Starting the iPhone simulator

I didn't know until today that you could start the iPhone Simulator without starting to compile your app. Right click the Xcode icon in the dock, select Developer Tools, then iOS Simulator. Voilà!

iOS Support Matrix - must have!

Nice work from Empirical Magic Ltd.

Pitching your application for a review - a sample pitch

So you've got an iOS application ready for release and you want to submit your application to a review site but you don't know what to include in your request? Go ahead and download this template from App Design Vault. This tip sheet was built from an interview of Erica Sadun by App Design Vault. She's an iOS developer and a writer for www.tuaw.com.

How Designers Can Help Developers - from Matt Gemmell

For iOS developers who hire designers to help them create their beautiful applications, here is a list of things they should communicate to the designers to get him started and know about your expectations. Many of these items maybe already be known to the designer. But, don't take anything for granted.

• Use an intelligent method of version-control
• Keep your layers
• Name all your layers meaningfully
• Use groups, and do so sensibly
• Prune unneeded layers
• Use Layer Comps
• Keep everything as vectors, and scaleable effects
• Learn how to preserve rounded corners while resizing
• Design at 72 ppi
• Snap to whole pixels
• Always use RGB mode
• Asset-preparation is part of your job
• Be careful with fonts
• Mimic the platform’s text-rendering (where possible)
• Be sure of design dimension
• Use the platform’s idioms
• Design once for landscape, then design again for portrait
• Design for each major screen-size, and their contexts
• Use genuine or at least realistic content
• Consider localization
• Respect the global light source
• Make navigational or organisational constructs explicit
• Export cut-ups without compression
• Ask about shadows
• Understand how buttons are constructed

This list is a excerpt from the excellent article from Matt Gemmell.

Gotcha with TestFlightApp Live

Recently, TestFlightApp service launched the Live dashboard where you can see in real time statistics about your application usage. As soon as the service went live, I visited their web site just to find out that all my apps counters were at zero event if all of my applications are currently shipping with the current TestFlightApp SDK built-in. Why?

Well, it appears that in order for the Live dashboard to work, your submitted application to the App Store must be using the exact same build number as the one you have on TestFlightApp. In other words, before submitting your production build to Apple for review, you should submit the exact same build to TestFlightApp. Voilà!

Recovering some space with Xcode Organizer

When opening projects, Xcode create an index of the project content for later searching. Compile logs are also accumulating fast and compiling. Same if you created snapshots on those projects. These files tend to accumulate on your hard disk.

Here is a simple trick to recover some space on your hard disk with Xcode Organizer. Open Organizer, then click on the Projects tab. On the left pane, see if there is project name in red. If this is the case, those projects are no longer on your hard disk so there is no need to keep those in organizer. Right click on them and select "Remove from Organizer".

How to contribute to Open Source Projects via Github

I'm not an expert at Github but I use it a lot to "consume" libraries that can be found in many high quality repositories.

Yesterday, I read a very small snippet from @cocoanetics' blog that seems to be a very good starting point to learn more about Git in general and how it can fit into a workflow of a contributor. Here is an excerpt from the post which I commented to the best of my current Git knowledge:

Generally the process to contribute to any open source project on GitHub is really simple once you did it for the first time.

1. You set up git and GitHub: you'll be able to learn more about this process by searching the web with "github tutorials" or "git tutorials".
2. You fork a project you want to contribute something: this will create a different branch, your own so you can start your own work and eventually contribute to the master.
3. You clone your fork to your local hard disk: this step is essentials as it will clone to your local machine the repository that you forked in the previous step.
4. You modify your local copy and commit the changes, providing sensible descriptions in the commit messages: changes are committed to your forked branch. See the following step.
5. You push your local clone to your online fork: so your changes becomes available on Github.
6. You create a pull request for the original master: in order to see other's changes to the repository you forked, you ask for them to be integrated into your forked branch with a pull. 
7. The owner might require some further changes, he will communicate with you via the pull request. If you respond to such e-mails they will automatically be appended to the conversion: a pull request notifies the owner (the master) of the repository of your changes.
8. Further commits you make to the branch you pushed will show up as updates to the pull request: obvious.
9. Finally when the owner is happy he can merge your changes into the master with just one button: obvious too. 

Any comments on this workflow? Feel free to share. 

Using GitHub for Mac to keep track of your libraries

If you happen to use many open sourced libraries hosted on Github's repositories for your iOS apps, then you should take a look at GitHub for Mac.

On the GitHub web site, you can watch many different repositories in order to keep an eye of what is happening with them. But, what if you use only a few of those repos and want to keep a local copy on your Mac for inclusion into your development workflow? I use GitHub for Mac for this purpose. 

Double-click on any repos to see the most recent activities on it. Hit the Changes section on the left and see what has changed between your local copy and the master on GitHub. Hit Branches to have a look at the repository's different branches then merge if you like. 

GitHub for Mac allows the complete management of repositories hosted on GitHub. As I'm not an expert, I found GitHub for Mac useful nonetheless. Download it here.

How to start building an app: from the end

How often do you get this question: I have an idea for creating an iOS application but I don't know where to start. Easy: from the end. Here is an excellent small article on starting to build an application. http://mur.mu.rs/?p=327

Your google Analytics in Mac Os X Dashboard

You've got a web site for promoting your iOS apps? Want to get an handy access to your Google Analytics from your Mac OS Dashboard? Go get GAget now at http://www.zoltanhosszu.com/gaget/ . This very well designed Dashboard widget will show you the most relevant stats in a elegant windows. Very handy.