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- TechUniversity: HTML Signatures in Mail
Apple makes it fairly easy to do basic text formatting for HTML signatures, but using HTML to create more complex signatures requires a bit more work.
In this TechUniversity HTML Signatures in Mail screencast (subscription required), we’ll take a look at how to create a custom HTML signature for use in Mail.app.
View the full HTML Signatures in Mail screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required)
Screencast Sample
Переслать - iPhone Still On Top of Android Globally
The iPhone may have given up its edge in the U.S. market over Android recently, in terms of smartphone OS share, but globally it still leads Google’s mobile OS. That’s according to market research firm Gartner (via PC World), who recently conducted a survey of the global smartphone terrain covering the first quarter of 2010.
That lead is thanks to two key international markets in which the iPhone still boasts a significant lead over its Google competitor. In Europe and Asia, Apple maintains a lead that amounts to around a 3 million unit advantage over Android. It’s still a significant lead, but the fact is that Android is still in a very strong position in all world markets.
It’s especially strong because it’s the fastest growing of all the smartphone operating systems represented in the survey, and it’s experiencing that growth during a heady time for smartphone sales in general, with global sales overall seeing record increases. Put simply, Android is grabbing the most significant portion of an expanding pie.
Android’s share grew from 1.6 to 9.6 percent in Q1 2010, while Apple’s share went from 10.5 to 15.4 percent. Both are still behind Symbian and RIM, but the shares of both those companies shrank during the period measured. Symbian, the worldwide leader, dropped to 44.3 from 48.8 percent. RIM slid from 20.6 to 19.4. Windows Mobile is the big loser overall, dropping from 10.2 to 6.8 percent, which puts it behind Android in the global rankings.
It’s a mixed bag for Apple. On the one hand, it’s still performing well in the global market, and two of the three major smartphone markets still have them positioned ahead of Android. On the other hand, Android’s growth is meteoric, and the numbers would seem to indicate that customers new to the smartphone market are leaning in Android’s direction overall.
What’s crucial to keep in mind is that Android’s share grew from next to nothing to a significant percentage. It’s highly likely that it’ll continue to have similarly strong performance globally, since it can really only go from nothing to something once. Now that it’s entrenched itself in the market at large, its growth rate will likely slip to something much more reasonable, like Apple’s five percent gain.
Will Android continue to threaten Apple’s piece of the smartphone market pie? No doubt. Will it blow past iPhone OS and emerge as the dominant force in the market? That’s much less likely. Android and Apple will contend with each other on the world stage, but it’ll be a real fight, not a one-sided affair.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Who Owns Android's Future? Google — Or Apple?
Переслать - Reading Guide for iPhone App Development
For those of you wanting to learn iPhone development, there are a number of resources available. Besides blogs (like ours) there are a number of books that can help pull things together for new and budding developers.
New Stuff to Learn
There’s been a lot of press lately about Apple development tools and the programming language, which is Objective-C. While folks that come from a C and C++ background feel quite at home with Objective-C, there are various developer groups feeling left out of the iPhone app gold rush. Specifically, I am speaking to the legions of .NET and Flash developers who have spent many years mastering their craft and are now being asked to learn a new set of tools, programming language and SDK.
As someone who went through that transition I thought I would document the books that helped along the way. While I did learn Mac development in a classroom setting, the books I’ll recommend were instrumental to it all making sense. My recommendations are listed in suggested reading order.
The Basics
The first book that can help orient new Mac developers is Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Apress. While the book doesn’t specifically focus on the iPhone SDK it does provide fundamental answers to beginner programming questions. This includes how to program Objective-C properties, methods, classes, variables and OO design. It also introduces important concepts such as NSDictionary and NSPredicate which become useful when learning database development using Core Data.
Build On What You’ve Learned
Once you get your bearings you can build on the fundamentals by reading Beginning iPhone Development by Apress. This book introduces the basic aspects of the iPhone SDK. As you may know, learning Objective-C doesn’t necessarily make you an iPhone expert. You will also need to learn how to apply the iPhone SDK using Objective-C which is the focus of this book.
Create User Interfaces
I’ve heard a lot of people comment about their experience with Interface Builder (IB). Granted, IB may not be what most existing developers are used to, I do find working with it to be fun and different. There’s a lot you can do with IB, but working with XIB files (pronounced “nib”) IBOulets and IBActions can be complex. In the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, he provides almost all of his code examples in an illustrated step-by-step approach. Readers also get exposed to additional concepts such as Key-Value-Coding, which is used in Mac desktop development.
Fill In the Gaps
At this stage you’ll certainly understand most, if not all of the language syntax and SDK fundamentals. However, you may not understand why some things work they way they do. This may include items such as memory management, synthesizing properties, calling delegates and handling notifications. One of the best books to help fill in the gaps is Head First – iPhone Development by O’Reilly. It provides one of the best introductions to Core Data that I’ve seen. One cruise through this book and you’ll be a happy camper.
Build Something Cool
By now you should have the knowledge to put your development ideas into action. Add to your new found expertise by reading More iPhone Development by Apress. This book skips the preliminaries and gets right into the good stuff such as Core Location, GameKit and the MediaPlayer Framework. I’ve been surprised by how many times I go back to this book as a reference for new and existing projects.
Have a Reference
Finally, the last resource that I recommend is the online reference material provided by Apple. This is not to say that its documentation is not good. On the contrary, it’s a great resource, but almost to a fault. Due to the complexity of its documentation I find it most useful as a reference and not for learning new concepts. I feel many new developers rush to the iPhone Developers Reference documentation as their first information source only to be discouraged when none of it makes sense.
Conclusion
Learning iPhone Development is indeed challenging but is not impossible with the right resources. As you continue to build your skills in app development we’ll be here to help take your ideas from concept to the App Store. In meantime these books should ease the learning curve.
Переслать - Google's Apple Complex on Display at I/O
The claws were out at Google I/O today, where Google VP engineering Vic Gundotra gave his best Steve Jobs impression — by which I mean, an on-stage presentation of new launches that featured ample use of passive-aggressive jabs and humor at the expense of competitors, delivered to a rapt and supportive audience.
Google VP engineering Vic Gundotra
Gundotra’s task was to present Android’s new version — 2.2 (aka Froyo) — as a minor update in the grand scheme of things. But he made masterful use of market sentiment, at a time when the greater technology community is somewhat aghast at Apple’s efforts to cut off Adobe and Flash at the knees. Feature after feature was presented in the context of the competition — Apple’s iPhone and iPad — drawing big laughs and applause from the audience of a few thousand at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.
“If you believe in openness, if you believe in choice, if you believe in innovation from everyone, then welcome to Android,” was Gundotra’s rallying cry. He explained that the mobile platform, from the time it was a top-secret product by Andy Rubin, had always been destined for this fight. “If Google does not act we face a draconian future,” Rubin apparently told Gundotra on the latter’s first day on the job.
Where Apple presents Flash as closed and buggy, and offers HTML 5 as an alternative, Google is trying to curry favor by being inclusive of all things web. The new Android will support the latest versions of Adobe’s Flash and Air. Google’s main objective is to advance the web as a platform, on PCs, on mobile and now the TV as well. And by playing nice with Adobe, Google got the beleaguered company to sign on to have Flash support Google’s new open-source video codec WebM, an alternative to Apple’s codec of choice, H.264.
Gundotra posed Google as the benevolent enabler of users and the competitive marketplace:
“It turns out that on the Internet, people use Flash. And part of being open means you are inclusive, rather than exclusive, and you are open to innovation. It’s really fun to work with other folks in the ecosystem to meet the needs of users, much nicer than just saying no.”
Gundotra walked through a new set of mobile ad formats quite similar to Apple’s coming iAd advertising platform and network, which has drawn fire for the tight grip Apple is holding over the creation and deployment of ads. Gundotra pointed out that Google has been in the advertising business for 10 years.
In introducing new Android APIs for communicating and updating the device, Gundotra poked at Apple’s equivalent, alluding that they were “designed for basic lack of functionality like lack of multitasking in the operating system.” Then Gundotra pitched Android’s new tethering and portable hotspot function as a mobile wireless solution for the iPad, receiving a big laugh.
He also demoed JavaScript performance improvements on the new Android, which is a supposed two to three times faster, by using an app to show a speed test vs. the older version of Android and the iPad. Froyo killed the other two, easily lapping the iPad’s performance within a few seconds. “I really wonder if we’ll be able to get that in the App Store,” Gundotra said of the speed test app, jabbing at Apple’s tight grip on the software available on its platform. Then came the punchline: “Oh, it’s a web app; how great is that?”
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
A Brighter Week Ahead for Flash
Переслать - Your Mom Wants an iPad
I’ve been amazed by the flood of negative press surrounding Apple’s latest offering. I like what David Pogue had to say about the shape of a typical Apple product release — “months of feverish speculation and hype online,” followed by “the bashing by bloggers who’ve never even tried it,” followed by “people lining up to buy the thing” — and the iPad release has followed that trajectory quite nicely.
But what’s so surprising to me about the bad reviews is the general condemnation of the iPad’s features. According to the blogosphere, most of the things that make the iPhone good make the iPad bad, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. What’s worse, though, is how much of the criticism is just facile. Are we really going to give big-name, prime-time, above-the-fold blog space to the iPad’s bezel?
I am disappointed.
So while I agree that the iPad looks like the iPhone grew up and got a job as a picture frame, I’m disappointed that only very few seem willing to look past that to see that the two devices have very different goals. Whereas the iPhone was about convergence of features, the iPad is about convergence of activities.
The iPad Versus the iPhone — What, You Mean They’re Not the Same?
The iPhone was designed from the ground up to change the mobile phone game with its features. Feature convergence was already a longstanding trend in the U.S. device market when the iPhone was released in 2007, having started with the first true smartphones like the Palm Treo in the early ’90s. But despite a full decade of “convergent” devices, there was still no one device in the U.S. market that combined telephone, music, contacts, high-quality GPS, and usable Internet browsing until the iPhone. The iPhone let people do things that no other phone would. Add the iPhone’s intuitive interface, polished appearance, and Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field to the iPhone’s (at the time) one-of-a-kind feature list and you get a bona fide, must-have, status symbol phenomenon on your hands.
The iPad, on the other hand, is designed from the ground up to be incredibly simple, but still useful and robust. Whereas the iPhone let techies do things they couldn’t do before at all, the iPad will let muggles do things they already do more easily.
Time has turned the iPhone’s touch interface from “newfangled” to “natural,” especially for the non-tech savvy crowd, so many people will find everyday tasks like email more satisfying on the iPad’s intuitive touch interface. People can say a lot of things about Apple’s products, but they can’t say that they’re hard to use. Apple’s track record on usability is stellar, and the iPad is more than living up to its pedigree.
The iPhone has also proven that apps are serious business, which means that iPad users can rest assured that if they want a simple-to-use app for playing poker, or planning a trip, or even looking at funny pictures of cats, the worst they’ll have to do is wait. And remember, all 185,000 apps in the App Store work on the iPad out of the box. (They may not be pretty, but they work.) The App Store will make the iPad the average user’s one stop shop for simple tasks and casual recreation. And because all apps come from the App Store, which has ratings and reviews for each one, finding good apps is easy because they’re all in one place and just a keyword search away.
But even though it’s obvious that the iPhone and the iPad are pursuing different goals in different markets, the most common criticism of the iPad by far is still its perceived lack of features. It’s true: the iPad lacks Flash support and HDMI output, and is not widescreen. But the people who have bought or are going to buy the iPad don’t care. If these features are important to you, then the iPad isn’t for you. Don’t buy it. But it’s important to understand that these features aren’t important to everybody, even if they’re important to you.
The Whole Point of the iPad: The Market
Because of the incredible amount of buzz that has surrounded the iPhone since its launch, it’s easy to forget that not everybody has one, or even wants one. The iPhone was aimed at techies who needed access to high technology anytime, anywhere. That’s a lot of people, to be sure, but it’s not everybody. The iPad is aimed at a different market: people who want an easy-to-use computer that’s powerful enough, as opposed to a souped-up phone.
Is there overlap between these two markets? Sure. But they’re not the same. The purpose of the iPad is to take iPhone technology and boldly go where no iPhone has gone before.
There are three kinds of people when it comes to the iPad: people who won’t buy it, people who will buy it and use it as their primary computer, and people who will buy it but will not use it as their primary computer. (There’s probably at least one more group that says something like “*@#$ no I won’t buy it!” but I’m trying to keep this article family friendly.)
The iPad as a Primary Computer
The people who will buy the iPad to use as their primary computer are not who you would call “power users.” They do simple things on computers, so a simple computer suits them just fine. How about your mom, for instance? Your mom uses her computer to play solitaire, check her email, poke around on msn.com, and leave embarrassing comments on your Facebook wall. The iPad is perfect for your mom. It’s easy to use, hard to break, and (compared to a “real” computer) not too expensive.
To your mom, the iPad’s simplicity is a feature, not a bug.
And when was the last time your mom complained that she can’t distribute her app to her friends because there’s no ad-hoc app distribution? How about never? Your mom loves that all apps come from the App Store because it gives her a better-than-chance shot at actually finding them.
And to those who call Apple’s closed platform restrictive and controlling: Bingo! But stop saying that like it’s a bad thing. Instead of thinking about what you can’t do on the iPad because it’s closed, start thinking about what your mom can’t do on the iPad because it’s closed:
- Install that friendly-looking free PC tune-up
- Claim her prize for being the 999th visitor to imavirus.com
- Streamline her iPad with “convenient browser toolbars”
- Download RealPlayer and its 517MBs of “must-have!” add-ons
Since Apple checks all App Store apps one-by-one, malware on the iPad just doesn’t exist. I don’t know why more geeks don’t support the iPad for exactly this reason — it’ll cut their mommy-related tech support calls in half.
And about the other “missing” features: Does your mom even know what HDMI is? How about widescreen standards? Product features are only important if they’re important to the people buying the product.
(By the way, it took all my discipline not to crack a joke in a whole section of talking about your mom.)
The iPad as a Secondary Computer
The people who buy the iPad to use as a secondary computer will be trying to do one of a couple of things: liven up their dead time, or make their hard work easier.
For the first case, think about a commuter who doesn’t drive to work in the morning (New York City, anyone?). Now that the iPad 3G has hit the streets, they can read any newspaper in the world, catch up on their reading, play some games, and look at compromising pictures of their friends on MySpace with multitouch goodness on a beautiful 9.7″ color screen all for $629 down and $15-$30 per month. It’s hard to call Kindle a good alternative for this market, even with free 3G wireless and a price tag of $259, because of its non-touch screen, lack of an App Store, slow Internet browsing, and because gosh, isn’t color nice? The Nook hits a little closer to the mark because of its color touch screen, but it’s still really just for books and other digitized print media, not for videos and apps. And both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have (or will soon have) iPad e-Reader apps, too, so it’s pretty clear they don’t expect their devices to out-compete the iPad on its own turf. But if you still don’t think the iPad will be used by morning commuters to catch up on the news and such, there are a couple small companies like the Wall Street Journal and NPR who disagree. If I weren’t so addicted to writing software in the morning (OK, all the time) and I didn’t drive my morning commute, the iPad would be a no-brainer for me.
The second crowd is thinking: sure, it’s expensive, but so what? This market of overworked high rollers like doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers value their time more than they value their money, so any product that can make catching up on email or keeping up on the news either (a) go faster or (b) suck less will be on their Amazon wish list in a big hurry. And these guys aren’t exactly what you’d call “price sensitive,” so for them productivity is king. Even the most expensive $899 price tag on the top model is well below their flinch point if it makes their work just a little faster or their life just a little more fun.
The iPad As a Viable Product
So if the iPad looks like a huge iPhone…well, good. I know a lot of people who could really use an iPhone-cum-tablet. iPhones don’t do everything, but they do a lot and they do it well, and most important of all they just work. And if the iPad bears more than a passing resemblance to an iPhone, that’s not a bad thing if you want to buy something that’s a lot like an iPhone. And it looks like that’s something a lot of people want to do.
Your mom doesn’t need a new widescreen computer with HDMI output and an open development process. Your mom needs a computer that does what she wants to do quickly and easily. That’s why she wants an iPad.
And she’s not alone.
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