I mentioned the Three20 open source library many months ago as a quick way to perform many utility operations within your app quickly such as photo-viewing, creating stylized buttons, and http caching.
Since then I’ve come across several tutorials that have really helped get more out of this library, and add some pretty cool functionality to [...]

Filed under: iPad

Is it too early to think about pre-ordering an iPad? The WSJ’s Smart Money website looks at the options for early adopters, and comes to the surprising and novel conclusion that it costs more to buy early.

I’m not sure there’s a polite way to put this, so with all due respect to Smart Money, let me say: Well, of course.

According to the writeup, waiting a few months before buying your iPad “could cut your bill substantially.” Author Kelli B. Grant quotes Rob Enderle, who points out out that early technology is issued with premium pricing and is often “riddled with glitches.” While those might be valid reasons to wait, there’s not much evidence for Enderle’s assertion that “the first iPhone owners were pretty unhappy.” Aside from the price drop, first-gen iPhone buyers (like me and Mike S.) have been pretty darn happy.

The early adopter tax, along with any associated tech risks, has not escaped the notice of most tech enthusiasts. In the end, it’s not much of a factor. We don’t buy early because it’s a good deal. We don’t buy early because it’s fiscally sound. We buy early because the technology is cool and we simply cannot or do not want to wait for our preciousssssss to finally come home with us.

We are the People Who Stand In Line.

In my case, this is a hereditary condition. I blame my father, who would bring home the latest gadgets to an adoring family. We’d gather around the latest technology, glowing in its radiance, having an utter blast using toys that no one had ever heard of, let alone bought. We were the first family on the block (and possibly in the state) to have a microwave, a fax machine (the size, may I point out, of a small car), a personal computer, or a hand-held programmable calculator.

It wasn’t just cool. It was awesome.

Thank you Dad, for being an early adopter. Thank you for showing me the way of the technology geek. Thank you for teaching me that you have to live life in the moment — because if you don’t seize today and play with it, tomorrow will never come.

Sure, something better and cheaper is always going to come along some day. Sure, the bugs will work their way out and the prices will work their way down. But if you don’t hop aboard the adoption train, you’re never going to get to Techsville.

Me? I’m going to buy a first-day ticket and have my fun from the get-go.

TUAWI’m OK, You’re OK: It’s cool to be an early iPad adopter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today I want to show you a new free tool I found today called “MockApp” (tagline: iPhone App design for the rest of us).
You can download MockApp as a Keynote or Powerpoint presentation. It is essentially a template full of iPhone graphics that you can copy, paste and arrange to create a quick mock-up of [...]

Filed under: Gaming, OS

Today, the Khronos Group announced the launch of OpenGL 4.0, the cross-platform 3D & graphics API. OpenGL was most recently at version 3.2. Updated specifications are available at the opengl.org site. Game and 3D developers are presumably salivating.

Mac OS X includes OpenGL, and the iPhone runs an embedded version of OpenGL called OpenGL ES. The mobile ES version remains in its 2.0 release and is expected to move to OpenGL ES 2.1 in the near future.

The updated OpenGL release includes enhanced shaders, better texture support, and 64-bit double-precision floating point operations, amongh other features. It offers support for backwards compatibility with existing OpenGL code.”AMD sees the release of OpenGL 4.0 as another major accomplishment for the OpenGL ARB,” said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of design engineering at AMD, in a press release statement.

An OpenGL 3.3 specification has been released simultaneously with the 4.0 spec, “to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous generation GPU hardware”.

TUAWOpenGL 4.0 announced during GDC originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[...]

Well how about this.  It’s not George posting!  What is the world coming to, riff-raff posting on blogs and what have you.
Anyway, it’s time to announce that we got Goo! version 1.1 through approval yesterday, and its now on sale!  The new version has:

A much larger play area
Much more intuitive controls
A bunch more predefined shapes [...]

I previously announced that Voices That Matter is hosting another iPhone Developer Conference, with this event being held in Seattle, WA. As part of that post, I mentioned that Voices That Matter and iPhone Dev Tips are giving away one free 2-day pass, a pretty good deal as the full admission price is $695.
Originally the [...]

Here’s an interesting read on how Ngmoco justifies the freemium model for being the only way they’ll release iPhone games these days. If you’re in a hurry, money quote (heh) is

We’re just finding that, with paid, you can’t make any money…

Now that, Dear Readers, is an absolutely classic line. Classic, we tell you.

… There’s only [...]

Just a quick shout out from a book from 71 Squared, the creators of the excellent iPhone game programming videos that you may have been found on this site.
Mike Daley’s upcoming book iPhone Game Programming has been released as a rough cut (essentially a beta verson of the book).  You can read about it here: [...]

Filed under: Apple

Unit testing refers to a software validation methodology that allows programmers to test individual program units for correctness. It’s been an ongoing question in the iPhone developer community as to whether the iPhone’s view controller class is testable or not.

In response to these discussions, iPhone developer Jonah Williams has written up a view controller unit testing how-to over at the Carbon Five web blog. His write-up offers examples that show how to incorporate some best practices into your code.

Williams points out how broken NIB bindings are a common problem for iPhone OS applications. To address these issues, he regularly adds simple assertions that test that each IB outlet and action are set properly from inside his view controller class implementations. These assertions check that IBOutlet instance variables are not set to nil and that IBAction targets have been assigned, adding a layer of protection against broken bindings.

Another typical view controller issue involves responding to application memory warnings. To respond, he adds tests that ensure that each view-dependent property gets correctly released and re-created as views unload and then later reload. By building these into test methods, he can execute this behavior on demand, and ensure that the sequence will execute flawlessly in real world conditions.

Finally, Williams discusses view controller interdependencies. Often instances are tightly intertwined, with objects acting as clients for each other. For example, a simple table view controller, living within a navigation controller, might present a detail view via yet another view controller when a row is selected. That’s three separate controllers to account for, when you really only want to test one at a time. Williams suggests isolating these view controllers away from their interdependencies to test each component separately and provides examples of how you can do so.

What made Williams’ approach pop for me is how he carefully exposes and isolates dependencies for testing. These are features that can otherwise be hard to inspect and validate in the normal course of programming. His write-up is well worth reading through, and provides an excellent jumping off point for investigating view controller unit testing.

TUAWiPhone devsugar: Unit testing for iPhone view controllers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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