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iOS development iPhone Mobile News

On the eve of the Apple event…

It’s the night before the Big Announcement, or for many no doubt the Big Disappointment when it turns out not to meet everyone’s fanciful expectations.   I fully expect that the hype has gotten so big that whatever is announced will cause a drop in Apple’s stock price.   It is the way of things.

I’m pretty sure the device won’t:

  1. Be made of gold
  2. Have an OLED screen
  3. Run Windows 7  (though I wouldn’t bet against it entirely)
  4. Run on AT&T exclusively.  Apple has made it clear they aren’t completely pleased with them as a partner.
  5. Be called iSlate.   I’m expecting iPad, myself, but it could just be called iPod Tablet or something like that.

Other than those things, all bets are off.

I’m hoping the device has:

  1. Front-facing camera, and a mobile implementation of iChat.
  2. Some form of iPhone OS — tablet PCs have been around for years, but a touch device has to work differently from a mouse device.  Gestures and touch, not mouseover and click and drag.    I’d hope there are a few new UI constructs that use the real estate better, but the current iPhone OS really has a lot of elements that will absolutely *sing* on the new device.
  3. No carrier tie-in.  I’ll gladly forgo a carrier subsidy for a device that can be used with any carrier or even just wi-fi for now.  The ideal would be for the device to accept some sort of wireless card in an SD card form factor, using the case as an antenna.   Then, let the carriers compete to offer deals on the cards and plans.
  4. Really good reading software.
  5. Don’t make me sign up for a new developer program,  sandwich this device into the current iPhone program.
  6. Inexpensive.
  7. Color calibration — don’t make a device that screams to be used by artists and photographers, then fail to put color management in it.  I still don’t know if there is any color management on the iPhone.
  8. An implementation of Apple TV on it.
  9. Support for Bluetooth peripherals, like a portable keyboard.

No matter what the device is, however, if it indeed is meant to be a game-changer for magazines, newspapers, and textbooks,  this release has got to be accompanied by a major retooling of iTunes.  iTunes has had so many types of content and commerce grafted onto it, it needs to be overhauled with a classification scheme that lets the individual consumer browse content efficiently,  do well-targeted searches,  bookmark or compare products, and support additional business models like subscriptions, gifting,  etc.    Don’t staple e-books and magazines onto the current thing, it’s gotten downright Byzantine.

Let’s see what it does, and hope that people judge it by what it does rather than what it doesn’t.  This type of device is still the product of a lot of engineering compromises.  People don’t seem to understand the hurdles that were overcome to bring the iPhone to market — the iPhone is a far more powerful computing device under the hood than its accessible exterior would suggest.   I expect the new device to be no less.   I do have to say that I still haven’t used cut-and-paste on my iPhone, even after Apple did put a very nice implementation in place.  They generally have some sound thinking behind their feature priorities, based on what will serve the majority of users best.  This sometimes leaves out your pet feature, but more often then not these features are worked around in an elegant way.

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iOS development iPhone Web Design Web development

WPtouch is an awesome way to get your blog on the iPhone

Since I’ve been studying how to optimize web pages for the iPhone, I decided to quit procrastinating and finally install WPTouch, a WordPress plug-in that generates a very iPhone-friendly version of your WordPress Site.IMG_0108

WPTouch provides some very elegant UI attributes, including a search panel that slides in, Google Adwords for Mobile support, and the whole presentation is very configurable. Also, you have a switch that will let you go to and from the standard browser layout, so you aren’t stuck with the theme. WP Touch is considered a theme, but is installed as a WordPress plug-in, since it has to inject some code into your pages in order to do the theme-swapping.

Mike-icon-snapshot
Obey the foot. See how happy it will make him?

So, you may be asking, “how do you get one of those neat-o icons that you can put on your iPhone home screen to jump directly to the web site?”
This blog post has a great tutorial of how to set up your icon app if you are using the plug-in. Normally in a static web site, you just create a 57×57 pixel PNG file and name it icon.png, and link to it in your HTML header:


Oddly enough, the apple-touch-icon link is not part of standard wordpress themes in general. I guess that’s not so weird considering the themes are designed for desktop rather than mobile, but it is annoying that the iPhone plug-in can do this but the standard view of the site can’t be saved with your custom icon to the iPhone home page.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this mobile page looks on other devices, apparently the user agent sniffing done by the plug-in can also supply the page for Blackberry, Android, and others.

Categories
iOS development iPhone Mobile News

iPad, iTablet, iSlate: whichever it is, expect videoconferencing.

Fresh new rumor about the upcoming Apple tablet,   this one from one of Apple’s telecom partners in France.

Basically, they are saying that the tablet will have a camera on the screen side, so that it can be used for videoconferencing, and that Apple will include a videoconferencing app for live streaming.

This is definitely credible — Apple has supported videoconferencing out of the box for years in Mac OS. Their video chat feature in iChat maintains a relatively high frame rate over AIM, much better frame rates and video quality than the video chat on Yahoo IM, for example. This feature runs very nicely on even the older Power PC laptops, it ran great on my old 1.33 GHz Powerbook G4 over a WiFi connection. The only question is how well it would run on the slower mobile networks, though the current version of iChat does have the ability of adjusting the video for lower bandwidth. A more refined version of this would detect the bandwidth available and throttle back image quality and frame rate as needed.

This does suggest that the tablet will definitely have WiFi connectivity and that it should have a beefier graphics system than the iPhone 3GS, though it wouldn’t need something as powerful as the graphics on current Macbooks.

Categories
iOS development iPhone Mobile News Web Design Web development

iPhone Web Apps versus Native Apps

Elisabeth Ronson from O’Reilly just started a new webinar class today through creativetechs.com, called “Learn to Build iPhone Web Apps.

It’s not too late to sign up, it’s a 2 hour webinar every Tuesday at 11am PST. Viewing the webinar is free, and the course videos can be purchased at a nice price if you are enrolled now. Find more info here. The first class was today, but that was more an overview, so you could easily jump in on the next session.

One thing that Elisabeth touched on that I think needs more amplification is the question “When should I consider a Web App, and when must I build my App natively?” It turns out that for many types of informational apps, a Web App makes a whole lot of sense, and few people realize just how powerful the iPhone browser is.   So many people who want iPhone apps for their businesses or services could actually get by very nicely with a well-written Web App, it’s just that there isn’t much awareness of that option, and there aren’t a lot of designers who are savvy about Safari’s Webkit/HTML5 features.

You *can* build a web app that:

  • Has a tab bar interface to separate sections of the app.
  • Can play video.
  • Can use the accelerometer.
  • Can accept simple gestures, like a swipe.
  • Can animate UI display and interaction (acceleration, crossfades, etc.)

You *must* build a native app if your app:

  • Needs to be able to run standalone without a data connection.
  • Uses the iPhone camera for stills or video.
  • Is intended to be sold on the App Store, and/or has additional content you want to offer through the App Store.
  • Requires more sophisticated animation than WebKit provides, or uses OpenGL.
  • Has complex gesture interactions.

If your app can be done as a web app instead of a native app, you get some immediate benefits:

  • You don’t need an Apple developer’s account to develop your app.
  • You don’t have to go through the app store approval process to publish your app.
  • You don’t have to go through the app store approval process to update your app.
  • Apple is not going to stop offering your app.
  • You have a very wide range of CSS/HTML tools to choose from to do your development, and a large base of people who know CSS.
  • You can push changes to your content, pages, etc. in real time.
  • May also run on other WebKit mobile devices.  Note that Palm, Android, certain Nokia phones, and certain Blackberries all have Webkit browsers.

More on this subject as the class goes on.