etc: If your indie band has songs on iTunes and you want to offer fans an iTunes LP package, check out this straightforward tutorial to adapt the sample iTunes LP project from Apple.
If your indie band has songs on iTunes and you want to offer fans an iTunes LP package, check out this straightforward tutorial to adapt the sample iTunes LP project from Apple.
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Stanford offering updated iPhone dev course on iTunes U
Like it did last year, Stanford University has posted the complete lecture and presentation slides for the Winter 2010 term’s iPhone Application Development course. If you aren’t in school or your local center for higher education hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon and offered its own course, the Sanford course may be a good substitute.
The course, overseen by Apple’s Paul Marcos and taught this term by Alan Cannistraro, also from Apple, has proven quite popular: it was downloaded from iTunes more than 4.4 million times last year. The latest series of lectures are updated to include APIs from the latest iPhone OS 3.1 SDK. Furthermore, the videos are also closed-captioned for better accessibility. “In addition to helping those with hearing disabilities, the captions will be helpful to English language learners or students trying to understand the more technical aspects of the classes,” Julie Zelenski, a Stanford computer science lecturer, told The Loop.
Unlike on-campus students that are officially enrolled in the class, however, you won’t be able to turn to the professor or TAs for help following along. “We get a lot of e-mails from people asking, ‘Hey, I have problems with this SDK function, can you help me do it?’” Cannistraro told The Chronicle of Higher Learning. “And we can’t, unfortunately.”
Lecture videos and materials are already posted for weeks one and two on iTunes, with the remaining eight lectures being posted after they are given. They are absolutely free to download via iTunes, and are published under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.
Apple dumps app developer and his 900+ apps from App Store
Apple has been criticized lately for some of its questionable app rejections, as well as the recent expunging of Google Voice apps from the App Store. Now, it seems as if Apple has seen fit to use its veto power to address one common criticism of the App Store—the flood of apps with questionable content or utility. Developer Khalid Shaikh had his iPhone developer license revoked, and his 900+ apps were summarily removed from the App Store.
Shaikh built a business model that took advantage of the worst aspects of the iPhone App Store. His team of 26 engineers—based in India and Pakistan and working 12 hours days, six days a week—churned out nearly 1,000 apps that merely agregated articles and other content from the Web in such cleverly titled apps as “US Army News,” “Skin Care Updates,” and “WWE Updates.” He sold these apps for $4.99 each, with the goal of “less product value” and “more monetization.” Shaikh told MobileCrunch that he was making thousands of dollars a day with this technique.
Apple dumps app developer and his 900+ apps from App Store
Apple has been criticized lately for some of its questionable app rejections, as well as the recent expunging of Google Voice apps from the App Store. Now, it seems as if Apple has seen fit to use its veto power to address one common criticism of the App Store—the flood of apps with questionable content or utility. Developer Khalid Shaikh had his iPhone developer license revoked, and his 900+ apps were summarily removed from the App Store.
Shaikh built a business model that took advantage of the worst aspects of the iPhone App Store. His team of 26 engineers—based in India and Pakistan and working 12 hours days, six days a week—churned out nearly 1,000 apps that merely agregated articles and other content from the Web in such cleverly titled apps as “US Army News,” “Skin Care Updates,” and “WWE Updates.” He sold these apps for $4.99 each, with the goal of “less product value” and “more monetization.” Shaikh told MobileCrunch that he was making thousands of dollars a day with this technique.
Apple may block push notifications for unlocked iPhones
A company called PoweryBase recently noticed that some users were having problems with its NotifyMe app, which allows uses to set reminders that are pushed to an iPhone at a specified time. It was able to trace the problem to users that had unlocked their iPhones to work on a different mobile carrier, which may actually be by design on Apple’s part.
The problem stems from how the push notification service works with Apple’s servers. An application that uses push notifications will attempt to register with APNS on launch. The APNS will respond with a unique token that allows notifications to be routed to a specific phone. However, APNS simply does not respond to a registration request from a phone with an unauthorized unlock hack. If an application isn’t coded to time out after a certain period of waiting for the APNS request, it will essentially appear to be locked up, waiting for a response that will never come.
Click here to read the rest of this article
Apple may block push notifications for unlocked iPhones
A company called PoweryBase recently noticed that some users were having problems with its NotifyMe app, which allows uses to set reminders that are pushed to an iPhone at a specified time. It was able to trace the problem to users that had unlocked their iPhones to work on a different mobile carrier, which may actually be by design on Apple’s part.
The problem stems from how the push notification service works with Apple’s servers. An application that uses push notifications will attempt to register with APNS on launch. The APNS will respond with a unique token that allows notifications to be routed to a specific phone. However, APNS simply does not respond to a registration request from a phone with an unauthorized unlock hack. If an application isn’t coded to time out after a certain period of waiting for the APNS request, it will essentially appear to be locked up, waiting for a response that will never come.
Click here to read the rest of this article
iPhone developer opens storefront, new business model
A software developer opening a brick and mortar store so that he can rent his application might not seem like a great idea on the surface, but the potential revenue was enough for Chris Metts of Slicker Interactive to do just that. Metts is the creator of several virtual tour applications for the iPhone that use the device’s location awareness to offer up local content to the user. Currently, the company offers applications intended for tours of Rome, Paris, London, and Charleston, SC.
So where will Metts be opening up shop? The city of lights? The Eternal City? No, the programmer will be opening his doors in Charleston, South Carolina (which, in his defense, has been coined America’s Most Historic City). There aren’t many details at the moment, but the business model seems to be comprised entirely of renting an iPod touch preloaded with his application to tourists who wish to see what the city has to offer. In addition to audio commentary, the application also offers interviews with experts, photos of buildings circa the 1860s, and video.
Hopefully, the store will be more than just a storefront and will also act as the company’s center of operations. It doesn’t seem like enough revenue would be generated from the rentals to pay for all the costs involved. Don’t get me wrong; I like the idea, it just seems that a historical society would have more foot traffic and be a more logical place for people to look for this type of thing. Further, a historical society could work out contracts with Metts to create similar applications for their cities and then bring in revenue doing what Metts is doing on his own. It does appear that Slicker Interactive has worked with the South Carolina Historical Society in the past, though, so we’ll have to see how this idea develops.
iPhone developer opens storefront, new business model
A software developer opening a brick and mortar store so that he can rent his application might not seem like a great idea on the surface, but the potential revenue was enough for Chris Metts of Slicker Interactive to do just that. Metts is the creator of several virtual tour applications for the iPhone that use the device’s location awareness to offer up local content to the user. Currently, the company offers applications intended for tours of Rome, Paris, London, and Charleston, SC.
So where will Metts be opening up shop? The city of lights? The Eternal City? No, the programmer will be opening his doors in Charleston, South Carolina (which, in his defense, has been coined America’s Most Historic City). There aren’t many details at the moment, but the business model seems to be comprised entirely of renting an iPod touch preloaded with his application to tourists who wish to see what the city has to offer. In addition to audio commentary, the application also offers interviews with experts, photos of buildings circa the 1860s, and video.
Hopefully, the store will be more than just a storefront and will also act as the company’s center of operations. It doesn’t seem like enough revenue would be generated from the rentals to pay for all the costs involved. Don’t get me wrong; I like the idea, it just seems that a historical society would have more foot traffic and be a more logical place for people to look for this type of thing. Further, a historical society could work out contracts with Metts to create similar applications for their cities and then bring in revenue doing what Metts is doing on his own. It does appear that Slicker Interactive has worked with the South Carolina Historical Society in the past, though, so we’ll have to see how this idea develops.
iPhone OS 3.1 Beta Available for Developers
Following closely on the official release of iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has seeded a developer build of version 3.1, build 7C97D, along with the SDK.
The point release appears to be more than bug fixes, too. A number of sites, including Gizmodo, are reporting features like:
- Faster boot time
- Bluetooth voice control
- Access to video editing through APIs for third-party developers
- Non-destructive editing of video by allowing saving of copies
- Fraud Protection, or phishing warnings, as an option in preferences for Safari
This discussion at MacRumors also has an interesting list of new features:
- A carrier selection preference, though apparently not for AT&T customers
- An MMS option, though again this does not apply to AT&T customers yet
- Saving video sent in e-mail to the camera roll
- Direct copying and pasting in the address book, no need to select edit first
- Copy and paste phone numbers to and from the phone keypad
- Canceling text messages as they are sent
- Choose picture size/quality for MMS video, where MMS is an option
As for fixes, the biggest problem, so far, relates to hardware of the iPhone 3GS, not the OS. Whether the new firmware helps with overheating issues has not been reported yet.
The speed at which Apple is updating the iPhone firmware is intriguing. From the final of version of 1.0 to 1.1, over two months passed, and nearly that much time from 2.0 to 2.1 and 2.1 to 2.2. Of course, this latest version of the iPhone OS is a beta, but it’s hard to imagine two more months will pass before iPhone OS 3.1 is officially released. One possible explanation might be that with the apparent early success of the Palm Pre, Apple feels the need to compete a little more aggressively. If so, bring on Windows Mobile 7.
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App Developer Diary Part 1: Game On
This is the first installment of one journalist’s diary designing a game. It is a genuine, behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to develop an app, from conception to release, for Apple’s iPhone.
This isn’t your regular developer diary. There’ll be no talk of code and classes, no discussion of the intricacy of integers or vileness of variables. In fact, before we begin my journey into game design, I’ll take a moment to set the scene.
Late last year, I hit the 3-year mark working at a big name mobile game publisher. My grand scheme, after graduating from college — studying for a degree in “Computer & Video Games” — was to take a job at an established game studio, learn my trade, garner some valuable industry experience and then go solo. Deep down, I wanted to make the kind of games that weren’t being made enough: Katamari Damacy, Rez, Jet Set Radio Future and Vib Ribbon.
I wasn’t exactly sure what going solo entailed, but I knew it involved me ploughing my own creative furrow. More importantly, after doing the full-time thing, I also knew that my solo endeavors wouldn’t involve a regular 9-to-5: I work best during night hours, while the city sleeps, like Batman, but with less scowling and cape swishing.
Fresh from college, when many of my peers were jobless, or asking their ‘clients’ if they wanted to supersize, or, worse still, working in QA for a game developer, I landed myself a producer role at a big-name mobile publisher. In just my first year as producer, I found myself working on projects for hit Hollywood movies and my favorite comic book characters.
A New Beginning
For three years I rolled around the company, shifting job titles and launching products, hoarding experience like a demented katamari. When the time came, though, I packed up my Mac mini — the only Apple device in the office — and moved on.
And here I am now, a freelancer, doing what I love — being a creative consultant, journalist, musician. Except that in the process of working for that game publisher, disillusionment set in. I still love playing and talking about games, but those three years sitting behind the wizard’s curtain utterly dissolved my passion for creating games.
Until last week, that is, when I was approached by an iPhone development studio to get involved with their latest project. The three-man team, located in Barcelona, the UK and Finland, had developed a game engine prototype for iPhone.
Breaking Out From the Mold
The dev team’s prototype takes a traditional bat-and-ball game and injects it with physics. They need me to introduce some depth to the game’s design, though, working on everything from the gameplay mechanic and fundamental rules to artwork and sound effects.
As a game concept, though, bat and ball is a dead donkey that has been flogged, with the bat, until only dust remains and then the dust has been flogged some more, just to be sure. And then somebody set fire to the dust. A quick search for Breakout on the App Store reveals a torrent of bat-and-ball games, all reiterating the same concept.
There are some exceptions, however. Paper Breaker takes the breakout concept back to the drawing board, literally. It’s got a hand-drawn aesthetic that, although it doesn’t introduce any notable new twists on the genre, still feels good to play.
Most of the clones aren’t as imaginative as Paper Breaker, though. They seem more like thinly veiled attempts to quickly cash in at the App Store before the bubble bursts. But I’ve got an idea, something that’s going to take the traditional bat-and-ball genre and twist it into something utterly new. Now I just need to convince those clever coders to make it.
Next time: Olly pitches the concept to the coders. Is it really a new twist to an old genre? And do the coders even like his idea? Find out in the next thrilling installment of TheAppleBlog’s App Developer Diary.
