Why Apple doesn’t release things until they’re ready…
When iTunes Match finally went live, my iTunes Library was sent to the cloud for the last time and I was finally able to not worry about what music I had synced to my iPhone since I could grab anything I wanted to listen to on the fly. Yesterday, things didn’t go quite as well as usual and it frustrated me. It wasn’t Apple’s fault. I was in a less than ideal spot for 3G coverage at the time and that prevented the song I wanted to download quick enough to listen to without stopping. The problem cleared up as soon as I drove further down the road, but there were moments that I was actually angry at the phone and service.
I’m a patient person and very understanding, so my brief spout of anger surprised me a little bit. Thinking about it a little, it just reminded me about why Apple devices forgo features that aren’t at least 99% perfect. Apple’s hardware and software works so well together that the slightest hiccup causes hysteria amongst it’s users because we’re just not used to it. I’d say that’s a pretty awesome problem to have.
Adding internationalization to XIB files in Xcode 4
I want to post a quick Derrr post about localizing XIB files in Xcode 4 since I just spent a good 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong to find I wasn’t really doing anything wrong.
Localization of your Interface Builder files in Xcode 4 is a piece of cake, actually.
iOS consolidated.db “flaw”?
I’m kind of getting sick of the big hoopla about the recently discovered (even though it wasn’t recently discovered at all) consolidated.db file which sits quietly in a publicly available iOS directory and is backed up every time you sync your phone. The file in question keeps a running log of dates, times and locations according to your GPS and wifi radios. I am all for getting up in arms if Apple has been actually collecting and doing something with this data without anyone knowing about it but the fact of the matter is, they aren’t. What really sucks, is that I have a feeling that this “bug” will get plugged with a future version of iOS and I personally think it’s a neat feature! I just pulled up a map of the last 6 months of my life and thought it was pretty damned cool. I agree that there should definitely be some sort of opt-out system that would purge this cache every so often, but I don’t want to have to do that. I’ll worry about my own security and make sure my iPhone and it’s backups stay out of the hands of wrong doers (heaven for big they see the extremely vague representation of locations data that I just saw on the map I made).
Bottom line. This is probably some oversight bug where a line of code wasn’t written to purge old location data. That’s perfectly plausible. But the data is so vague that it doesn’t really matter much. And without access to your computer or phone, no one can get at this information anyways. So plug the hole, Apple, but how about an opt-out strategy? I like it.
Hooray, iPad!
I finally got my iPad 2 last week and this post is coming to you straight from it! I really love it for just about everything. My MacBook Pro hasn’t gottten a lot of love over the last week and I can see her getting delegated to mostly development work and gaming. I do, unfortunately, feel the sting from the lack of Flash a little more now than when I just had my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I think the iPad needs flash, it just makes me want all videos to go to h.264 even faster than I did before since that’s the only thing that I run into flash for.
Anywho, that’s all I got for now. I’m going to be able to test Secret Browser out a lot more on the iPad now that I actually have one! More on that soon!
Going back to unjailbroken
I really do love all the nifty features and tweaks that jailbreaking allows. I’ve dabbled many times. But every time I do, it just eventually reminds me how amazing Apple’s attention to detail and their refusal to release features until they “just work” really is. There aren’t any jailbroken features that I have found that work 100% of the time and/or work as intuitively and without fail as if Apple would have implemented them. At the end of the day, stability and intuition are more important than themes or “quick reply” to SMS.
I’m not going to go back to my pre-jailbreak backup either because I’m going to see how well iPhone Explorer works with restoring my Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies (among others) save files.
Can’t wait to see what iOS 5 has in store for us this summer! I’m probably going to write a post about what I’d love to see eventually.
Why not use Mobile Safari to it’s fullest?
I don’t understand why more web developers aren’t using a lot of the great features in Mobile Safari when they’re re-formatting their sites for iPhone-type devices. AdMob is a great example of how to do it. If your a developer that uses AdMob for serving up your ads, you probably have seen their mobile formatted site (m.admob.com). There’s an attention to detail involved that (for some strange reason) doesn’t exist elsewhere. Granted, a lot of this polish comes from some smooth transitions, but I feel like they make the site feel more like a native app and less like just another website. Bank of America is a good example of what not to do as far as I’m concerned. They have a native app and a web app. The problem is, the native app is just a crappy wrapper for the web app. They also haven’t taken the time to optimize anything. A huge company like Bank of America should have the funds available to at least come CLOSE to the smoothness of AdMob. Bank of America’s site just feels cheap and thrown together. I don’t really have a point here. I just thought about this when I logged in to AdMob’s mobile site the other day and was reminded how much they nailed the basics of what can be done with Mobile Safari and how little I’ve seen of it elsewhere.
Baby-Daddy Generator Preview added to iPregnancyTest
An update to iPregnancyTest was just approved by apple that includes a couple of tweaks here and there. There’s a one time notice about iPregnancyTest’s support for Facebook that reminds you to log in so we can use your Facebook friends as a basis for the Baby-Daddy Generator. Speaking of the Baby-Daddy Generator, there’s also a new “Baby-Daddy Generator Preview” feature that allows you to see who our “super scientific tests” have determined to be the Baby-Daddy before launching Mail or asking for your permission to post a feed story to Facebook. Update your apps now or, if your don’t already own iPregnancyTest, pick it up from the App Store now.
Secret Browser is now available!
Until today, the only options you had for private web browsing were either kind of shotty and thrown together really quick or much more expensive than anyone should pay for such a thing. Secret Browser was approved and released on the App Store today to solve those problems! I made sure to try and squash all the annoyances of other private browsers out there now as well as threw a very reasonable price tag on it. How does FREE sound? Head over to the App Store now and download Secret Browser. Let me know what you think!
P.S. You can also go ahead and follow @secretbrowser on twitter or just follow my twitter list for all of my apps!
Poke A Keith now OFFICIALLY available!
Poke A Keith was released about 2 months ago but was very quickly removed from sale (by myself) after a tiny oversight was found by me that would have caused some major problems in the future. It was a very quick fix. Took me about 2 minutes to fix it and I was ready to submit the update. While waiting for this update to be approved, I worked on some more features and bug fixes until I figured I’d just submit this new update instead. I did this about 2 more times after this too. Today marks the RE-release of Poke A Keith for good! The best part about the re-release is that it’s FREE! Lots has been added since I originally released and I’m quite happy with this as an initial version. I’ll be adding more in the near future. Go download Poke A Keith from the App Store now for your iPhone or iPod Touch!
- Dead Simple to learn. Very, very hard to master!
- Great score sheets give you a LOT of ways to compete with your friends!
- Share your scores (Or maybe you’d like the word, brag?) with your friends on Facebook or via email.
- “Achievement” scores are there for you to discover.
- Tons of AWESOMENESS is always included!
iPregnancyTest v1.2.0 released!
Apple was finally kind enough to approve iPregnancyTest v1.2.0 and it’s now live on the App Store. There was a tiny discrepancy with a new button image I used that Apple didn’t think should be used in the way I did, but all is well now and you can go ahead and update/download it now! What’s new?
- Facebook Support! All my apps are getting the Facebook treatment. The result sharing now offers the ability to share via Facebook instead of just email. We’ll also use your Facebook friends with the Baby-Daddy Generator and the new Baby-Daddy Picker.
- Baby-Daddy Picker! Before, you would need to type in a friend’s name if you didn’t want to use the Baby-Daddy Generator, but now we supply a list for your to pick from. If your logged in to Facebook, it’ll show you all your Facebook friend’s names. If your not, you’ll see names from your Address Book. You can still type a name if you want, but the option is there for you now!
- Misc. Bug Fixes.
it’s a good update! So download and start sharing on Facebook now!
Pros & Cons on AppGiveaway.com
Pros & Cons is available on AppGiveaway.com now! You can sign up there and possibly win yourself a free code for Pros & Cons!
Pros & Cons v1.1.0 FINALLY approved!
Pros & Cons was finally approved by Apple! It’s been over 2 weeks and the update is finally live. Lots of polish and a couple new features here..
- Facebook Support added. You can now share your list ideas with your friends and see how they feel about those results. A great way to get a ‘second opinion’ on some tricky lists.
- When you add a new list, it automatically asks you to name the list. This feature was added by just me observing some other people using the app and it seems pretty nature that you name a list right away from the beginning.
- A new options pane inside the list gives you a couple of options for each list. It also gives you a more detailed look at the ‘score’ for the list so if you like more than just a ‘yes, no, maybe’ answer, you can see exactly how much better 1 side is than the other.
- Some polish and under the hood fixes.
I’m pretty excited about this update, so download it now and start sharing on Facebook!
iPregnancyTest v1.1 FINALLY approved!
The update to iPregnancyTest (v1.1) has finally been approved!
- “Result Sharing” was added to let you share positive results with your friends while using out optional “Baby-Daddy Generator”
- “Baby-Daddy Generator” was added to automatically pick the name of the Baby-Daddy if you aren’t quite sure who it might be.
- “Coin-Flip Mode” turns iPregnancyTest into the best coin-flip app on the iPhone!
Download it now from iTunes @ http://bit.ly/ipregnancytest
Safari Single Window Mode! (And the Secrets prefPane)
I just found the hidden preference for Safari 3.1 that enables Single Window Mode!! This is the first step Apple has taken to actually making Safari my main browser. Before 3.1, there was no way to make links that opened up in new windows open up in a new tab instead (Firefox has had this type of option for a loooonnnggg time). Apple has added a hidden option to Safari as of version 3.1 that lets you do away with the 100 windows you’d normally have open while browsing with Safari and keep it all in nice and clean tabs. Try this in your terminal…
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool trueAfter that, you should notice all links that would normally pop a new window up, now open in a new tab instead. I actually found this while I was bored and going through the Secrets preference pane. If you haven’t tried this out yet and are a little ballsy (i.e. know what your doing) give it a go. It gives you a VERY long list of hidden features in various Apple and 3rd party apps on your system. Sometimes you even find a gem you weren’t expecting. x=)
