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My feed

By Rick Jelliffe
November 14, 2009

A couple of people have asked again this week for the RSS feed address for my blog. Here is is: I believe you can get the individual feeds for other bloggers on OReilly sites using the same URL and the...

Posterous: The Copy-and-Post Revolution in (Micro) Blogging

By Mark Sigal
November 4, 2009

A friend of mine, who has achieved repeated success in high-tech startup land, said that if you want to be successful, focus on segments where <10% of the crowd currently adopts the solution, and by virtue of dramatically simplifying the approach, you can toggle adoption rates to closer to 90%. Enter Posterous, a micro-blogging tool (it's free) that does a few things really well.

Computer Security Basics

By Rick Lehtinen
July 17, 2009

Hi, It is about time I got started on this blog. Computer Security Basics was a landmark book when it was first published in the early 90s. I was honored to have the chance to update it in 2006. Now...

TapIt4Me: A Serious Productivity Tool for Heavy iPhone Email Users

By Dave Aiello
February 1, 2009

One of the secrets of MacOS ninjas are shortcut utilities such as TextExpander, TextMate, and TypeIt4Me. These programs allow you to type abbreviations that are automatically replaced by words, sentences, or whole paragraphs. Apps like these have been absent from...

The New Father in the Nursery

By Dave Aiello
January 30, 2009

My wife gave birth to our second son, Peter, last week. The proud parents are both iPhone users, so you'd expect us to have an iPhone-based solution for announcing the big news to our friends and family. Although we tried...

On Vibration

By Erica Sadun
January 23, 2009

Making an iPhone vibrate requires nothing more than a simple call to Audio Services. Deciding on when your application should buzz is a different matter. The code for producing that short buzz effect is this:

Opt-In Complexity

By Chris Adamson
January 16, 2009

It's an interesting trait that the Mac and iPhone stacks work this way, opting in to complexity and keeping the higher-level APIs sparser and simpler, and you have to wonder whether it's a conscious design decision or a happy accident.

Plenty of Choices in Weather Apps

By Dave Aiello
January 15, 2009

With the weather as brutal as it's likely to get this winter in much of the Continental United States, now is a great time to take a quick look at the leading free weather apps for your iPhone and iPod...

Who says Lite apps don't work?!

By Raven Zachary
January 13, 2009

For the first time in the history of the App Store, the same iPhone application holds the #1 spot in both the Top 25 Paid and Free apps lists. The app is iShoot by Ethan Nicholas. It's a fairly straightforward...

Thinking about table selection: Persistent or Active?

By Erica Sadun
January 9, 2009

A colleague recently had his application rejected from App Store because he used what I can only call a noun-verb approach. He allowed items in the table to be selected, and highlighted upon selection, and then provided buttons that used that choice to perform an action. His application was rejected, with the rejection citing the following from the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines:

We Probably Aren't the Target Market for the iPhone Anymore

By Dave Aiello
January 9, 2009

I've been cheerleading for iPhone tethering since this past summer. In spite of that AT&T and Apple have failed to announce it. With Macworld Expo 2009 almost over, I'm beginning to wonder if Apple considers this feature a maybe-someday feature...

Is Tweetie an iTunes App Store Anomaly?

By Dave Aiello
January 5, 2009

I am really impressed with Tweetie, the multi-account Twitter client iPhone application. I find it bizarre that Loren Brichter (the developer) has created a true, multi-account Twitter client for the iPhone and there's still not a native application for the...

iPhone Activities @ Macworld

By Raven Zachary
January 5, 2009

Headed to Macworld? There are number of iPhone-related talks and events taking place at and surrounding Macworld this year. This is liklely not complete list, but I provide some of the items that stand out. This information is collected from...

Defining legal input characters

By Erica Sadun
January 2, 2009

I sometimes use a little trick to ensure that a UITextInputField only accepts a certain subset of characters. Say for example, you want to ensure that a user enters only letters and spaces. A UITextField delegate can catch each character as its typed and decide whether to add items to the active text field. Here's how.

Wave Front OBJ File Loader for iPhone

By Bill Dudney
December 31, 2008

Many years ago (way back in college) I wrote a 3D stress visualization application for one of my professors. It was my very first Cocoa application. Written on a NeXT Cube in Display Post Script. Wow, was it cool...

The App Store Effect

By Paul Kafasis
December 27, 2008

Snapper-brand lawn mowers are expensive. Many Snapper products cost thousands of dollars, and even their simplest push mower is hundreds of dollars more than some competing products. Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap. What they are, however, is reliable. They're...

Apple's New Position on App Acceptance

By Raven Zachary
December 27, 2008

As best as we can piece together, Apple changed its criteria for iPhone application acceptance sometime in early December. The first we heard of this change was from Sam Magdalein, creator of Pull My Finger. Earlier this month, he received...

App Store Glitches

By Paul Kafasis
December 21, 2008

Last Monday, Rogue Amoeba's first iPhone product Radioshift Touch was finally released through the App Store. After many months, we're very happy to have finally shipped. Doing so, however, has highlighted a few glitches in the App Store that developers...

App Store Glitches

By Paul Kafasis
December 20, 2008

Converting Points and Rectangles to Strings and back

By Erica Sadun
December 19, 2008

Two core graphics structures, the CGRect and the CGPoint, play a large role in iPhone development. They are used to position items on-screen and to set their size. Every time you use a UIView, you can work with its frame, its center, and its bounds--all of which use these two structures to handle geometry. Here's a quick review of the structures in question.

Converting Points and Rectangles to Strings and back

By Erica Sadun
December 19, 2008

Why Didn't Apple Declare Victory at Macworld Expo?

By Dave Aiello
December 18, 2008

Like everybody else, I saw Apple's announcement that they would end their participation in Macworld Expo after Macworld Expo 2009 and was not surprised. The real issue about this and all trade shows is do they make sense in 2009,...

Why Didn't Apple Declare Victory at Macworld Expo?

By Dave Aiello
December 18, 2008

Mind the Seadragon

By Oliver Breidenbach
December 15, 2008

Aargh! Now I have Microsoft software on my iPhone. And of course it is as ugly as something designed by a city council commitee and totally unintuitive. But don't send in the Knights just yet: what Seadragon does is pretty...

Mind the Seadragon

By Oliver Breidenbach
December 15, 2008

Seeing the Power of the iPhone as a Gaming Platform Through the Eyes of Kids

By Dave Aiello
December 12, 2008

On Thanksgiving my wife, son, and I ate dinner at my wife's parents' house. My brother-in-law and his family were also visiting my in-laws for dinner. After dinner I did a little experiment that showed me the power of the...

Seeing the Power of the iPhone as a Gaming Platform Through the Eyes of Kids

By Dave Aiello
December 12, 2008

iPhone Apps Built By Retailers Coming Out Just in Time for the Holidays

By Dave Aiello
December 11, 2008

In the run up to Christmas I became interested in the iPhone applications that several major retailers have been rolling out. I think the Amazon Mobile iPhone app provides some useful functionality and will stay on my iPhone. Target's iPhone...

Better late than never

By Oliver Breidenbach
December 11, 2008

I've kept quiet for some time now, waiting and seeing what happens in the iPhone app market, making up my mind on how to get into the game. From the beginning I thought the environment that Apple created was not...

Some App Store Answers

By Paul Kafasis
December 11, 2008

Back in June, a few weeks before the App Store opened, I posted a list of open questions for the App Store. Now, almost five months since the store opened, we've seen some answers. Let's look over those questions from...

Lala's Potential iPhone App

By Paul Kafasis
December 11, 2008

Yesterday I posted about Lala.com over on the Rogue Amoeba weblog. You can read the full article, but in short, I discussed the very cool Lala.com music service, which offers several advantages over the iTunes Store. I'd certainly encourage you...

iPhone Apps Built By Retailers Coming Out Just in Time for the Holidays

By Dave Aiello
December 11, 2008

Better late than never

By Oliver Breidenbach
December 11, 2008

Apple Loves Free Apps

By Raven Zachary
December 8, 2008

Apple has been focusing its recent iPhone marketing efforts on applications. This is an approach I am quite pleased with as it has tremendous strengths in regards to expressing the 'more than a phone' capabilities of the device. Application distribution...

Some App Store Answers

By Paul Kafasis
December 7, 2008

Back in June, a few weeks before the App Store opened, a posted a list of open questions for the App Store. Now, almost five months since the store opened, we've seen some answers. Let's look over those questions from...

Apple Loves Free Apps

By Raven Zachary
December 6, 2008

The case of the Missing MapKit

By Erica Sadun
December 5, 2008

While wading through the new 2.2 Frameworks, I suddenly noticed that MapKit, once a Private Framework was missing in action. MapKit, which was available until SDK 2.1, offered all kinds of utterly yummy features including Trip Players, Traffic tiles, Route Views and more. So what happened to MapKit?

The case of the Missing MapKit

By Erica Sadun
December 5, 2008

iPhone Apps Over $100

By Raven Zachary
November 30, 2008

Put aside the debate about $0.99 vs $1.99 on the App Store for a minute. How about $109.99 vs. $199.99?! There are currently 14 iPhone applications for sale on the US App Store for more than $100. While some of...

iPhone Apps Over $100

By Raven Zachary
November 30, 2008

Lala's Potential iPhone App

By Paul Kafasis
November 29, 2008

Locating, tagging, and retrieving views

By Erica Sadun
November 28, 2008

Last week, I wrote about exploring subviews both of the user-added and Apple-created varieties. Many GUI components contain view classes that are hidden from the developer but are composed of perfectly standard components.

Locating, tagging, and retrieving views

By Erica Sadun
November 28, 2008

Turning Ideas Into iPhone Applications

By Raven Zachary
November 24, 2008

"I have an idea for an iPhone application." The most common conversation I have with people these days concerns the process of turning ideas into iPhone applications. Someone reaches out to me from across the Internet, hoping I will be...

Innovation On The iPhone

By Paul Kafasis
November 22, 2008

Early this week, Google released their Google Mobile Search application on the iPhone, adding Voice Search capability. It can now record your query, pass it to Google's servers to translate, and return results. The voice recognition itself is far from...

Innovation On The iPhone

By Paul Kafasis
November 22, 2008

Early this week, Google their Google Mobile Search application on the iPhone, adding Voice Search capability. It can now record your query, pass it to Google's servers to translate, and return results. The voice recognition itself is far from perfect...

Turning Ideas Into iPhone Applications

By Raven Zachary
November 22, 2008

View Spelunking Part 1: Exploring subviews and layout

By Erica Sadun
November 21, 2008

It's often helpful to take a look at your UIView hierarchy; and when I say "look", I mean all the way down. You can just as easily look at the component subviews that comprise on-screen objects like buttons, switches, and sliders, as you can at the UIImageViews and UIButtons that you add directly to your screen. UIButtons, for example, are composed of three image views and a label. Some UITextFields are built on a private UITextFieldRoundedRectBackgroundView, with a number of UIImageViews that are added below that class.

View Spelunking Part 1: Exploring subviews and layout

By Erica Sadun
November 21, 2008

We Need iPhone Tethering and We Need It Now

By Dave Aiello
November 20, 2008

Several weeks ago I wrote about the experience of using a Nokia E71 as a 3G tethering device for my laptop here on Inside iPhone. I took advantage of a $19.99 unlimited data plan offered by AT&T GoPhone, the pay-as-you-go...

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