Briefs is Dead, Long Live the Briefs

Rob, one of my MartianCraft partners-in-crime, decided to throw in the towel last night on Briefs.app. After a solid year of fighting with Apple's app review team, implementing changes that were suggested might clear the path for getting Briefs.app on the App Store, and trying to just get a straight answer from Apple about what the real problem was, he's finally decided it's just not worth the hassle any more.There were several lights at the end of the tunnel over the course of the year, each one a bigger and faster freight train. Despite the changes to the license agreement that seemed to imply Apple was going to become more reasonable on this subject, they continued to insist that Briefs allowed users to download and run executable code and is dangerous.I don't like that answer, but if...

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Posted in: App Store,Apple

On WWDC Now Being "Broken"

Over at TUAW, fellow author Erica Sadun opines that WWDC is broken because it sold out fast. And she's right. It's so horribly broken that more people want to attend than they've got room for. Th… wait, what? Where I come from, that's called "success", and it usually indicates that you're doing something right. It's not usually a big red flag that you need to make a complete about face in your approach. But that's exactly what Erica is suggesting Apple do.I used to work in the Enterprise software world and know all about these large conferences that Erica is referencing. I was a developer at PeopleSoft (now part of Oracle), and I've been to (and have even spoken at) mega Enterprise conferences like the old PeopleSoft conferences (20k attendees at its peak) and OracleWorld (which is now, I...

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Posted in: conferences,Rant,WWDC

WWDC 2011 is Sold Out.

I told you they'd go fa...

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Posted in: Apple,conferences,WWDC

WWDC First Timer's Survival Guide, 2011 Edition

Today, WWDC was announced. This is the earliest they've announced WWDC during the iPhone epoch, so there's a little more time to prepare than we've had the last few years. Given how popular it's been the past few years, I thought it was worth updating and re-posting my WWDC First Time Guide from last year and the previous year.Again, WWDC is different every year, so don't take anything written here as gospel, but hopefully these hints and suggestions will help some of you.Arrive on Sunday or Earlier. Registration is usually open most of the day on Sunday. You really, really want to get your badge and related swag (bag, shirt, jacket, etc) on Sunday. The line for the keynote will start forming many hours before the doors to Moscone West open up on Monday (the past three years, people started...

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Posted in: Apple,conferences,WWDC

WWDC 2011 Announced

June 6-10 at Moscone West. You should go. If you're going to go, don't wait, they will sell o...

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Posted in: Apple,conferences,WWDC

Attributed Strings in iOS

Ten months ago when the original iPad shipped, Apple released iOS 3.2, and for the first time, iOS developers had access to NSAttributedString and NSMutableAttributedString, objects designed to hold strings along with font, paragraph, and style information. We no longer had to resort to using heavy UIWebViews or complex Core Graphics calls to draw styled text.Well, sort of…On the Mac side of things, NSAttributedString and its counterpart NSMutableAttributedString have been around for a long, long time, as part of Foundation. But, there's also been, for nearly as long, categories on both of these classes in App Kit called the Application Kit Additions which have all sorts of useful additional methods.These categories provide ways to create attributed strings from various sorts of formatted...

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Posted in: iOS SDK,iPhone SDK,Sample Code

Building for the MAS

If you have any thought of making the jump from iOS to the Mac App Store, bookmark this post by Craig Hockenberry right now. It's a brilliant and detailed guide to everything you need to do to get your application on the Mac App Store from somebody who's been the...

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Posted in: Mac App Store

Design Then Code

Mike Rundle just put up a really nice beginner's tutorial on program iOS SDK applications from scratch. Although I disagree with him pretty violently about whether you should use Interface Builder (no, really, you should use it), it's otherwise a brilliant introduction; one of the best I've seen on the web for beginne...

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Posted in: iOS SDK,iPhone SDK,Other blogs,tutorials

The iPad 2 Rant

MartianCraft has a fair amount of Android work right now. Personally, I try to focus on the iOS work whenever possible, but we're a small company, so nobody gets to play the primadonna. As a result, I spend a good chunk of my time on Android projects and have to stay abreast of both the Android and iOS worlds from both a hardware and a software perspective.Last week, I found myself grudgingly admitting to myself that the Motorola Xoom is not a bad tablet. It feels incomplete in many ways. It has rough edges, some definite hardware and software CBBs¹, and a general dearth of good, native-resolution apps. But, it had potential and I definitely saw how certain demographics might be attracted to it over the iPad. I saw a tablet that normal people could use with some frustration, but not an insurmountable...

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Posted in: iOS,iPad,Rant