App Licensing

Google took an interesting step recently by adding a service called App Licensing to the Android SDK. I haven't looked at it in detail, but the gist of it is that it's a license validation system for third party apps. It allows third party apps to check with the Android Marketplace to see if it's authorized to run on the particular device. To simplify it beyond recognition: It's sort of like Steam for Android Apps.This is a bit of a double-edged sword for Google, though. Steam-style online authentication isn't exactly warmly embraced by the proponents of "open" systems, but given how easy it is to pirate applications downloaded from the Android Marketplace (and then return them for a refund!), it's probably a necessary step to attract developers to the platform. Google has to at least look...

Read more »

Posted in: Android,App Store,Marketplace

Those Were the Days…

The Computer History Museum has recently posted the original source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw! Apple has given them permission to publish them both, and they're well worth taking a look at if for no other reason than to realize just how good we programmers have it today. The source code is a combination of 68k assembly, resource files, and Pascal, and all of the code was written by the incomparable Bill Atkinson, one of the early heroes of Mac programming and author of Hypercard (among many other things).As an interesting aside, Bill stopped programming several years ago to focus on photography, but started programming again after the iPhone SDK came out so that he could create PhotoCard. If you're not really familiar with who Bill is, you might want to read some of the stories on Folklore.org,...

Read more »

Posted in: Apple,Bill Atkinson,History

A few things iOS developers ought to know about the ARM architecture

The Wandering Coder has a great post today titled A few things iOS developers ought to know about the ARM architecture. There's some really good information about the different ARM architectures in different iOS devices and different generations of certain devices. Well worth the re...

Read more »

Posted in: ARM,Other blogs

On Swords, Perspective, and Spin…

Although I thought Apple started off a little too defensive yesterday, when you boil it down, I thought they did the right thing. If you're having a problem and a case can fix it, here, have a free case. If you already bought a case, they'll refund the money you paid for that case. If you bought an iPhone 4 and the problem keeps you from being able to use or enjoy your phone, they'll take it back, no restocking fee, no questions asked.All other issues aside, I'm not sure what more Apple could or should have done. There aren't many products that come with an unconditional guarantee any more, yet reading some of the output of various so-called tech "journalists" since yesterday's press conference, it seems that there are many who think that Apple didn't do enough and didn't "do the right thing"....

Read more »

Posted in: Apple,iPhone 4,Rant

iPhone 4 Press Conference

Well, the iPhone 4 press conference just ended, and I thought I'd type up my thoughts quickly before diving back into work. Overall, the end result is exactly what I thought they'd do: free cases and refunds for those who want them. Seems very like a fair response to me.I thought Steve started the presentation sounding a little defensive, though I can understand why. By the middle of the performance, though, he really hit his stride, and by the end I'd have to say it was one of Steve's best performances to date when you factor in that he wasn't announcing a new product, but instead defending an existing one, which is never as much fun or as easy.The main points were that yes, you can interfere with reception on the iPhone 4 by grasping it a specific way, but you can also do that on most smart...

Read more »

Posted in: Apple,iPhone 4,PR

On the iPhone 4 Reception Issue…

Until today, I've kept pretty much quiet on the iPhone 4 reception issue. Part of that was simply that I didn't own a phone until a week ago when my pre-ordered phone finally arrived. Part of it was just that I'm crazy heads-down on the book and doing client work right now. And part of it is that I'm having trouble deciding exactly what I feel about it. It feels to me like the issue is being overblown, but I doubt that people who are severely impacted feel that way. I also don't think Apple has handle the situation as well as it, perhaps, could have. Apple is normally exceptionally good at "spin", but the response to this issue has felt a little ham-handed.For me, I can recreate the issue if I try, but not in the drastic way that some people can, and not consistently. I've been able to get...

Read more »

Posted in: Apple,iPhone 4

Ahh… the Sweet Smell of "Open"

I bet owners of Droid X phones are thrilled to have such an "open" phone. Man, I was just so off-base when I discussed Android and the practical reality of openness in a world controlled by wireless providers. Oh, wait… no I wasn't.via several people on Twit...

Read more »

Posted in: Android

Core Data Encryption

I've been asked a number of times about the best way to encrypt a Core Data persistent store. The answers I've had to give have always been somewhat kludgey at best. Apparently, with iOS 4, there's a better answer, and I was completely unaware of the change. If you're storing anything remotely secure in Core Data, it's worth a few minutes of your time to read Nick Harris' post.via Brent Simmon's ranchero....

Read more »

Posted in: Core Data,Encryption

OpenGL ES 2.0 Book Teaser

I've been making really good progress on the OpenGL ES 2.0 book for Prags, and I'm really happy with what I've done so far. The book isn't quite as hand-holding as Beginning iPhone 3 Development was, but it's probably more hand-holding than any graphics programming book I've ever read. If you've got prior experience with graphics programming, you may get frustrated with the pace of the book. I'm working on Chapter 8 now, and I haven't even gotten to lighting yet.Those of you who have never worked with a programmable pipeline engine like OpenGL ES 2.0 or have tried and been frustrated by the books and resources available, will (I hope) appreciate the approach I'm taking. I'm trying to be very, very thorough. I'm trying not to leave any questions...

Read more »

Posted in: Book project,OpenGL ES,Sample Code

Thumb

I thought I had done a post on this at some point, but after Googling around, I guess I never did. There were a couple of Twitter discussions about the subject in the past few days, so I thought it was worth mentioning. You can get more in-depth detail about this subject by watching the two OpenGL ES videos from the 2009 Tech Talk World Tour Videos (iTunes link, requires logging in with iPhone SDK account).The ARM architecture has something called thumb mode (or just thumb). Now, I'm not a hardware engineer so the following may not be 100% technically accurate, but my understanding is that basically thumb mode uses a subset of the processor's available operations and passes two 16-bit operations in the space of a single 32-bit operation, allowing commands to be sent to the CPU twice as fast....

Read more »

Posted in: OpenGL ES,Thumb,Xcode

Pressure Sensitive iPad

One thing that I've wished the iPad had from the beginning was the ability to detect different levels of pressure, similar to a Wacom tablet. That would make it much more useful for things like sketching. I've heard from a few people that the hardware supports it, but I've been skeptical of those claims. How could a capacitative touch device detect pressure? But a few people I talked to at WWDC insisted it was possible with the hardware.Turns out they were right. This is really cool. I don't know anything about the technology - whether they're really using pressure (I tend to doubt it) or just the relative size of the area being touched, but the results in the video look promising. I also hope the final version can be accomplished with only public APIs someh...

Read more »

Posted in: iPad,iPhone SDK

Synthesize by Default

So, in my previous post, I told you I was excited about the "synthesize by default" functionality that's now available in LLVM 1.5. And I am, very much so. But it turns out there's a caveat that tempers my excitement at the moment.With synthesized iVars, we've had direct access to the underlying synthesized variable for a while now, so if you created a class like this:#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>@interface MyViewController : UIViewController {}@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *foo;@endYou're able to access the NSString variable foo that backs the property of the same name within the scope of your class. So, in your dealloc method, you can do this, to give one common example:- (void)dealloc{ [foo release], foo = nil; [super dealloc];}However, if you enable the "synthesize by default"...

Read more »

Posted in: Clang,LLVM,Objective-C