A new book arrived...

Yesterday, I received my new book "Beginning iPhone Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK" by Dave Mark & Jeff LaMarche.

After reading a lot of different things about programming and building iPhone applications since the end of January (see bibliography), this book is the one that will fill in the blanks in my head.

First, the book take the form of a course with a very smooth way, not too intimidating. There a many illustrations that help to gasp the key concepts that are introduced.

Second: Interface Builder. Because of this book, I'm finally starting to get it. Alone, this is worth the price of the book.

So, so far I love this book. One of the best.

Continuing my reading... Stay tuned.

Listening to Screencasts

OK, I'm a little bit tired of reading on Objective-C for now. I'm going to listen to one of those screencasts tutorials that we can find in the iPhone SDK Dev Tutorials section (part of the Forum section).

I will be listening to UINavigationController tutorial.

About design and engineering

Here is a great article about design. Design is not only a matter of engineering. It's a matter of perception, intuition and creativity.

http://theocacao.com/document.page/600

Nice.

The importance of UI prototyping

I spend a lot of time working on my first app UI by building a prototype of it in Keynote with my UI Prototyping template I developed. I'm doing this in parallel of my readings on subjects like obj-c language and Interface Builder.

By presenting my interaction sketches to others, I cannot stress enough how valuable the feedback is. This help me refine the UI and by having to explain how the users will interact with the app, I find myself that I'm not always making the best design decisions. It makes me think out loud which is sometime better than think in my head.

Object programming learning

I'm learning Objective-C. At university, I've done lots of C or even C++. So to me things are going pretty much easily. So far. I plan to implement the core of my future app (the model part of the MVC modeling) first as a command line utility. Then I'll add the rest: integrate the view and controller part in Xcode and Intercace Builder.

My readings...

After having completed the reading of "iPhone SDK Application Development: Building Applications for the AppStore" by Jonathan Zdziarski, I decided to go with another one that I think will be better reading: "Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK (Beginning from Novice to Professional)" by

Dave Mark.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading the "Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) (Developer's Library)" by Stephen G. Kochan. This book is SOOOO well done... Loving every page of it!

iPhone OS 3.0 - the aftermath

Well, the cat is out of the bag by now... Pretty happy with the Apple announcements today. Again, we are seeing the continued evolution of a major plateforme: the iPhone OS. There is a lot of new things either on the API side and user functionality side. 1000 new API for developers, 100 new features for the users. I can't wait to see comment about the 3.0 beta that people are currently downloading and testing. Again, bravo for Apple.

iPhone OS version 2.3 then 3.0 ?

Why I think Apple will release version 2.3 of the iPhone OS this week and version 3.0 with the new iPhone on June ? I have the feeling that Apple will keep us busy by providing us version 2.3 of the iPhone OS with no API changes but a few general usage fixes and new functions. iTunes 8.1 is, I think, ready for this. Don't forget that new App Store user review sections that should be implemented in the built-in App Store application... Just a thought. Just a wish.

Interface Builder

Is it me or Interface Builder is not... easy to learn ? I'm still not getting it.. UIOutlets, File's owner... what ?

iPhone OS 3.0...

So, Apple is about to talk about iPhone OS 3.0. What to expect ?

• App Store: paid Apps upgrade (more revenues for Apple and developers, less app rename to something "new, better, improved");
• App Store: time limited full version of Apps (reduce the need for Lite versions);
• MacOS X dashboard-like applications (Hello Palm Pre!);
• Push Notification Services (at-last);
• Copy-And-Paste services (a new app will be included, to see what is in the "clipboard" - remember the Scrapbook desk accessory in Mac OS 7 ?);
• MMS (what's the point ? AT&T will do it, not Apple);
• Modem mode;
• Built-in Apps: Mail will be much better, with consolidated view of all mailboxes, landscape orientation also available;
• Better way to organize applications in the Springboard application: nine screens is clearly not enough (user defined categories maybe ?);
• SDK 3.0 for sure;
• Global Status Page when device is not active (pending meetings, missed calls, etc.)
• Tasks syncing;
• Flickr support in Photos application;

We'll see next monday !