross-tablet communication solution, and Skype would have been the best fit. Sadly, there’s no such app and I have yet to find a working alternative.
The Mail app is ok, but could use some improvements – it lacks advanced features such as downloading previous messages on the server, or sending attachments locally towards external apps.

Extra

A big plus is the ability to sideload apps on the Playbook. That is, to download apps on the computer from non official sources and upload them to the tablet. This, combined with piracy, makes it possible to fill the tablet with a considerable number of games and apps, either cracked native versions, or converted ones from the Android Market. Unfortunately, BlackBerry has announced that the next OS update will disable this feature, so you might want to restrain from updating to it.
Another cool feature is the ability to connect to the tablet from the local network and get read-write access to its folders. This, combined with the previous one, is how I got the Kindle app for Android installed on the Playbook, and how I uploaded non-DRM .mobi ebooks into it. Looks good.

Conclusions

PlayBook is now selling for $200 – that is, the same price as the Kindle Fire (which is slightly heavier, thicker, smaller and with half the storage space and RAM memory – and doesn’t have a camera). If I was looking for a tablet in this price range, the PlayBook would be the winner. Sure, Fire has the advantage of a built-in App Marketplace and integration with Amazon ebooks, videos and music stores. But if you don’t buy many of these from Amazon, you should probably go for the PlayBook. If only it also had Skype…

Developer’s conclusions

I am not considering app development for this device in the near future. After all, its sales numbers haven’t been great so far – so the iPad remains my main focus. Later on, however, I might consider porting my existing mobile apps to it – like I said, I do like the hardware and software. Let’s just hope it won’t flop any time soon.

iPad review, briefly

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:00:00 PDT

Because I am still working hard recoding one of my most important apps, and hoping I’ll be ready in a week or two, I won’t do a iOS development post just yet. Instead, I am going to take my turn reviewing the new iPad, in the shortest manner possible:

When did I get it?
As promised by Apple, on the 23rd of March. It was a shock for everyone that Apple really kept their word on the international release date – unlike their previous device launches, there were indeed enough iPads in stock to make sure early risers could get one.

How much did it cost?
Although there is no official Apple store in this small part of Europe, prices at authorized Apple sellers had been set up by Apple – the 16GB Wifi cost 2199 RON, which is 501 Euros, which is 668 USD. Significantly more than in the US, but a comparable price with the rest of EU prices (12euros more, probably due to VAT difference). This is the first time Apple does this, and I hope it won’t be the last – I’m sick and tired of Romanian prices for Apple products being 30-50% more than elsewhere.

Which model did I buy?
I had initially wanted to get a 4G one with a larger capacity, aiming to turn it into my main mobile device. But eventually I chickened out and went for the cheapest version I could get, justifying the purchase as an investment – I do need the latest iOS devices at hand, if I am to develop apps for them. I also hope that future versions will add better battery life on top of the extraordinary screen.

Actual review points:
Introduction:
I have owned an original 16GB iPad Wifi from april 2010 till february 2012, when I sold it and got an almost new but second hand 16GB iPad 2 Wifi. My reasoning for this was that, as much as I loved the iPad 1, there was no doubt that iPad 2 was better and I wanted to two iPads in the house – one for development, one for daily use, and I knew I’d also end up buying the iPad 3. So the math fit.

Now, the iPad 2 is a huge improvement over the iPad 1. That extra RAM size and processor speed makes a ton of difference. The slimmer and lighter device feels like a different thing altogether, one that you actually enjoy holding.

New iPad 3 versus iPad 2:

Slightly thicker(like 0.5 mm) and 50-60 grams heavier. It is very little, but after a bit of getting used to the iPad 2, you can’t help but feel it as a minor step back.
Being slightly thicker has an advantage: the connecting cable goes in easier. For the iPad 2, I really have to struggle to make it fit in the awkwardly oriented slot
The screen is amazing, indeed. You don’t quite notice at first, and most casual users probably won’t. They will, however, notice it when they try to go back to an older iPad (or other tablet, as a matter of fact) – what used to look ok before they met iPad new, now looks blurry and eye-straining
The iPad 3, with its great screen, makes reading pdfs an almost organic pleasure.
For the past 2 years I’ve been doing more and more serious reading on the iPad. I love to use it for reading comic books, software programming books, photography books and other nonfiction. I do have a Kindle and think it’s great for “normal” books – but it can’t show you picture-rich books or any other non-flowing format. For these, the iPad is the best device ever invented – the perfect screen size and format. If you don’t already have an iPad, you should get an old one for a small price, if only just for reading pdf books and comics. You can’t have these on a Kindle – not even Kindle Fire would work as a pdf/comics reader, because of the small screen size.
battery issues? So far I didn’t have any. The iPad charges as I’d expect it to. I usually put it to charge during the night, using its own charger (not the iPhone one). It works.
overheating? No overheating. Sure, it gets warmer than the iPad 2 during normal games, but it’s still cooler than the iPad 1. Also, like I mentioned, I use it mostly for web browsing and reading – and for these, it manages to remain cool

Conclusions
Highly recommended. If you don’t have an iPad yet but have the budget, you should get the new one. If you don’t have the budget, I bet you can get a used iPad 2 for $200-$300, and you should definitely get one – has almost the same internals as the new one, with the exception of the great screen. It’s the greatest device you could have. As for iPad 1, it is still highly usable – just not for the latest games. An used iPad 1 is likely to cost less than a new Kindle Fire or other competing tablets, and it’s definitely better than any of them.

PS. I also currently have a Blackberry Playbook – but I guess I’ll blog about it at a later time.

What should a high school student learn to best prepare for a successful IT carreer?

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:00:00 PDT

This post is dedicated to Tibi, my parent's godson, who asked me the above question, in a somewhat different form. A bright student now in his 2nd year of high school, he loves computers and sometimes feels that he should be taking advantage more of the opportunities that his generation takes for granted(you know, everyone having computers, internet, access to information). To be honest, his question was actually how can I earn some money after school. I twisted it around trying to cover a more useful area.

Thing is, there is no universal definition for a successful career. At times, peer pressure might make you feel that the money in your pocket is a good metric of it, and for some it actually is. But it's not enough. You will discover that short-term financial success can sometimes prevent long term one. Or that blindly looking for financial success might prevent achieving personal success and happiness.

Some general advice

Invest in yourself and in your skills. Skills, knowledge and experience remain with you, while material possessions can be lost, stolen or will eventually get old and out of fashion.

Out of the things I learned in high school, the most useful for my future were:
- a. language proficiency: if you aren't a native English speaker, then achieving English mastery is probably the best investment in your future. Knowing to speak and write good English in addition to your main occupation can boost your career or open up new opportunities. If you are a native speaker, fluency in a different language(Spanish, Chinese, French, German, etc) will help you stand out from your peers
- b. there's no time like high school for developing your intellect, culture and general knowledge – fields usually ignored when we get hooked to the online world. Solid general knowledge will make you look smart(as long as you aren't being smug) which in turn will make people admire you more(helpful both in personal life – such as when flirting with the opposite sex and also in your career). Basic geography, arts, history, literature, sciences or maths will be needed all through your life – the sooner you know them, the better you'll be.
- c. learn to write, to express yourself using words on paper (or screen): not only in Facebook comments, but as essays and longer articles. You'll definitely need these skills in the future when writing emails, reports or business letters. You can also use them to make extra money. Journalists aren't the only ones getting paid for their writings: so are book authors, bloggers or copyrighters in ad agencies.
- d. computer literacy: no longer a "nice to have" but a "must". Stop using that computer only for games, emails, messaging or Facebook flirts – learn to use it as the valuable tool it is. You should be able to learn unknown software, search and find obscure information, centralize results in spreadsheets, use software tools to communicate, create and organize. Learn how computers work, what an operating system is, how programs are written, how a web page is created and where it lives. It's knowledge that people in this age are required to know, in order to comprehend what's happening around them.
- e. invest in your future: great academic results will help you get to a good college. Try to earn scholarships to foreign countries – living, studying or working abroad is among the best investments towards your personal development you can make.
- Do as many things as you can, try out new skills and hobbies. There is so much more to life than you know right now; without knowing, you might be the worlds best magician, scuba diver or astronomer; maybe one day you'll discover you love to cook and decide to quit your "normal" job in order to start your own restaurant; or that you can make a living as a cartoonist. Even if you don't decide to change your job later in life, having hobbies and various interests is a great thing – you should be more than your job – you should a person, and an interesting one.
- Never forget to explore. Discover what you love to do, and try to get better at it. Not all jobs are well paid, and definitely not all of them are fun. Eventually you'll want to find a way do what you love and earn your living doing it. For instance, if you love drawing but aren't successful as a painter, you might consider a day job as a graphic designer, still doing what you love but also being paid for it.

Actual computer-related advice

That's enough generalities – you wanted actual advice to prepare for a career in programming and/or making money with computers

First of all, know this: if you love computers, you will probably hang around them even if your college degree doesn't say so. I know philosophy, journalism or finance graduates who make money from software and online products. So don't sweat it too much, and if you want to learn anything else you can still do it. Just keep in mind that if you really love to do something, you should try to become better at it as soon as possible – it might make you richer than you've ever dreamed (just ask Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others).

Whatever your future, there are some skills you should learn that will make you a better computer geek, with a more valuable skill-set. This is my personal vision and it's not in sync with what you'll read on most current job requirements. They also don't apply to those highly paid computer specialists that create really cool things, but to the large mass of computer programmers and other computer geeks.

Non-programming: just like for general advice below, you should diversify your skills. Learn the basics of productivity, good photography, design or usability. Try to learn to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or their various alternatives. You can also learn to create music or other forms of digital art. Even if you don't become a professional designer, you will still find uses for these skills. Or, at least, they make for cool hobbies.
Learn more than one programming language: there are good or bad languages to start programming with. I recommend learning programming with Processing – a simple language with very low friction(you can quickly install it, play with it and see results) and quite similar to other languages (Java, Javascript, C/C++), which will ease the transition to them. There are some cool languages that will make you feel good and make you a better programmer – like Python or Ruby. Or some hot ones that will help you get a job quickly – Javascript, Java and Objective C.
Learn to program: by programming I mean being able to implement algorithms(search algorithms, sorting, etc). You should have a good understanding of functions, pointers(what they are, how they work), data structures(arrays, matrices, maybe lists). You should also how object-oriented programming works and how to use it in your language of choice.
Learn to develop software. Writing a program that adds a+b is easy. Writing a calculator app with a graphic user interface and even a scientific entry mode is a slightly more complex task. Writing a web-based software app that lets people make friends, post messages, comment on others postings, upload images and do this while handling hundreds of millions of users is an incredibly complex task – which surpasses the skills of any single person.
Software development is more than knowing the language and how to program. Software, in my definition, refers to complex programs: programs that involve multiple source files and resources, multiple developers, and that do more than a basic function. Learn to use other people's code, learn to interface with it, learn to work in teams, learn to fix bugs, etc. There is a lot to learn, and it never ends (which is also why software development is very often a cool and exciting job).

Making money

If you follow the above, you should now be on your way towards a career as a freelancer (working for others on a per-project basis) or employee (working for others for an undetermined period). I don't need to explain how you can become an employee – find a job posting, answer it, repeat until you are hired. For freelancing, you need to find clients(either online on freelance-related websites or offline, through word of mouth) and do good work for them. The first projects will probably bring you little or no money, but they help build a portfolio and reputation that can attract more clients.

There's also a 3rd option: entrepreneurship – aka working for yourself and, on cases, hiring others as well. Successful entrepreneurship is a skill like all the others, and you can and should train it as much and as soon as possible. Instead of not doing anything because of fear of failure or laziness, try to cultivate your entrepreneurial spirit by actually doing things. You might fail, but that's ok – the point is that you'll need to get up and try again, with a different idea.

There's always money to be made if you are a strong-willed entrepreneur – you can always find services or things to buy and resell. The secret is finding which ones, how and to whom.

On the top of my head, if you know English and know how to write, you can start a blog on a given topic, try to promote it wherever you can, then add advertising to it – if you are lucky and inspired, you might end up earning thousands of USD/month from it; if you aren't lucky, you still would have learned more about online marketing than you could learn in school. Alternatively, you can post videos on YouTube(and monetize through advertising) or write ebooks on particular subjects and sell them on your own website, Amazon or iBookstore. You can do the same about pretty much everything else – sell photos on stock photo websites (Fotolia or others), recorded sound effects or even music compositions.

As you guessed, trying to make money online is easy – and the reason there are thousands of "make money from home" books around. Really making money is more complicated – it takes experience, skill, and probably repeated failures.

In my case, as a programmer, my best bet would be to try to sell software – either as an online app which people want to pay to use, or as downloadable apps(which you can sell on the dedicated marketplaces – mobile apps for iOS, Android or Windows Phone, desktop apps on the Mac App Store or as shareware, etc). Developing great apps that people would pay money for is, as you guessed, more complicated also – and not something you can really teach. For me it worked, and has done so for the past years. I was lucky and inspired at first, and in time I got even better at it.

Repeated trials and failures are great teachers. You might get lucky from the beginning, you might get lucky later on, or you might simply never be lucky and base your success on skill and experience alone.
Whatever path you chose, just remember that the sooner you start your journey, the more time you have for it and the farther you might get to. So… good luck!

TinyLetter sucks – and I’m a spammer, now

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:00:00 PDT

I had heard about TinyLetter from some online sources(Daring Fireball, among others), and it looked interesting enough to worth a look today: a free newsletter manager software, capable of sending thousands of emails at once, so interesting that it got purchased by Mailchimp. Being the curious early adopter that I am, I created an account and started playing with it.

I didn’t really want to create a newsletter, I just wanted to see how it manages a longer list of contacts. So I figured I could import the contacts from my Gmail account.

Big mistake. Big. Huge.

It imported the contacts, that’s for sure. But it also, without asking me first, without asking confirmation, without even warning me, sent out an “Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter” email to all the people I had ever contacted on Gmail: ex-boses, ex-girlfriends, business partners, teachers, friends, unknown others.

Shit.

You know what’s worse? (Yes, even worse than having spammed every one on my contact list with a completely useless email)

That it doesn’t even have a “select all” and delete option. Not even a “check this, this, this and this and then delete” one. Nope. For every single one of the hundreds of contacts it has imported, I have to click on an Ajax “x” button, then wait until a custom made alert popup appears, then move my mouse over to the confirm “Delete” button and click again, then move my mouse back to the “x” button of the next contact, and so on and so forth.

Heck, I can’t even delete my account(and all contacts within).

So I’ll have to spend the next hours not only apologizing to all the intrigued people that write me back after receiving that email, but also laboring over the simple process of deleting hundreds of email addresses.

All of this because TinyLetter didn’t think it was necessary to warn me that importing an email address in its system would automatically and irrevocably send a confirmation email to the unsuspecting recipient. Or to allow me to chose which of the people in the Gmail contact list that it imported do I really want to add to its email list. Or something like that, anything.

So, please, everyone on that list, forgive me. I promise never to use that damned “import from Gmail” option again (this was my second time, the first similar shit storm was back in 2007 when I unwillingly sent out thousands of invites to Stumbleupon).

Does any sane person use it voluntarily?

Life without an iPhone

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:00:00 PST

Like everyone else, when I saw the iPhone shown by Steve Jobs on stage back in January 2007, I realized it would change everything. I just had no idea how much it would change me – I’d earn my living creating apps for it, I’d surround myself with Apple-made gadgets and services and, most importantly, I’d never leave home without it.

My brand new iPhone 4S (white, 16GB) started giving me problems about three weeks ago. It would randomly disconnect from the cellular network and never connect again, with network status ranging from “Searching..” to “Invalid SIM” or even “No SIM”. The only solution was to manually reboot it by powering it off and on. At first this happened once a day or night, so the first thing I’d do each morning was to check out if I was still reachable. Then it increased to twice a day and, eventually, it would stay more in the disconnected state than in the reachable one. It was still working as a Wifi-connected device but, when I wanted to give a phone call, I was forced to reboot the phone just to be able to see the network carrier. Also, no one could call me (which wasn’t that bad, actually).

None of the solutions I found online worked. I tried placing some adhesive tape on parts of the microSIM in order to prevent an alleged shortcut (I can’t find the link that advised this), I also upgraded the iOS version to 5.0.1 9A406 instead of 5.0.1 9A405. The errors persisted.

The last solution was to go to the store. There is no Apple Store in Romania, so I had to take it down to Orange, the provider from where I had purchased it. Then the bad news struck: they would have to change the device and give me another one. That wouldn’t have been a bad news normally, but since they didn’t have it in their replacement stock, I had to leave my beautiful looking iPhone with them, get a temporary dumbphone instead for a few days and wait until a new iPhone shipment arrived. Apparently there were quite a lot of similar problems with the 4S that there was a waiting list,so leaving my device with them and waiting for the replacement shipment was the only way to go. And this might take up to 15 days.

I never realized how dependent I was of my iPhone, how addicted to its mobile internet browsing, my favorite games, the gestures, full screen keyboard or its UI, until I was forced, for the past week, to use a Sony Ericsson W302 instead. Phone calls are lousy, due to its meager speakers I can barely understand what the other person is saying; typing text messages on a physical numbers-only keyboard seemed like a punishment from hell. Internet connection doesn’t work (and I don’t have the will to make it work, as WAP-compatible websites are fewer and fewer).

Being forced to use a dumbphone made me appreciate just how much a smartphone has to offer. The always-reachable internet, the always-near entertainment, its ease of use and familiar interface – those are things you can’t just detox from. Not after almost 4 years of continuous iPhone interaction.

Is it a good thing? Is it bad? I only know that I am impatiently waiting for my i4S to come back from service. It can’t come soon enough.

A few recipes about dates / using NSDate

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:00 PST

The app I’ve been working lately makes a bit more use of NSDate than my usual ones. I thought I’d share with the world a few pieces of code I’ve been using;

How to test if two NSDate dates belong to the same day:

I created a category on NSDate and added the following method to it:

-(BOOL)isSameDay:(NSDate *) otherDate
{
    unsigned unitFlags = NSYearCalendarUnit | NSMonthCalendarUnit |  NSDayCalendarUnit;
    NSDateComponents *comps_self = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components:unitFlags fromDate:self];
    NSDateComponents *comps_other = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components:unitFlags fromDate:otherDate];

    if ([comps_self day]==[comps_other day] && 
        [comps_self month]==[comps_other month] && 
        [comps_self year]==[comps_other year]) {
        return YES;
    }
    return NO;
}

I can now call [mydate isSameDay:otherdate]

Find out the first and last days in the month that contains a given date

-(void) updateMonthIntervalForDate:(NSDate*)date{
    unsigned unitFlags = NSYearCalendarUnit | NSMonthCalendarUnit |  NSDayCalendarUnit;
    NSDateComponents* dc = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components:unitFlags fromDate:date];
    dc.day=1;
    NSDate* startOfMonth = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] dateFromComponents:dc];
    NSDateComponents *offsetComponents = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
    offsetComponents.month=1;
    NSDate* endOfMonth = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] dateByAddingComponents:offsetComponents toDate:self.startVisibleDate options:0];
    // ... do whatever you want with startOfMonth and endOfMonth
}

Last but not the least, print out nicely Print out the full name of the month, or the abridged name

First of all, create a NSDateFormatter; the docs says it’s not inexpensive, so if you need it several times, try and reuse it instead of recreating it over and over again.

dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];

Next, decide the date format you want to output

Abridged version (like 01 Jan)

[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd MMM"];

Full month name (January)

[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"MMMM"];

Sure, this is in the docs as well, but I did quite a bit of searches to find out the part about MMMM for the full NSDate month name. So maybe it will help someone.

Once you have the date formatter ready, you can invoke it to get the nice string from your NSDate:

NSString* mystring = [[dateFormatter stringFromDate:crtEntry.date] uppercaseString];

This was it. I wish you happy coding.

.. And a New Year

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:00 PST

XMas is gone, New Year’s is gone, the holidays are over and I am back to work. Same old stuff. Like Dilbert says, there shouldn’t be anything special about a random point in the space-time continuum.

But there is something special. Each new year is the perfect reminder that time flies and we should do something with our lives.. something more than merely living them. It’s also the perfect moment to look back, draw the line and have some accounting done – what we did this past year, how it fared compared to the previous ones and, most importantly, what we expect from the future.

For me, the past year was the year of Clean Writer. First Clean Writer for Mac, then Clean Writer Pro for Mac, and at the last minute Clean Writer for iPad 2.0 . There were also major updates to Self Help Classics and Business Inspiration Classics, and a few other minor apps (like SideTodo for Mac and some simple iOS apps that nobody cares about). I finally started my own company – Cognitive Bits, lost months negotiating business contracts which failed at the last moment, lost some more months developing products that I couldn’t possibly sell. I started a google group for Bucharest iOS & Android devs and organized a few meetups, met some really nice iOS devs at the London Tech Talk and learned a few very important lessons that I will list below.

1. If you like what you’re doing, keep doing it.

I won’t go into much details here. Bottom line is, I love what I am doing as a job(working on my own apps and projects) and I hope I’ll be able to keep doing it. I don’t like working for clients, so I hope I won’t be forced to do it.

2. Learn from the source.

Stackoverflow is great, and so are developer forums around the web. But I should rely more on Apple’s docs, the WWDC videos and iOS development books. Don’t waste time learning from bad teachers when you have access to the best ones.

3. Motivation comes from like-minded people

Meeting other iOS devs from the UK or Bucharest and listening to their success stories was the most energizing thing that could have happened to me in the past year. I hope 2012 will harvest the results of this newly found motivation.

4. Inspiration comes from non-like-minded people

I think that good ideas come from the interaction of people with different interests (you know, Art vs Technology kind of stuff). Sure, some believe their ideas are golden – “I have a great app idea, you implement it and we split the revenue“; I learned to avoid them politely(as in “sorry, I’m a bit swamped right now, maybe we’ll do this later“). But overall, talking to others is a great thing and it gives you new insights and ideas. Use this.

5. Last, but not least: Polish your app

Great ideas with no polish have little chance of being successful. Great polish with no decent idea … that’s not great either. Bottom line: don’t throw away the effort you have put into developing your app, only because you didn’t take a bit more time to polish it. Yep, this comes from my own experience.

I want the above five to be my guidelines for 2012, and I hope that these insights will help this year to be significantly more successful than the previous.

2011 si 3 experimente

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:00:00 PST

Parca ieri eram in iulie. Din ce in ce mai des, sfarsitul de an vine subit, anuntat doar de un Craciun pripit si, inainte de asta, de un Halloween vazut pe la TV. Imi doresc ades sa fiu din nou copil, fie si doar pentru a mai percepe altfel timpul. Mai pe indestulate.

Dar nu despre asta voiam sa scriu. De luni intregi incerc sa povestesc despre cele 3 experimente pe care le-am intreprins anul acesta.

Experimentul 1: Slow Carb Diet (aka 4-Hour Diet)

De Craciunul trecut mi-am facut un auto cadou cartea lui Tim Ferriss, 4 Hour Body (cumparata de pe bookdepository). Nu recomand sa v-o cumparati, dar recomand sa o rasfoiti macar – se gaseste pe torente in format electronic. Tim Ferriss este un autor mediocru dar un marketer extraordinar, iar numeroasele capitole ale cartii sale pot fi rezumate in sub o pagina fiecare; restul de aproape 600 de pagini sunt de umplutura, preludii lipsite de utilitate dar savuroase de multe ori. Cu toate astea, ca prim experiment pentru 2011 am aplicat, cu succes, dieta descrisa in cateva din capitolele cartii – slow carb diet. O rezum copiind un singur paragraf dintr-un email trimis acum aproape o luna:

In esenta, dieta se poate rezuma la jumatate de pagina(si tot vreau sa pun un post pe blog cu asa ceva) – pe durata dietei renunti la carbohidrati ‘albi’, adica la cartofi sau cereale, la dulciuri, fructe si chiar lactate. Mananci la discretie carne, fasole, mazare, spanac, orice legume, oua; cu moderatie grasimi. Micul dejun consistent, cu carne sau oua si legume, etc. O zi pe saptamana(regulat) trebuie sa mananci carbohidrati si orice altceva doresti (dulciuri, ciocolata, bere..), ca sa impiedici trecerea metabolismului la mod economic. Recomandat baut apa multa si , cum ziceam, mic dejun consistent. Neaparat, masuratori periodice ca sa analizezi progresul sau sa identifici plafonari. Eu ma cantaream (si am ramas cu obiceiul) zilnic, dimineata inainte de micul dejun. Mi s-a intamplat sa ma blochez uneori, cand in ziua “libera” nu mancasem suficienti carbohidrati – dupa aceea nu mai vedeam scaderi de greutate. In medie insa am dat jos cam un kg/saptamana. Dupa ce am ajuns la dimensiunile dorite am reinceput sa mananc ‘normal’, fara sa mai iau in greutate. In fine, cand vad ca incep iar sa acumulez, mai raresc carbs si dulciuri o zi-doua.

Inainte de aplicarea dietei, desi nu aveam vreo problema cu greutatea, doream totusi sa dau jos burta de programator. Dupa cum va va spune orice trainer ne-mincinos, burta se poate da jos doar prin dieta(abdomenele nu fac decat sa intareasca muschii, doar dieta reuseste insa sa arda grasimea). Pe 1 ianuarie 2011 m-am cantarit: 75 kg. In mai, dupa 4 luni si putin, ajunsesem la 64 kg, aceeasi greutate pe care o aveam in primul an de facultate. Totul, fara vreun efort deosebit. De atunci ma mentin in zona 64-66 kg, mancand orice, fara restrictii.

Experimentul 2: No Poo

Am aflat de curentul “no poo” de pe BoingBoing (vezi aici). Pe scurt, oameni care nu se mai spala cu sapun sau sampon, ci doar cu apa. Chestie sustinuta de unele experimente stiintifice(nu le mai gasesc sursa, desi probabil veti ajunge la ea din linkul de mai sus) care au aratat ca, in medie, pentru cazuri comune, spalatul cu apa este mai eficient(sau chiar mai) decat spalatul cu sapun sau sapun antibacterial.

In cazul meu, de la inceputul lui 2011, am incercat sa ma spal doar cu apa. Fara sampon sau sapun. Singurele exceptii au fost:

cand eram murdar pe maini cu unsori, uleiuri sau vopseluri – am folosit sapun
cand am revenit de la mare, cu parul plin de nisip – am folosit sampon
cand aveam parul lung si prea gras – am folosit un pic de bicarbonat de sodiu (de bucatarie) pentru degresare

Concluzii:

m-am spalat mai des (no shit, Sherlock)
transpir relativ mai putin (weird)
chestia functioneaza in primul rand pentru cei cu par scurt; la par lung banuiesc ca nu prea
miros chiar ok(ask my wife; chestie confirmata si de cei din articolul de mai sus)
parul meu arata mai sanatos si mai inchis la culoare (asta o zice maica-mea)
matreata care imi chinuie scalpul de ani de zile si care nu s-a vindecat definitiv nici cu Head&Shoulders nici cu Nizoral sau alte sampoane dedicate e acum mai putina si mult mai discreta
acneea ocazionala este de asemenea mai mica si mai discreta

Experimentul 3: Fitness

Pe langa dieta si schimbarea de greutate imi propusesem ca, in 2011, sa devin, pentru prima data, “fit” – cu bicepsi, pectorali, 6-pack abs si orice altceva. Din pacate nu am reusit. Un mic accident in iulie la sala de fitness (o semi-dizlocare de umar, urmare a unui exercitiu cu o haltera prea grea) m-a facut sa intrerup programul auto propus. Mai incercam din nou, in 2012.

La anul si la multi ani!

Adjusting UITextView size on Keyboard show/hide events, for iOS5

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:00:00 PST

The time has come to, once again, blog over here as part of #idevblogaday.

Remember the project I was telling you last time? I can reveal it now, as it’s been on the AppStore for a while now – Clean Writer for iPad, 2.0, a fully recoded, feature rich redesigned version of my quite popular iPad plain-text editor for writers.

One thing that plagued the previous version was how the keyboard would cover up the text entry textview. I had tried to fix it by automatically adjusting the text view size, but there were always problems.

I ended up with a fix based on a recipe from Pragmatic Programmer’s iPad Programming book.

The original recipe, copy/pasted below, is:

In my view controller’s viewDidLoad method:

 - (void)viewDidLoad {

    [super viewDidLoad];

// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib....

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(keyboardWillAppear:)

                                                 name:UIKeyboardWillShowNotification object:self.view.window];

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(keyboardWillDisappear:)

                                                 name:UIKeyboardWillHideNotification object:self.view.window];

the keyboard notification handlers:

-(void) matchAnimationTo:(NSDictionary *) userInfo {

    [UIView setAnimationDuration: [[userInfo objectForKey:UIKeyboardAnimationDurationUserInfoKey] doubleValue]];

    [UIView setAnimationCurve: [[userInfo objectForKey:UIKeyboardAnimationCurveUserInfoKey] intValue]];

-(CGFloat) keyboardEndingFrameHeight:(NSDictionary *) userInfo {

    CGRect keyboardEndingUncorrectedFrame =   [[ userInfo objectForKey:UIKeyboardFrameEndUserInfoKey ]  CGRectValue];

    CGRect keyboardEndingFrame =  [self.view convertRect:keyboardEndingUncorrectedFrame  fromView:nil];

    return keyboardEndingFrame.size.height;

-(CGRect) adjustFrameHeightBy:(CGFloat) change multipliedBy:(NSInteger) direction {

    CGRect r = CGRectMake(mainView.frame.origin.x, mainView.frame.origin.y, mainView.frame.size.width, mainView.frame.size.height + change * direction);

    return r;

-(void)keyboardWillAppear:(NSNotification *)notification {

    [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];

    [self matchAnimationTo:[notification userInfo]];

    mainView.frame =  [self adjustFrameHeightBy:[self keyboardEndingFrameHeight: [notification userInfo]] multipliedBy:-1];

    [UIView commitAnimations];

-(void)keyboardWillDisappear:(NSNotification *) notification {

        [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];

        [self matchAnimationTo:[notification userInfo]];

        mainView.frame = [self adjustFrameHeightBy:[self keyboardEndingFrameHeight: [notification userInfo]] multipliedBy:1];

        [UIView commitAnimations];

Now, the problem with the above code(as I discovered) is that on iOS5, on the iPad, something else can happen other than the keyboard appearing or disappearing. You can now Split or Undock your keyboard. In this case, the keyboard will receive a UIKeyboardWillHideNotification but it won’t receive any UIKeyboardWillShowNotification one, receiving UIKeyboardWillChangeFrameNotification instead.

To sum up, in iOS5 you might get more UIKeyboardWillHideNotification than UIKeyboardWillShowNotification, so it will mess up the pairing described above, as we are only interested in the pairs of keyboardWillShow/keyboardWillHide events. Since I wanted my textview to adjust size only when the keyboard actually appeared and not when it docked/undocked, I added the following simple fix:

add a boolean flag to my controller:

 BOOL keyboard_needs_adjustment_status; // initialized to NO

change keyboardWillAppear and keyboardWillDisappear methods to:

-(void)keyboardWillAppear:(NSNotification *)notification {

    [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];

    [self matchAnimationTo:[notification userInfo]];

    mainView.frame =  [self adjustFrameHeightBy:[self keyboardEndingFrameHeight: [notification userInfo]] multipliedBy:-1];

    [UIView commitAnimations];

    keyboard_needs_adjustment_status = YES;

-(void)keyboardWillDisappear:(NSNotification *) notification {

    if (keyboard_needs_adjustment_status) {

        [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];

        [self matchAnimationTo:[notification userInfo]];

        mainView.frame = [self adjustFrameHeightBy:[self keyboardEndingFrameHeight: [notification userInfo]] multipliedBy:1];

        [UIView commitAnimations];

    else{

        // if kb is undocked or split

    keyboard_needs_adjustment_status = NO;

That was it. A quick bug fix that saved the day for my users. If you want to see it in action and get a great app also, Clean Writer for iPad is a great app with way more to offer, and is on sale in the Productivity category, only $0.99

Happy Holidays, everyone!

UITextView, Apple quirks and cutting one’s losses

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:00:00 PST

I’m in the middle of a project which excites me a lot, especially because I want to have it finished in the next couple of days, so that with a bit of luck the app would go live to the appstore before December 22 (the dreaded date when iTunesConnect will shut down for an entire week). I’ve only had 3.5 hours of sleep last night, and about 5 the night before.

One of the things I was doing at 5AM in the morning was trying to find the current point location of the cursor inside a UITextView (iOS 4.3+ or even 5.0 – whichever works).

I couldn’t.

Now, it’s not unusual to not be able to do things in iOS. What is unusual is that Apple’s docs said I should have been able to.

Let me explain. See, UITextView, according to the documentation, conforms to UITextInput protocol. UITextInput protocol, according to the documentation, has a required property selectedTextRange that gives “the range of the selected text in a document” and, in particular, the caret(insertion-point). It should be straightforward. (PS. do not mistake selectedTextRange for selectedRange which returns just the range of the selection inside the text string.

To my frustration and despair, it didn’t work. My code would crash again and again complaining that selectedTextRange is an unrecognized selector. Even more frustrating, Google doesn’t offer any clue (except for one stackoverflow question and the fact that people enjoy giving stupid answers although they don’t understand the question). Or that others don’t think it’s possible.

So I gave up implementing what I wanted, cut my losses and moved on to implementing some other features. But if you have any idea about a decent way to achieve this (and, no, I don’t really want to use a custom 3rd party uitextview clone just to be able to know the CGPoint position of the cursor), I’d greatly appreciate your input.

Until then, ain’t it weird that a required property in a required protocol doesn’t seem to be fully implemented in Apple’s one of the most important core UI objects?