January 2012
2 posts
4 tags
Follow up: App Store Spam
Just a little follow up regarding my post from Dec. 9th regarding the spammy behaviour of one App Store developer App Store Spam - 28 identical apps.
It looks like he’s trimmed his armada of white noise apps from ~28 down to 8. I have no idea if this was voluntarily, or if he was forced to remove them by Apple.
I haven’t contacted the developer directly because I’m not a damn...
December 2011
3 posts
4 tags
“Hi, I have an app that I feel is pretty good, but has a shit name (Saline). I’ve...”
– unled in response to my previous post
I absolutely don’t think that would be spamming the App Store. Even if you keep the old one in for a bit to do a little A/B testing. As long as you drop one after a bit, or differentiate the two apps in some meaningful way (i.e. functionality).
...
7 tags
App Store Spam - 28 identical apps
In August, iOS developer George Talusan put 22 identical copies of the same app in the App Store. That’s 22 times, under 22 different names.
When I discovered this, a few months ago, I reported it to Apple immediately. Since then, he has put the same app in another 6 times, with a slightly modified UI. Apple does not seem to have responded.
I stumbled on this honeypot of apps while...
6 tags
Compile Calcurse on OS X Lion
Download calcurse-2.9.2. Later versions probably work.
Open the Terminal, cd ~/Downloads/calcurse-2.9.2.
./configure CFLAGS="-fnested-functions"
make
sudo make install
Edit: after playing with calcurse for a brief period of time, I’ve moved on to wyrd which seems like a better system.
It’s based on a unix app called remind. The only thing that bugs me is that downloading and...
September 2011
4 posts
6 tags
Deretina.py - never worry about Retina graphics...
(or rather, never worry about non-retina graphics again)
I’ve devised a system to stop having to fiddle with retina and non-retina graphics when building iOS apps.
Only make retina (@2x) graphics assets.
Store them all in an “Assets” directory, added to my xcode project as a folder-reference.
Add a “Run Script” build step that converts any and all @2x graphics...
3 tags
Screen Rotation on the Mac
John Gruber just posted a story about screen orientation, pointing out that the iPad, while less flexible in some ways, is MORE flexible in this aspect (pun intended).
This triggered a memory of reading about software that allowed rotating the screen, but when googling for it I found this:
...
5 tags
Node.js as an HTTP debug server
A quick node.js script to do simple http debugging. I’m working on a RESTful service, and while I’m stubbing out the client, it’s helping to have a server that’ll echo any requests back to it. This can be quickly modified to respond differently to specific requests. See the commented out block for sending 301 redirects for an example.
gist here
var http =...
8 tags
Tidy JavaScript in BBEdit
I’ve been poking around BBEdit 10 a bit, but it’s decidedly lacking in native support for things like tidying up javascript. So I added it.
It took me a bit of twiddling, so I thought I’d post it here.
Grab my fork of jsbeautifier, originally written by Einar Lielmanis. It’s identical to the master branch, except it has a fix for a unicode issue with the text-stream...
August 2011
2 posts
4 tags
The future of hand-held telephones
I’m just going to go ahead and call it now:
Windows Phone 7, iOS, and Android, will all succeed.
WP7:
Dedication (Microsoft won’t give up like HP).
Developer tools (They’re awesome).
Android:
The linux effect. It’s geeky and hackable.
Google is heavy and won’t back down on it.
iOS:
duh.
duh.
3 tags
Save books out of Safari Books Online
This is hard. I spent way too much time figuring this out, because I was annoyed that a book I bought (Addison-Wesley) was available online for free, except only for 45 days after which payment was required. So I made this hack… probably useful to no one else, but here it is.
Requirements:
iPad.
Safari To Go (the Safari Books Online iPad app).
a Mac (could be done on a PC, but...
July 2011
1 post
5 tags
CALayer's drop shadow performance. →
I was having some trouble with lagggggy drop shadows caused by enabling a drop shadow on a UIImageView’s CALayer. This article brought to my attention the useful shouldRasterize property. Problem solved!
June 2011
1 post
5 tags
The special cruelty of Lodsys
The thing that gets me riled up the most about this lodsys business is that they’re going after the little guys. Look at this comparison:
Companies sued by Lodsys: Combay, Iconfactory, Illusion Labs, Shovelmate, Quickoffice, Richard Shinderman, and Wulven Game Studios.
Companies making crazy-money off in-app purchase: Zynga, Pocket Gems, Capcom, The Playforge, SEGA, Haypi Co, Z2Live,...
May 2011
2 posts
4 tags
6 tags
April 2011
10 posts
8 tags
iPhone Property-List Benchmark
Researching the best way to solve a problem, I decided to write a quick benchmark.
The issue involves a complex many-levelled hierarchical dictionary (+20k when stored in XML format), and I wanted to know if crawling it looking for specific keys would be too slow to be viable. My test function crawls the dictionary, and looks for keys that exist (4), and some that don’t (6). I repeat the...
5 tags
Stack Overflow - Programming Jargon →
There are some great gems on this stack overflow discussion of programming jargon. e.g. Ninja Comments and Scar Tissue, both great terms.
5 tags
FileMaker PHP Re-Deployment
Threw about three hours of work into a weird bug in FileMaker Pro Server 11. Basically the network administrator cloned the server’s drive, and put that in a different machine. Pull the old server out, pop the new machine with the cloned drive in it’s place… everything works fine except my php-filemaker solution.
Spent about three hours looking for the issue. In the end what...
5 tags
4 tags
Automating dual deployment to the Mac App Store:... →
4 tags
7 tags
iAd Gallery →
Apple has put an app in the app store that ONLY displays iAds.
I’d just like to state for the record that back when I made my first ad-supported app (Fixed, which I later made $1 because ads are bullshit) I thought about doing exactly this. I’m certain if I had, it would have been rejected immediately.
6 tags
Open-Source Cocoa Controls →
Some quality controls right here!
6 tags
March 2011
7 posts
6 tags
“Since Google’s business is advertising, shifting industries away from paying...”
– -Kyle Baxter, with a brilliant explanation of why it’s harder to make money on Android apps.
(via marco)
5 tags
Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Broken iOS icons →
mrgan:
Something is rotten in the state of iOS icons. More and more, I’ve been noticing app icons with good ideas behind them, pretty solid execution for the most part, and one hair-raising screwup practically designed to get the goats of oversensitive designers such as myself. These are some apps I just…
Great post on some rookie iOS icon mistakes, with some tips on how to avoid...
6 tags
WWDC 2011
Just bought my ticket.
4 tags
4 tags
6 tags
UIKit: Hide the keyboard without a reference to... →
A way more useful method than resignFirstResponder, because you don’t need a reference to the UITextField in question.
[self.view endEditing:YES];
6 tags
February 2011
12 posts
3 tags
10 tags
A list of apps that won't be on your next iPhone?
Jim Dovey (alan quatermain) sets fire to Apple’s new policy on content purchasing:
After another year, Apple decides that, since my application can display content purchased from my store (which isn’t even implemented in my app, it’s just a website), I must now implement in-app purchase of all my content. I hire more people to sort and input my 1 million items into the IAP database, and...
3 tags
5 tags
Numbers from Apple
From today’s press release on subscriptions in the app store,
“The revolutionary App Store offers more than 350,000 apps to consumers in 90 countries, with more than 60,000 native iPad™ apps. Customers of the more than 160 million iOS devices around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and...
1 tag
2 tags
5 tags
A functional definition... →
The short description of vectors in this OpenGL ES tutorial is so vastly superior to the one I was exposed to in university calculus. It’s short, and sweet, and to the point. In school I think it took at least a week of lectures before it really clicked what the hell the prof was talking about. When you’re about to use something, you give a functional definition. “This is what...
10 tags
iOS Debugging Magic (Technical Note TN2239) →
Includes such varied topics as “Endianness”, “Unit Sizes”,
“Controlled Crash”, “Zombies!”, “Architecture Gotchas”, and of course “More Zombies!”
If I didn’t know better, I would think it was a more-than-slightly whimsical fantasy-adventure novel.
5 tags
Tips for optimizing iPhone/iPad applications →
Some interesting optimization tips and tricks.
Things like [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:] is faster than loading into an NSData instance and then passing to [UIImage imageWithData:].
3 tags
Midi on the iPad →
An impressive rundown of what you can do with an iPad, and MIDI.
5 tags
2 tags
January 2011
11 posts
8 tags
vector vector: NSDateFormatter format strings for... →
vectorvector:
Format strings for processing dates from facebook or twitter’s json api’s
//2010-09-12T22:21:18+0000
#define DF_FACEBOOK @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZ"
// Sun Sep 12 17:06:56 +0000 2010
#define DF_TWITTER @"EEE LLL dd HH:mm:ss ZZ yyyy"
Usage:
NSDateFormatter *df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc]...
8 tags
DMURLConnection →
vectorvector:
A very very light wrapper for NSURLConnection. I wrote it, found it useful, thought that I would share. For when you need to send an HTTP post request and download some kind of response asynchronously.
5 tags
vector vector: How to set default values for... →
vectorvector:
NSUserDefaults is a great place to store your apps settings. It is convenient, available everywhere, and integrates nicely with settings bundles. One problem you run across with NSUserDefaults, is setting default values for your settings. There is a very simple elegant solution to this, detailed…
7 tags
5 tags
Ignore touches to UIView subclass, but not to its...
vectorvector:
If you want a UIView subclass to ignore touch events, just set its userInteractionEnabled property to NO. But that will block touches to all its subviews. To ignore touches in a UIView subclass, but not its subviews, just work a little hitTest magic:
-(id)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
id hitView = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];
if (hitView ==...
9 tags
iOS Interface Elements →
vectorvector:
Some interface icons for iOS. Taken from my app Double Exposure, and put on github for the common good.
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