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- TechUniversity: Preview
On the surface, Apple’s Preview application doesn’t appear to do much other than display PDFs and images. But it actually is quite powerful and has some really great features.
In this TechUniversity Preview screencast (subscription required), we’ll take an in-depth look at both PDF and image functionality.
For PDF documents, we’ll cover:
- Combining PDFs
- Searching PDFs
- Bookmarking PDFs
- Annotating PDFs
For images, we’ll cover:
- Selection Tools
- Slideshows
- Adjustment Tools
View the full Preview screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required)
Screencast Sample
Переслать - Rotten Tomatoes Reviews and Ratings Now Available in iTunes
The iTunes movie store just got a lot more usable thanks to a small but significant update that went live today. As of now, the iTunes movie store features Top Critics’ reviews and the Tomatometer rating score from Rotten Tomatoes prominently displayed above customer reviews on every movie page. It’s the only review source I really trust when deciding whether or not to see something, and now I don’t even have to leave iTunes to check it.
As an example of why this is such a handy thing to have, take Valentine’s Day, a movie well recognized as one of the great stinkers of the year so far. But if you check it out in iTunes, at least here in the Canadian store, the average rating is four stars. iTunes alone would’ve steered you wrong. The Tomatometer rates it 18 percent rotten, and the Top Critics all pan it. Saved from a bad purchase.
The Rotten Tomatoes features will also let you know when a movie is exceptionally good. The screenshot that accompanies this article shows the Rotten Tomatoes box for Office Space, a modern classic by Mike Judge that you really should see if you haven’t already, especially if you’ve spent any time working in a cookie cutter cubicle-farm type office. Note the “Certified Fresh” award icon next to the Tomatometer rating. This is an honor bestowed upon especially awesome films.
You can also click through to see the actual Rotten Tomatoes page for any movie (so long as it’s actually been rated on RT, of course), which will give you access to full-length reviews from users and critics, more information, and the ability to buy it in physical form or add it to your Netflix queue.
Kudos to Apple for introducing a small, simple change that has a significant positive effect on overall user experience. But will it encourage you to buy movies on iTunes?
Related TechUniversity Screencasts: iTunes 101 and Smart Playlists (subscription required)
Переслать - iPad Sales Outpace the Mac
Apple wasn’t kidding around when it said it was going to become a mobile device company first and foremost. According to at least one analyst estimate, the iPad is now outselling the Mac by a fair margin, having almost caught up to its lucrative cousin, the iPhone. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Abramsky (via AllThingsD) thinks Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week at this point.
Compare that to around 110,000 Macs per week, and about 246,000 iPhone 3GS handsets. For a device that originally looked like kind of an odd duck that would only appeal to a very niche market, that’s not too bad. Especially when it hasn’t actually launched in international markets as of yet (barring pre-sales to the first nine countries getting the device on May 28).
Sellouts in both Apple Stores and Best Buy locations in the U.S. continue to be a fairly regular occurrence, and at the time of RBC Capital Markets’ checks, which took place in mid May, roughly 25 percent of Apple Stores were sold out of 3G models of the iPad completely and only had Wi-Fi stock remaining. New units bought from the Apple website are at least a week out in terms of predicted shipping times. In other words, Apple is still selling the things as fast as it can make them.
Abramsky’s changed his 2010 global iPad sales estimate from five million to eith million in the wake of the device’s continued success at retail, and he’s not the only one who’s optimistic about the iPad’s selling power. Research firm IDC (via Bloomberg) predicts that the iPad’s success alone will account for a six-fold increase in the sales of tablet computers in general by 2014. If true, tablet sales would nab a fair chunk of global computer sales, which doesn’t bode well for the slowing netbook market.
It also doesn’t bode well for the Mac. Apple’s efforts will go where the money is, and all indications point to the fact that the money will be with the iPad and iPhone, not with MacBooks and iMacs. What changes will this prompt in Apple’s personal computer line-up? Well, in business silos that bring in less money inevitably face cuts and streamlining. Apple recently added more choices to its notebook lineup, but I predict we’ll see a reversal of that in the future. Look for fewer product configurations and simpler categories (one basic notebook, one pro, etc.) as Cupertino focuses on mobile.
I’m not too worried about this trend, because far out, I see a convergence of device categories. Mobile will be the default mode for consumer computing, and I suspect the iPad will look much more like that future than the MBP I’m typing this on now. Apple has always been good at the long-view, and this time around is no exception.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Is The Age of the Web Tablet Finally Upon Us?
Переслать - Supercharge Your iPad Browsing with iCab
iCab Mobile is the browser for the iPad I’ve been waiting for. Using the same WebKit rendering engine as Mobile Safari, iCab brings a true “desktop” class browser to the iPad. Where Mobile Safari scales up from the iPhone, iCab Mobile has scaled down from the desktop version of iCab, one of the oldest Mac browsers still around.
For additional learning on Safari for Mac, checkout Safari 101 and Mac Browsers (subscription required).
Tabs
The first noticeable thing about iCab is that it actually uses real tabs. The UI borrows heavily from Mobile Safari; the URL bar looks almost identical. However, underneath the URL bar is a bookmarks bar, and underneath that is the tab bar, which seems to function just like the tab bar in any desktop browser.
The tab bar does two things to the interface: one, it adds what some might consider “clutter” to the window. When compared to Safari, iCab has more of the “chrome” around the web page because of the additional buttons. The second thing the tab bar does is far more important: it reduces friction. Hiding tabs as Mobile Safari does puts them out of the thought process, it creates an independent experience for each tab. In iCab, when all the tabs are grouped together in the tab bar, I can see immediately what I have open, what I still have to read, and what I need to close. I can’t count how many times I’ve opened up the tab window in Mobile Safari and found eight tabs that are already open in the background of sites I forgot to read. Keeping all of the tabs visible means that I have one less step to go through to get to the tab that I want. In iCab, it’s simple; just look and touch. In Mobile Safari, I first have to remember which icon is the tab icon, then find the tab I’m looking for from the collection of website screenshots. It’s pretty, but adds friction.
Settings
iCab has many more settings than Mobile Safari, allowing your browsing experience to be customized to your liking. My favorite setting is the ability to open links to other domains in a background tab. This is by far the best browsing experience on any platform. Have a list of Google search results to check? Just tap each one and it opens in a background tab automatically. Reading through Daring Fireball’s Linked List? It’s as simple as scanning Gruber’s summary and tapping the link to open the tab in the background and on to the next one. This is how I’ve browsed for years on the desktop.
Another favorite setting are the filters. iCab comes out of the box with 142 filters to help block annoying ads. The filters are not enabled by default, but can be easily. Customizing filters is also very easy, assuming you know some basic wildcards.
Instapaper and Twitter are supported via modules. Modules are similar to Firefox’s extensions, but much simpler. They are more like bookmarklets on steroids. iCab does not have a very large collection of modules right now, but it does have a fairly simple tutorial on how to develop them. The repository has modules for jumping to the bottom of the page or the top of the page, and a handful of others, but if someone whips up a Readability module, I think that will have all the important stuff covered.
iCab may not be for everyone, since not everyone is going to need all of the features. I’ve just touched on some of the features that I’ve found useful, I didn’t even mention ScrollPad (place three fingers on the screen to scroll super fast!), the multiple privacy options, support for downloading files and opening them in another installed app, import and export of bookmarks, or full screen and kiosk mode. iCab is $1.99 in the App Store for a universal iPad/iPhone app. If you care about your browsing experience on the iPad, go get it.
Переслать - Announcing the GigaOM App for the iPhone & iPod touch
Finally, the big day has arrived. Apple has approved the GigaOM iPhone app — it’s now available via the iTunes store for download. It goes without saying that we’re pretty stoked to be launching this app, which essentially offers a unified experience of all our various properties — from our blogs to our paid subscription service to our events to our real-time Twitter feed. One brand, one app…download it now from the iTunes store. It works both on the iPhone and the iPod touch.
Many of our readers are already using the iPhone and Android browsers to read what we write, and those numbers keep going up. So it made perfect sense for us to build an app for the iPhone. Importantly, we decided against building an offering that merely mimics the experience of our websites.
Mobile and the web are two distinct experiences — from the screens to the way we interact with content, the engagement is entirely different. We started with a blank sheet and an idea with which to engage our readers. But that wasn’t all. In order to set guidelines for our app, I turned to the fantastically brilliant mobile guru Tomi T. Ahonen (author of the Communities Dominate Brands blog) and looked at the eight unique characteristics of mobile he lists. They are:
- Mobile is personal
- Mobile is permanently carried
- Mobile is always on
- Mobile has a built-in payment channel
- Mobile is available at the point of creative impulse
- Mobile is most accurate at measuring its audience
- Only mobile can capture the social context of consumption
- Only mobile can offer augmented reality
OK so we’re missing the augmented reality features, but you get the point. Based on those abilities, here are the features in our app:
- Real-time stream of posts 24/7 from across the GigaOM network of seven leading websites, with full user-commenting capabilities
- Access to the GigaOM Pro research service, including its more than 100 research reports, PDF downloads and the ability to sign up for the service within the app itself
- Ability to share posts and stories via Twitter, Facebook and email
- Video posts and live-stream video from GigaOM conferences and events
- Detailed conference and event information including speaker line-ups, schedules and the ability to purchase event tickets
- Twitter feeds from across the team of GigaOM writers within the GigaOM Pulse feature
- Saved articles folder for future viewing of selected items
- Direct communication channel with our team of writers
So download it and give it whirl — I hope you’ll give us loads of feedback so we can make it even better!
Finally, this app never would have been possible without the tireless efforts of three of our team members: our tech Jedi, Chancey Mathews; our director of product, Dan Burke; and our SVP of product & marketing, Dan Silmore. We worked with our friends at Atimi to develop this app and are very grateful for their efforts. Please, if you can, put your hands together and applaud the team that turned my wild idea into an app.
Now I can finally say: Want GigaOM on the iPhone? Yup, there’s an app for that.
Переслать - New iPod Touch With Camera Latest of Apple Leaks
Apple’s vaunted secrecy appears to be falling to pieces all around the Mac maker as yet another early product leak hits the web today. Only yesterday, it was the MacBook update that did end up coming true, and before that it was not one, but two cases of iPhone version 4 pre-release hardware units slipping through Apple’s grasp.
Today, an iPod touch is the leaked product in question. And the key feature of said iPod touch is the 2.0 megapixel camera featured prominently in the middle of the back of the unit, like a glaring cyclops eye. It’s never been a secret that the iPod touch was likely going to get a camera. The question was only when and in what form.
If the demo unit (which was brought to us by the same Vietnamese site that leaked the most recent iPhone 4 prototype) is any indication, then we’ll be seeing a new iPod touch that looks very similar to existing models, with the simple addition of a relatively underpowered mobile camera. 2 megapixels? What is this, the Nintendo DSi? I expected a lot more from Apple.
Of course, it’s always still possible that the model found is actually an older prototype (maybe from when the iPod touch should’ve received its camera upgrade), but the device’s capacity is 64GB, so it can’t be that old, and I’m willing to bet Apple isn’t above kneecapping a camera-capable touch. Look at its track record.
It’s become fairly evident that the iPhone 3G was probably knowingly underpowered for iPhone OS 4.0, and sold at length during a period in which Apple must’ve known it wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the software it was developing. Compare that to Mac sales. Imagine, for instance, Apple was still selling new PowerPC machines last year while developing Snow Leopard.
Personally, I hope Apple skips an actual production release of this iPod touch. A single, rear-facing 2 megapixel camera (which likely won’t shoot great quality video, if at all) has no added selling power in my opinion. It certainly wouldn’t be enough incentive for me to upgrade from my 1st-gen iPod touch. For a camera to be useful on Apple’s marquee media player, I’d need at least a 5 megapixel still camera that also shoots 720p video.
I’m not sure what’s more disappointing at this point: that Apple had an iPod touch with camera ready to go and shelved it, or that it’s just developed the thing and included a laughably low-powered lens in the new hardware. The 4th-gen iPhone better make up for this mess, that’s all I’m saying.
Переслать - Official Twitter App Now Live in App Store
Twitter for iPhone is here, and those of you who already have Tweetie 2 installed on your phone can get it just by checking the App Store for updates. It brings with it a new icon, some UI refinements, and a few new features, including a couple not available anywhere else. There certainly are benefits to being on the inside.
One of the first (and most notable) changes is the price. Whereas Tweetie 2 was $2.99, Twitter is now a free app for all. And that’s without ads. While I’m slightly sore about having paid for what’s now freely available, I don’t begrudge atebits the money and at least I get the update free. One note of warning, if you upgrade from an existing install you’ll have to re-add all your accounts and any drafts you might’ve saved will be lost. Not fantastic, but not tragic, either.
One thing I’m not too crazy about is the new icon. I realize that official corporate backing required a more recognizable and brand-friendly icon, but the Tweetie icon was one of my absolute favorites. At the very least, I’d have liked them to have kept the same color scheme and cut-out style, while just replacing the word-ballon graphic with the Twitter bird.
Things that are improved are the search function, the addition of recommended user lists and the ability to sign up for a new account right from within the app. Those last two you won’t get anywhere else, either, since no public API exists for either function. Another neat feature is that you don’t have to be logged in to use Twitter for iPhone. Searching and trending topics are available to all via a new interface that launches at first startup if you just want to have a look around without creating an account.
Top tweets are now included in search results as well, which should go a long way toward making them more meaningful, and the retweet function (the official version) has been added to the context menu that comes up for each tweet when you swipe. Finally, some visual changes have been made so that the tweets themselves look more like they do on Twitter.com.
Bottom line, if you liked Tweetie on the iPhone, you’ll like official Twitter incarnation. And if you’ve been waiting for a reason to switch, official support and a price tag of free are two very good reasons. It’ll be interesting to see how the development community responds to this. Tweetie was hard enough to compete with before it became officially sanctioned. Once Twitter for iPad hits, I think apps by third-party sources will have a hard time surviving, except by offering sync services and access to other services like Tweetdeck does.
What do you think? Will you be using Twitter or something else on your iPhone now that it’s out?
Переслать - 10 Presentation Tips for the Mac
Whether your presentation tool of choice is Keynote or PowerPoint, when you give a presentation on your Mac, the last thing you want is for something to go wrong. Here's my top 10 list of helpful tips that will help you get the most out of presenting with your Mac.
1. Run Through Your Presentation Before Presenting
PowerPoint and Keynote will play together, but they don't always play well together. If you're moving presentations between applications or even just between computers, give your presentation a good run through before showtime.
2. Test Out the Hardware
If you'll be presenting with an external display, using external speakers or something similar, test all of this before your presentation. Your Mac's screen will flicker as it adjusts screen resolution to match what it's connected to (if you're mirroring displays). Test all of this beforehand so you're prepared and not dealing with unexpected complications.
3. Simplify Your Slides
This one is purely a stylistic suggestion, but you'll be doing your audience a favor if you simplify the text on your slides as much as possible. Do you enjoy reading a lot of text when it's displayed on your television? Neither do your viewers.
4. Use a Soothing Color Palette
Make you presentation stand out with a color palette that works well together. If you need some inspiration, visit Adobe's Kuler website to see a variety of color palettes submitted by users. Search for one that fits your needs or upload and share your own.
5. Turn Everything Else Off
When you are presenting, make sure any unnecessary applications are closed. Growl notifications, incoming iChat messages and bouncing dock icons are not appropriate for a presentation. If you're the type of presenter who uses a few slides but speaks at great lengths on each one, make sure your screensaver and sleep settings (if using a laptop) are disabled to prevent your Mac from accidentally going dark. You can adjust these settings in the Desktop & Screen Saver and Energy Saver panes of System Preferences (subscription required). Remember that portable Macs store energy saver settings differently when you use your battery and when you use your power adapter!
6. Presenting a Website? Load it Beforehand
If you'll be presenting websites alongside your presentation, go ahead and load those beforehand. This will save you from wasting time while the pages load and will still be able to serve its purpose in your presentation even if you are unable to connect to the Internet when you are presenting. Better yet, you could even include screenshots of the website you want to show. That way, if for some reason the pre-loaded version in your browser doesn't work, you'll still have something to show. While you're at it, if you'll be displaying any other application while presenting, go ahead and have it loaded too. There's nothing more frustrating than staring at a splash screen for 30 seconds while you and your audience wait for Photoshop to load.
7. Got an iPhone? Use the Keynote Remote App
Apple's 99 cent Keynote Remote app will let you use your iPhone or iPod touch to remotely control your presentation. It can advance slides and return to previous slides and can even show you your presenter notes. The only catch is that you must have a Wi-Fi network to use it. If you do not, you can set up a computer-to-computer network with your Mac.
8. Don't Have an iPhone? Use the Presenter Display for Keynote or PowerPoint
With this mode (accessible under the preferences of each application), you can customize a view to display your current and upcoming slide, show your presenter notes, view a clock and a timer. With Keynote, you'll need to make sure that your primary display is set to the projector or whatever device you connect to your Mac. Since Keynote uses the "alternate display,” you will need to make this change so that the Presenter Display will show up on your Mac and not your external display.
9. Bring Handouts
So many people overlook this tip, but it’s just about as important as backing up your computer (and we've all been guilty of not paying attention to that tip too). If technical difficulties get the best of you, you'll still have physical copies of your presentation to fall back on. Plus, handouts make a great way to give your audience a leave behind, should you wish to give them out at the end, or they give your audience something to follow along with and add their own notes if you hand them out beforehand.
10. Make A Good Impression
Saving the best for last, a snazzy PowerPoint or Keynote is nothing if the presenter stumbles their way through. Take the time to be familiar with your slides and be able to speak to them with comfort. You don't have to be the next Steve Jobs, but take your time and be able to present your actual topic.
Do you present with your Mac? Found any great tips that work for you? Give us and your fellow readers your thoughts in the comments below.
Related TechUniversity Screencast: Keynote Transitions & Effects (subscription required)
Переслать - TechUniversity: Quick Search Box
Quick Search Box is a search box application that allows you to search both your computer and data across the web.
In this TechUniversity Quick Search Box screencast (subscription required), we’ll cover how to get started using it, some of the cool things you can do with it, and places to get more plugins for it.
View the full Quick Search Box screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required)
Screencast Sample
Переслать - One Month Later: The iPad
It’s been a little over a month since I’ve introduced the iPad to my digital workflow. In a post last year, I wrote, “I'm not saying I don't think there is a market for a device that's larger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook …” and lo and behold, that is how Apple billed it.
I did have an iPad-sized hole in my life. For me, a MacBook is weighty overkill. I have two jobs: the corporate-level one that pays the bills and my writing gig where I blog, freelance, and work on personal projects. The day job comes with its own Windows laptop that I lug around. I try to maintain a separation between the corporate job and personal work, so there’s very little in the way of personal data on the work machine. My commute is almost four hours round-trip. Most of it’s on a train, but if I wanted to write, I’d need the MacBook with me.
For personal work, my needs are modest. I need to write, research ideas, and read a book or watch a video. Simply put, I just need a tool to let me put words down. I don’t care about how they look when I’m composing on the iPad; just want to get them out of my head and onto what passes for paper for these days.
Productivity
A month in, I find Pages whelming. I felt Pages was about one patch from elevating itself from “merely OK” to “good,” and the 1.1 patch did that with support for landscape toolbars. I find myself to be fairly proficient with the virtual keyboard. While I am clearly faster and more accurate with an external keyboard, the iPad doesn’t seem to handle swapping between virtual and physical keyboards well, so I tend to stay with the iPad's.
What I wasn’t expecting is, even at home, I prefer to write on the iPad. I think it comes down to a fantastic screen and, oddly, the single-tasking nature of the device. Pages gives me enough of a distraction-free environment that I can focus on writing.
For an in-depth look at Pages for Mac, view Pages 101 (subscription required).
I’m going to be giving a talk in a month or so, and as much as I try and tell myself I can do it on the iPad, the fact is, I can't. While I tend to use my own fonts for my talks, I can design an effective presentation for the iPad using stock fonts, but I don't want to be chained to the podium with no remote control.
The presentation issue pales to getting files to and from the iPad. Original rumors hinted of some sort of a shared-pool for files, but that never came true. Instead, each app still has files isolated to its own sandbox. You can use iTunes to transfer files into the sandboxes, but it’s a pain. Since there’s no true syncing, I can’t really work on a file on a desktop and get it back to the iPad without feeling like I’m playing a shell game. My ideal solution would be to have a Documents version of Photos. Apps could read and write to that sandbox to their heart’s content and there would be OS-level integration of MobileMe iDisk.
These issues, while frustrating, don’t make me regret my decision to buy the iPad at all. I’m getting more done with the device, so that’s a win
Recreation
Like most writers, I read. A lot. I probably read about 30-40 books a year, not counting assigned reading for class and the like. I also am somewhat of a magazine junky. The iPad is indispensable for consuming this type of media.
Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple's iBooks are both fine readers. Amazon’s selection is better, but I like the flexibility in iBooks’s presentation; the ability to change the order of my library is huge. However, when I’m researching, Amazon’s note tool wins out. One small thing iBooks does is tell me how many pages are left in a chapter. That's great for reading in bed and deciding if I want to commit to the next chapter.
I find the Zinio app fine for reading magazines. Recent updates have significantly improved page load times. As with the Amazon app, my chief complaint is not being able to arrange the library the way I want it. Deleting magazines seems undoable, also. I’d love an archive feature like the Kindle’s. I have a few subscriptions that thoughtfully provide DRM-free PDFs and GoodReader is my choice for reading them.
3G vs Wi-Fi
This was one of the hardest decisions I made regarding the iPad. In the end, I chose the Wi-Fi because it was out sooner. A close family member was having some major surgery and hospital stay before the 3G came out. I’d had some luck using the iPhone during a previous hospital visitation, but knew the iPad would be better. I also knew I’d be weak and keep the $30 data plan going and didn’t want the expense. While there have been times I wished the iPad had always-on Internet, I don’t regret my decision.
Final Thoughts
A month later, like my iPhone, the iPad is a device I rarely leave the house without. Its excellent battery life means I don’t need to worry about charging out. A heavy night of writing, surfing and game playing barely takes 30 percent of the battery. I like that I can get a creative idea and be writing it in less than 30 seconds. I do see an anti-glare film in my immediate future. It’s almost unusable outside, and a frequent place I use it has a fluorescent light directly overhead.
How about you? One month later, what are your thoughts?
Переслать - GigaOM Is Hiring! WordPress Jedi Wanted
As one of our readers, you are among the most tech-savvy folks online, and if that savviness extends to either developing web content or managing it, we want to hear from you!
GigaOM is hiring. We’re looking for a senior-level WordPress developer and a Junior Webmaster, both full-time positions, as well as a project manager to work on a contract basis. All three require working out of our offices here in San Francisco.
Find out if it’s you we’re looking for to join our rapidly growing team — the required skills and experience for each position are laid out here. If so, we hope to you from you soon!
Переслать - Apple Updates MacBook, But Not the Value
With nary a yellow sticky saying the Apple Store will be back soon, today Apple quietly updated the white MacBook. The company’s value laptop got a slightly faster CPU, better graphics, and longer battery life, but not a better price.
Like the recently updated 13″ MacBook Pro, the MacBook continues to use a Core 2 Duo CPU, now at 2.4 GHz, up from 2.26 GHz. Also like the 13″ MacBook Pro, the MacBook now uses the Nvidia GeForce 320M GPU and advertises up to 10 hours of battery life on a slightly larger 63.5-watt-hour battery.
Unlike the updates to the MacBook Pros, the MacBook saw no increase in memory (still 2GB) or hard drive size, which is still 250GB. The price remains $999, and that’s arguably the problem. Is the MacBook really a value anymore?
The biggest difference between the 13″ MacBook and the 13″ MacBook Pro is now the price, $999 versus $1,199. However, increasing the amount of memory to 4GB like the 13″ MacBook Pro narrows the difference to just $100. For that extra $100, the 13″ MacBook Pro adds an aluminum unibody enclosure, backlit keyboard, FireWire 800 port, and an SD card slot.
You also get a subwoofer in the MacBook Pro, not that it matters with tiny laptop speakers, but the those other features easily combine for a $100 of value. It’s hard not to see the MacBook as little more than a price point attraction to lure customers into an Apple Store where friendly associates can upsell to the MacBook Pro, not there’s anything wrong with that.
What might be wrong is the lack of a true value-priced MacBook at say, $799. While it could be argued that the iPad is the “post PC” portable at $499, the iPad requires a computer if for no other reason than software updates. This means a price-conscious consumer wanting an iPad is better off buying a PC, especially a laptop, if they want the iPad, too. Is that what Apple really wants? It’s something to think about.
The other thing to think about is when, or maybe if, the MacBook Air will be updated. Once again, the niche laptop was passed over. The MacBook Air was last updated in June 2009 at WWDC, meaning history may repeat itself this year, or maybe not.
Unless Apple has kept some magic in reserve, it’s hard to imagine how the five-hour battery in the thinnest of Mac portables will be increased. With the advent of the iPad, a truly portable computing device, it’s becoming more and more difficult to see where the MacBook Air fits into Apple’s portable future.
Переслать - TechUniversity: iChat 101
iChat allows you to chat with friends, share files, share your screen and more. We’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get up and running.
In this TechUniversity iChat 101 screencast (subscription required), I’ll show you the in’s and out’s of the app and how to get up and running chatting, adding friends, sharing your screen and more.
Topics covered:
- Adding a screen name
- Adding buddies
- Text chatting
- Video chatting
- Screen sharing
View full iChat 101 screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required)
Screencast Sample
Переслать - iPhone Dev Sessions: Using Singletons
Managing an application's state can sometimes require complex interaction with persistence and messaging with various resources, or it can be as simple as keeping track of a counter from one view to the next.
Two popular techniques to pass references to objects from one view to the next are to create properties in the Application Delegate, or to continue to pass references from one view to the next like a relay race passes a baton from one runner to the next using a series of carefully placed update methods making for an allocation nightmare and increase the opportunities for memory leaks or the hard to track down crashes. Sometimes this need in programming is referred to as implementing Global Variables. There is also a well established design pattern that can assist with this need as well, it is called the Singleton Pattern.
Singleton Pattern
The Singleton Pattern is a derivative of the Factory Pattern that ensures that one and only one instance of an Object can ever exist. By creating one or more implementations of the Singleton Pattern within a given application, the concept of 'global variables' can better be managed through tighter control. This allows for what is called lazy instantiation. If you do not need the variable based on what is going on in the application, then do not ask for or create an instance of one. In Objective-C, Apple has outlined the recommended technique for implementing the singleton pattern.
Objective-C Singleton Pattern
static MySingletonClass *sharedGizmoManager = nil; (MySingletonClass*)sharedManager{ if (sharedSingletonManager == nil) { sharedSingletonManager = [[super allocWithZone:NULL] init]; } return sharedGizmoManager; } (id)allocWithZone:(NSZone *)zone{ return [[self sharedManager] retain]; } (id)copyWithZone:(NSZone *)zone{ return self; } (id)retain{ return self; } (NSUInteger)retainCount{ return NSUIntegerMax; } (void)release{ //do nothing } (id)autorelease{ return self; }But you may find that the following is all that is necessary:
Singleton.h
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h> @interface Singleton : NSObject { } + (Singleton*) retrieveSingleton; @endSingleton.m
#import "Singleton.h" @implementation Singleton static Singleton *sharedSingleton = nil; + (Singleton*) retrieveSingleton { @synchronized(self) { if (sharedSingleton == nil) { sharedSingleton = [[Singleton alloc] init]; } } return sharedSingleton; } + (id) allocWithZone:(NSZone *) zone { @synchronized(self) { if (sharedSingleton == nil) { sharedSingleton = [super allocWithZone:zone]; return sharedSingleton; } } return nil; } @endTry and keep each singleton's scope limited to manage only the information that is related to a particular use case and not as a catch-all for all global information across the application. It is probably best to utilize each singleton as a delegate to the information it is responsible for managing, and not use it as a means to gain access to any objects it has associations with. Although on the iPhone, and when being used in primarily a read only or a write seldom implementation, the risk of writing code that is not thread safe increases when utilizing shared objects. Keeping concurrency in mind, and utilizing the singleton as a delegate to the information at hand, one can watch out for multi thread related issues and deal with them in kind. One thing to watch out for would be include updating or setting properties of the singleton from within an implemented perform selector or a notification. If concurrency issues do arise, it may become necessary to synchronize access to certain properties or methods.
No, not the AppDelegate!
So why not just keep adding properties to the AppDelegate? After all, the AppDelegate is a singleton as well and is therefore accessible by invoking the sharedApplication class method. The problem with this techniques is that you end up loading up the application with too much information that may or may not be necessary depending on what functions the user chooses to evoke. It could also lead to longer and longer startup times. Get the application started as quickly as possible, and don't leave the user hanging for too long.
What about Global Constants?
Keep in mind that this is not the best technique to employ if all you need is a means to define and gain access to Global Constants. The quickest way to do that is to create a Precompiled Prefix Header file and include that in your project. By default, most of the projects generated in XCode that create iPhone Applications will include a file with an extension of .pch. This file will initially look like the following:
#ifdef __OBJC__ #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
