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- Preparing to Write Your First iPhone App
You’ve seen the statistics and glowing success stories and you’re interested in writing your first iPhone app. Good for you! If you’ve never developed content for a mobile device, or if you are new to software development, learning iPhone development can be a fun and rewarding experience. In future articles I’ll be providing you with tips and tricks for getting your first application up and running. However before we jump into the code, let’s take a step back to consider the building blocks of your first app.
Will it make sense to your audience?
As in all things related to software development, the goal of your app will be to provide a solution to a set of end-users. In some cases your “solution” could be an answer to a specific problem, or it could allow people to discover something new about their environment. Perhaps the solution already exists on another platform (e.g. desktop, web) but doesn’t exist for the iPhone.
One thing you do know is that your audience is on the go. People who use mobile applications find value in quick interactions with limited user input. They don’t want to use your app to write a Word document. However, people will like your app if they can get the information they need by pressing a button or two. In the case of a mapping application or e-mail, they may only launch the app (with no user input) to get the information they need.
Think “Pocket Computer” instead of Mobile Phone
As an experienced web developer, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the term “mobile phone” is limited functionality on a screen that is too small. All things being equal, this has been the typical experience of previous mobile platforms. With the iPhone, think of the device as a pocket computer. For example, many new iPhone users report decreased usage in both laptop and desktop computers. In addition, successful applications like Pandora that have typically struggled in a desktop setting now flourish as a pocket computer solution. When planning your application think about what is unique to iPhone that can be utilized in your app. If you can figure this out you’ll have the next Bump or Urbanspoon.
Consider the differences between iPhone and iPod touch
With your cool app idea and a good understanding of your audience, let’s consider the actual hardware and software. Depending on which frameworks (major components of the iPhone SDK) are used in your application, your app may not work on every iPhone device. For example, an application that makes use of the camera, compass or microphone will work on an iPhone but not an iPod touch. It’s OK to write an app that is limited to iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS – just be sure you account for it when you develop (and market) your app. This should also go without saying, but be certain to have a physical iPhone or iPod touch to test your code before submitting your app to the app store.
Document your ideas
Before you commit any code to your new project, take some time to document your end-user experience. This doesn’t need to be a lengthy requirements document. It could be as simple as writing down some notes on paper or sketching some drawings. When I created Jingle! I sketched the design using a stencil kit provided by UI Stencils. Using actual paper and a stencil kit was especially cool as it was a fun way to piece together user interface elements. I also tracked my notes, marketing materials and communication using Evernote.
Design a great user experience
When you start looking at Apple documentation, one recurring theme you will see is reference to a document called the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). Essentially this is the master document for how your iPhone application should look and behave. Most of us have heard the stories of how XYZ app was “rejected” by Apple because of an apparently random decision. If you want a head start on what Apple is looking for in an application, you will benefit greatly by starting with this document.
Another way to ensure a great experience is to look at other leading applications that may be in your category. Ask yourself why those applications are the leaders and what elements they used to create a great experience. Also check out the ideas of usability expert Jakob Nielsen.
Manage Memory and Battery Life
To ensure your project is successful also consider how your app will manage memory and battery life. As we will discover in the code, there is no garbage collection for iPhone so you as a developer will be in command of memory management. Also, certain iPhone functions will use more battery life than others. For example, applications that stream data from the Internet or make extensive use of the Core Location Framework (e.g. GPS) will drain battery life more quickly.
Data Management
Finally, one of the most complex items you will need to consider is data management. You have three options. If your app is a basic utility (e.g. temperature converter, calculator) you shouldn’t have to worry about storing data. If you plan to build an app that connects to an Internet-based service (e.g. how Tweetie works with Twitter), you’ll connect to these online resources through web services. Your third option will be to store user data on the device using the Core Data Framework.
If you are planning your first app, feel free to send in your questions, thoughts and ideas!
Переслать - iPad: Slayer of Netbook Sales
The iPad may be partially or even primarily responsible for the slow demise of netbook sales, according to Morgan Stanley market (via Fortune) analyst Katy Huberty. In a report released Thursday for Morgan Stanley clients, the impact of the iPad is causally linked to the rapid decline of the netbook sales growth curve.
Netbook sales apparently peaked last summer, when its growth rate reached an impressive 641 percent increase from the same time the previous year. Since then, it’s been trending downward, though punctuated with some comebacks and maintaining impressive growth overall. Then in January of 2010, things start to go downhill fast, with a dropoff from 68 percent growth that month to only 5 percent in April of 2010.
So what’s the iPad have to do with anything? Apple’s category-spanning device was announced in January of 2010, you may recall, and it was released the following April. Considering that that period perfectly intersects with the netbook’s most significant growth drop-off to date, it’s hard not to see the two as causally related. Especially when Apple moved 1 million iPad units sometime in there, counting pre-orders and sales of the device since its release.
This is only anecdotal, but I’ve seen a number of friends put their Dell hackintoshes up for sale following the iPad announcement and release, in most cases explicitly because they don’t need their little Frankenstein monster anymore now that Apple’s provided its own affordable ultraportable. As a side note, it’s probably a good time to grab a cheap, lightly used hackintosh Mini 9 or 10v if you’re in the market.
It isn’t just the netbook’s sales growth slump that points towards the iPad’s success over those devices, either. In a survey conducted in March, 44 percent of those polled claimed that they were buying the iPad instead of a netbook or notebook PC. And if that same survey is any indication, the iPod touch is next.
41 percent of those polled said they were planning on buying an iPad instead of Apple’s marquee media player device. It can’t really be a surprise to the company, since the price gap between the two isn’t really that significant and you get so much more (screen real estate, connectivity) for your buck with the iPad. My own theory is that Apple intended this, and will try to swing the pendulum back by introducing an iPod touch with camera before doing the same six months later with the iPad.
Will the iPad kill the netbook? I hope so, but I think that device was doomed regardless of whether or not an iPad-type device came around to finish it off. Will it kill the iPod touch? That’s another story altogether, and one that I think will depend heavily on how much further Apple can push the iPhone in terms of market saturation. In theory, I can see the iPad and iPhone squeezing out the iPod touch as the markets of those two more versatile devices expand. What do you think?
Related GigaOM Pro Research: The Future of Netbooks!
Переслать - Does Ubuntu Capture the "Mac Vision And Spirit" Better Than Mac OS X?
A week ago, on April 29, Linux distro Canonical released Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) in Desktop, Server and Netbook editions. It featured a new look that some rate more attractive and up-to-date than Snow Leopard’s. “Lucid Lynx’s” new graphics card drivers and other consumer-oriented innovations front a Linux-based operating system package containing all the essential productivity applications you need, all for free: a web browser, office suite, media apps, instant messaging and much more, and is being pitched as an open-source alternative to Windows and Office or Mac OS X and the iApps. Ubuntu’s core applications are all free and open source.
The Register’s Gavin Clarke reported last week that with Lucid Lynx, Canonical is hoping to entice Mac and Windows users to switch, quoting the company’s COO and blogger Matt Asay asserting that changes in the consumer-oriented Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition will cause “Apple fanbois” to reconsider their love for Steve Jobs, while “milk-fed Windows users” will be less inclined to run screaming to their retailer to return their Ubuntu PCs.
Given Apple’s increasingly evident distractedness from Mac OS development as it concentrates more and more on the mobile space with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, some are also suggesting that Ubuntu captures the traditional “Mac” spirit and vision better than the actual Mac OS does these days.
In an April 28 essay anticipating the imminent Ubuntu 10.04 release, ServerWatch’s Paul Rubens said that Apple is fading from relevance in the computing space as it focuses more and more on phones, web tablets and other consumer gadgets, and that if you’re an old-style Apple fan (by which he means a fan of real Apple Mac computers, not so much the new Apples-R-Us toys and games company), there’s no need to fret because while Apple may not “get” it anymore, it seems Canonical does. He asserts that during the past 12 months Ubuntu has evolved into something that’s powerful, easy to use, and far more stylish than Snow Leopard, which he thinks is not really that surprising when you consider that Apple is far too busy with its iPhone OS to bother much with updating OS X. Rubens says that Ubuntu is innovative, forward-looking, stylish and fun, and rapidly becoming everything that OS X might’ve been had Apple not decided to turn its back on it and become fixated with iPhone OS — “except for being overpriced and closed.”
The concept of desktop Linux possibly better capturing the early-days essence of Mac culture isn’t entirely new. A decade ago I reported on another user-friendly Linux GUI project by a startup called Eazel. The Eazel team was spearheaded by a who’s who of Macintosh alumni. Staffers included Mike Boich — former head of Macintosh evangelism for Apple Computer; Andy Hertzfeld — lead programmer for original Mac OS development in the early ’80s who wrote much of the code that became the iconic Macintosh GUI; Susan Kare who did the graphic design for the original Mac OS Finder icons; Darin Adler who had been technical lead for System 7 development at Apple; and Bud Tribble — first software architect on the Macintosh project and manager of the original Macintosh software team. Mac people all from way back. Arguably, that bunch had a more purebred Macintosh “pedigree” than the folks who were developing OS X at the time.
I suggested back in 2000 that there was a case to be made that the thinking behind Eazel may well be truer to the original Mac essence than OS X itself. I wondered whether OS X would retain enough distinct classic Mac-ness, that je ne sais quois that made the Mac a Mac for many of us veteran users, to sustain the dogged loyalty that had characterized the Mac community through thick and thin for 16 years up to that point? Or would it be so NeXT like, or much, much worse, Windows-like, that hitherto Mac loyalists might be tempted to stray into other pastures? As it turned out, the Eazel project eventually withered on the vine, as it were, and we Mac OS fans adapted to OS X, which turned out to be a very decent computing environment, but lately there are rumblings that Apple is losing interest in the Mac OS with its focus shifting primarily to the mobile space.
Indeed, in his April 29 philippic against Adobe Flash, Steve Jobs appeared to refer to “the PC era” in the past tense, “implying that the computer and mouse paradigm is passé, with the mobile era being about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards (notwithstanding that ironically the iPhone OS environment is anything but ‘open’).”
Not so with Ubuntu, which is committed to traditional desktop and laptop computing, and where the ‘free’ in ‘free software’ is used primarily in reference to freedom, and not to price — although the company says it’s committed to not charging for Ubuntu, and that the most important thing about Ubuntu is that it confers rights of software freedom on the people who install and use it, freedoms that will enable the Ubuntu community to grow, continue to share its collective experience and expertise to improve Ubuntu and make it suitable for use in new countries and new industries.
What do you think? Does Canonical with Ubuntu have a realistic shot at convincing significant numbers of Mac OS and Windows users to switch?
Переслать - New Features in iPhone OS 4 Beta 3
This week saw the release of a new beta for the upcoming iPhone OS major release, version 4.0. Beta 3 brought a lot of bug fixes and stability improvements, but it also brings some more noticeable changes the user experience of everyone’s favorite smartphone device.
File Sharing
A new menu interface in the Apps tab of your iPhone when it’s connected to iTunes promises to allow you to move files from your computer to your iPhone, and to specific apps in particular.
Can’t wait to see this feature implemented device-wide. It’ll make it so much simpler to use apps like Documents to Go and, hopefully, the entire iWorks suite from Apple itself. Let’s hope all file types are supported, too, so that certain apps will be able to turn your iPhone into a true flash drive, finally.
Closing Open Apps
The new multitasking interface is great for switching between apps, but wasn’t all that great for killing open ones, since you had to hold them individually until the red minus sign appeared, and then do the same again for the next. In this new update, each app that’s open now gets a minus sign when you perform the icon hold once, so you can then go through and kill them all quickly in one pass. It’s a huge improvement in terms of user experience, and one that my tired digits greatly appreciate.
Screen Orientation Lock
Lying in bed, trying to browse the web, and having to hold the iPhone and your head at just the right angle to prevent it from switching to landscape mode. Now that’s incredibly annoying. I’m sure you’ll agree if you’ve ever had to do it, or anything that involved trying to prevent the iPhone’s auto-orientation adjustment from happening.
A new button, located in the app switcher bar, fixes all that. It locks the iPhone in portrait-only mode, device-wide. No option to lock it in landscape mode, but that wouldn’t really work on the iPhone, which lacks landscape options for the home screen.
iPhone OS 4.0 was exciting to begin with, but to see that Apple’s actively interested in adding further refinements and improvements at this late stage is even better. Let’s hope these new features make the cut and see full implementation in the final release.
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