There's been a bit of a conversation going on in the shoutbox so I figured I'd make a thread.
I've ordered myself a fancy new 15" MacBook Pro (2.2GHz intel i7, 4 gigs of ram, high rez screen etc). My main goal with this is to get into some iOS app development. I'm excited to get my hands on it and really see what a mac can do. Currently it's sitting atthe UPS hub in Louisville and should be delivered by Monday. I'll post some unboxing pics and chronicle my opinions and experiences getting into OSX in general and iOS app development here.
If anyone knows of any Mac applications you think are must haves then feel free to post!
And no, I'm not "changing teams" or anything like that, I still have 3 PCs at home and won't be giving them up anytime soon :)
Also, as I was mentioning in the shoutbox, I went with a MacBook instead of an iMac for two reasons:
1. With Fran going back to school I don't have the desk space to support both my fancy gaming PC, an iMac and have a separate workstation for Fran to do school work.
2. My Dell laptop that I do most of my "on the side" development work on is getting on in years and just isn't as snappy or reliable as it once was, I like having a laptop and have always really liked apple's offerings there (from an aesthetic sense at least)
...we'll get you eventually... :)
Needless to say I love my 15" MacBook Pro.
Well considering I'm an iPhone, iPad and now MacBook owner, I'm well on my way. I live in Microsoft land at work (we're a "gold certified partner") so I should diversify a bit. :)
Joe have you ever used OS X before?
I found it a small learning curve but once I got into the swing of it I found it very natural to use. It's a great robust OS.
In terms of apps, that's a difficult one. It has all the equivalents of Windows apps that you might use etc. What I have found is that the choice is somewhat limited compared to Windows, especially Freeware, but the apps generally run a lot more efficiently and they are very stable.
The Mac App Store is excellent, prices are OK but you have the advantage of free updates and you can install on multiple Macs for free.
I got my hands on a G4 iBook quite a few years ago for two months (my mother ran the 'computer classes' at the school she taught at). I asked her to bring me one because I wanted to play with OSX, so I have some outdated familiarity with the OS.
I guess it's little things that take getting used to. I know I never really got used to the file system, it seems disorganized to me.
As much as I don't want to, I know I'm gonna need MS Office (at the very least for the Remote Desktop client so I can connect to my machine at work).
At some point I know I'll probably want iMovie (though I can't decide if I want it on iPad or just on the mac).
Yeah the filesystem really does show it's Unix heritage but the "Finder" is quite easy to use with a bit of practice.
My package just left Louisville, Kentucky, love UPS' shipment tracking.
Damn it! I HATE losing...
Well, it still has to get waaaay up to Canada. :)
EDIT: This seems appropriate
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/delivery_notification.png)
I use Handbrake (free) constantly to convert video files into iPhone/iPad friendly formats for viewing on those devices.
There's a little program I acquired (I forget what it's called but I can find out if you want) that allows the Mac OS to transfer files to and from NTFS formatted hard disks. You will probably find this useful if you have files stored on portable drives that you've used for your Windows based computers.
There's a free program called Maxx that I use to convert lossless Flac audio files to MP3 for use on the iPhone.
Also there's a free program called UnRarX for joining/expanding compressed Rar files that you may run across here and there.
When I get home I'll see if I've forgotten any good ones.
Awesome suggestions. It's the little apps you forget about. I use handbrake on my windows machine, defintiely gonna get the mac version.
I found Handbrake terribly slow for converting on a pretty good PC compared to other programs like DVD Fab. Congrats on the MacBook Joe. My son really likes his a lot. But he still has his gaming rig for LAN parties and "serious gaming" stuff.
OS X will read NTFS partitions out of the box in 10.6 and it can be set to write enabled too with use of the command line. It is believe Apple switched off this feature due to certain stability and corruption issues. If I remember correctly the app that Jody is referring to is a graphical frontend that enables this feature.
A lot of the quality "multimedia" apps are multi-platform such as Audacity, VLC and Handbrake. There is a distinct lack of free or reasonably priced DVD ripping software for Mac although I believe Handbrake will decrypt DVDs out of the box in OS X.
By the way, iTunes is SUPERB in OS X as opposed to the horribly bloated and buggy Windows version.
Handbrake works very fast on my iMac. I didn't know there was a PC version. I believe it was originally Mac only software.
The NTFS enabler is called Paragon. It's not free but worth it. There might be a free alternative, not sure.
Flip4Mac enables WMV files in quicktime.
Filezilla has a Mac OS version for accessing FTP (thanks for the tip on that one Rico)
PS3 Media Server enables streaming of PS3 supported video and music files from the Mac hard disk to the PS3 via WiFi.
Just popped open my good old UPS tracking page and...
QuoteConcord, ON, Canada 07/08/2011 8:17 Out for Delivery
Woot!
Posting from my new MacBook Pro! This is pretty awesome.
Congrats!!
Mine says hi!
I didn't realize you actually had to physically push on the trackpad to make it click :)
I thought it was defective!
Quote from: billybob476 on July 08, 2011, 04:01:13 PM
I didn't realize you actually had to physically push on the trackpad to make it click :)
I thought it was defective!
..newb.
Quote from: Bryancd on July 08, 2011, 04:38:03 PM
Quote from: billybob476 on July 08, 2011, 04:01:13 PM
I didn't realize you actually had to physically push on the trackpad to make it click :)
I thought it was defective!
..newb.
Lol!
Well, I got everything set up last night (and took some crappy "unboxing" photos). Installed Tweetdeck (thanks King), skype, Eve Online and finally XCode and the iOS software development kit.
I'm following a pretty fun iOS development book from Big Nerd Ranch and after the first chapter already built a very, very basic app and exported it to my phone.
(http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1236/imagenfh.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/219/imagenfh.jpg/)
It's very basic (you press the top button to show one of three questions and then press the bottom button to show the answer). But building it gives a good overview of the XCode environment, project structure, where to put resources, basic objective-C syntax and how to build, run and debug a project.
The hardest part was actually getting the app on to my iPhone. There are quite a few steps, both on your machine and online and the process involves certificate requests and public/private key exchanges. It's actually an almost identical process to requesting a secure certificate for a website. I didn't really have any trouble, but I can see how the process couldbe confusing if you've never experienced it before. I know the first time I had to request an SSL cert for a website it was nerve wracking :)
So that was day 1 of setup and chapter 1 of the dev book. Going well so far! This is fun.
Oh and here's the link for the book: http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321773772/ (http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321773772/)
Crappy unboxing pics to come soon.
Great stuff Joe! Looking forward to that App we talked about! :)
Looking forward to the RSS and streaming audio chapters :)
Do I sense the Treks in SciFi iPhone app somewhere down the road? That has potential.
Quote from: Jobydrone4of20 on July 09, 2011, 07:57:38 AM
Do I sense the Treks in SciFi iPhone app somewhere down the road? That has potential.
I can neither confirm nor deny such speculation. ;)
That usually means yes ;)
King
...just posting my experiences so far...take it how you will :innocent
I actually wasn't planning to document the process but this i actually kind of fun. I'll roll onto the next chapter (Objective-C) either later on today or tomorrow morning. The goal of the chapter is to make a small console application that will be used in a later chapter and to further familiarize with Objective-C syntax.
Luckily my C programming isn't as rusty as I thought it was! Last time I really used it was in university.
Made some more progress this morning, worked through chapter 2 of the book which did a quick overview of the Objective-C programming language. Objective C does differ from C++ (that I learned in school) and C# (that I've used from time to time in my still short career). Syntax, naming conventions and core libraries are all a little bit different then I've used before so this was a good way to get into it a bit more.
I was tasked to create a small class. Very basically, a class is a way to represent a "thing" in a program. I created one called "Possession" which represents items a person might own. I gave it various properties such as a name, a serial number and a monetary value. I played with instance methods and class methods (which I knew as 'static' instead of 'class' from C#), how the XCode debugger works and a whole bunch of other details.
Next chapter involves memory management, something I don't have to worry about a whole lot in my web projects, so it should be insightful.
Sounds fun.
I used to code around a bit for my old PalmOS handhelds but will probably never get to touch iOS which is a bit I'd a shame really.
Keep sharing your progress. It's fun (is that sad? ;)).
Grrr...no time tonight to run through another chapter, I guess it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Got this email from Apple:
QuoteYou now have access to iTunes Connect, our exclusive, partner-facing website. You may access iTunes Connect using the link below:
iTunes Connect
Log in using the existing username and password for your Apple Developer account.
With iTunes Connect, you can enter into a Paid Applications agreement, setup and edit information about your application, view sales and trend information, retrieve financial reports (if applicable), and create new user accounts for other people at your company.
If you have any questions regarding your iTunes Connect account please Contact Us.
Best Regards,
The App Store Team
I logged in, this site basically allows you to view and agree to seller contracts for paid app store apps, there's more to it but I haven't gone in farther yet (don't think I want to agree to any contracts without at least a cursory inspection). I'm already 'signed on' to the free iOS app contract, I assume the other ones outline revenue sharing, app restrictions, etc.
Ran through the Memory Management chapter last night. It's actually pretty interesting, even with all the tech and automation, iOS still uses manual reference counting. Basically this means that as the programmer, you have to specifically indicate which entity owns an object, you have to make sure all your referenced objects are released before destroying a parent object, you have to make sure you release an object from its creator if you are switching ownership, etc, etc.
It's a very flexible system, but if you're not paying attention it's very, very easy to create either:
a) a memory leak (which will eventually cause you to have to restart your device, since even if you force-quit an app, it will have no way to release unreferenced memory)
b) premature deallocation (which will cause the app to crash on an invalid memory reference)
Anyways as I mentioned in the last post, this chapter was good for me. As a web developer, the vast majority of objects i create tend to be auto-cleaned at the end of a web request. I also tend not to have to pay too much attention to items stored in my persistent scopes (though I still do) since the web servers I tend to run apps on have 8-16 gigs of ram.
Memory usage and leaks are defintiely something I'll have to keep a closer eye on as I continue down this road.
Interesting stuff Joe. Glad you are making progress on this.
Quote from: billybob476 on July 15, 2011, 11:46:53 AM
Ran through the Memory Management chapter last night. It's actually pretty interesting, even with all the tech and automation, iOS still uses manual reference counting. Basically this means that as the programmer, you have to specifically indicate which entity owns an object, you have to make sure all your referenced objects are released before destroying a parent object, you have to make sure you release an object from its creator if you are switching ownership, etc, etc.
It's a very flexible system, but if you're not paying attention it's very, very easy to create either:
a) a memory leak (which will eventually cause you to have to restart your device, since even if you force-quit an app, it will have no way to release unreferenced memory)
b) premature deallocation (which will cause the app to crash on an invalid memory reference)
Anyways as I mentioned in the last post, this chapter was good for me. As a web developer, the vast majority of objects i create tend to be auto-cleaned at the end of a web request. I also tend not to have to pay too much attention to items stored in my persistent scopes (though I still do) since the web servers I tend to run apps on have 8-16 gigs of ram.
Memory usage and leaks are defintiely something I'll have to keep a closer eye on as I continue down this road.
Sure, I know that when I suffer from premature deallocation, my memory crashes all the time :) Sorry, that just sounded like it was ASKING for a bad joke!!
Quote from: billybob476 on July 15, 2011, 11:46:53 AM
Ran through the Memory Management chapter last night. It's actually pretty interesting, even with all the tech and automation, iOS still uses manual reference counting. Basically this means that as the programmer, you have to specifically indicate which entity owns an object, you have to make sure all your referenced objects are released before destroying a parent object, you have to make sure you release an object from its creator if you are switching ownership, etc, etc.
It's a very flexible system, but if you're not paying attention it's very, very easy to create either:
a) a memory leak (which will eventually cause you to have to restart your device, since even if you force-quit an app, it will have no way to release unreferenced memory)
b) premature deallocation (which will cause the app to crash on an invalid memory reference)
Anyways as I mentioned in the last post, this chapter was good for me. As a web developer, the vast majority of objects i create tend to be auto-cleaned at the end of a web request. I also tend not to have to pay too much attention to items stored in my persistent scopes (though I still do) since the web servers I tend to run apps on have 8-16 gigs of ram.
Memory usage and leaks are defintiely something I'll have to keep a closer eye on as I continue down this road.
This explains so much about certain companies and the apps they put out.
King
Quote from: QuadShot on July 15, 2011, 03:38:48 PM
Sure, I know that when I suffer from premature deallocation, my memory crashes all the time :) Sorry, that just sounded like it was ASKING for a bad joke!!
Don't tell my wife!
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on July 15, 2011, 05:06:42 PM
This explains so much about certain companies and the apps they put out.
King
Yup, going through this process is definitely giving me a new appreciation of those really good, really stable apps. In ym day job I work in enterprise environments, with load balancing, redundancy and honestly much more horsepower then I can even take advantage of. While smartphones have come a long, long way in a very short time, you're still working with a much more limited resource pool.
I know these reports may not be for everyone, but I'm glad you guys are getting something out of this, I sure know I am.
In my software background this was all very easy since any form of dynamic allocation was outlawed as a matter of process (which probably means I'd make a very bad App developer!). I'm a bit surprised it's fully manual but I don't really have a sensible baseline for comparison.
Been quiet on this front for a little while but I've gone through a few more chapters of basic stuff. I made a small app called WhereAmI which uses the Core Location Services to pop up a map with a GPS location of where the phone currently is and allows you to enter an annotation on the map (basically sticking a pin and giving it a label).
The goal of this exercise was to teach about delegates, protocols and how to link functionality to delegates via protocols. Despite going through the chapter I'm still a little hazy on these concepts. Basically, apps follow a Model-View-Controller architecture. Anything you see on the screen is considered a part of the View layer, anything that handles data in anyway (stores, retrieves, modifies, etc) is part of the Model layer. The thing that connects them together is the Controller layer. This is where the concept of delegates come in. They connect the view components (buttons, GPS input, etc) to the app's background logic.
This is a bigger concept then I can easily put in a single post and I'm still processing it myself (my web apps tend to have the same architecture, MVC is standard. It's just the way iOS goes about it seems confusing to me at the moment).
The next chapter was about handling text entry and customizing the popup keyboard which wa fun. There are a variety of keyboard types, some designed for text typing, others with various symbol buttons (such as @) on the main keyboard.
Finally the last exercise I did was to play around with the UIView class. UIView is the basic view objeoct of an iOS app (consisting of a rectangle). You can create views in two ways, via a drag and drop interface in Xcode (the "easy way") and programmatically via subclassing UIView (the "hard way"). In the previous exercises I had been doing things the easy way, but for very fine-grained control, it's good to know how to do things programatically.
So the challenge here was to programatically create rings of concentric circles. Initially just to fill the screen, then extending outside of the screen. By extending them larger then the screen and some other jiggery and poker you enable panning and zooming. Playing with these C graphics objects reminded me of the OpenGL graphics class I took back in university, fun fun!
(http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/16/photof.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/31/photof.png/)
So all this wall of text to say things continue to progress despite a week or so of life stopping me from sitting down. The iOS adventure continues!
Next chapter...View Controllers! Good! Some more clarification is needed there :)
It still all sounds fun although some of the detail loses me. I guess I'd need to read the textbook for a full picture.
Yeah I realize as I get farther in this will likely get pretty technical (though I'm sure most people on these forums could do this given the motivation) :) I've found that writing these posts helps me process the info after I've gone through the examples.
Super cool and interesting, please keep it up. Can't wait till your first app hits the store! I'll buy it for sure, whatever it is.
Don't let work interfere with your review of Pirates, though, still waiting for that ;)
I was able to get through another chapter last week, just ran out of steam before I could write up a post. Expect more slow but steady progress soon! If only I didn't have a day job!
Went through the chapter dealing with the accelerometer and handling shake events. Pretty cool! Made one of my smaller apps (the 'you are getting sleepy' one) move itself around based on accelerometer inputs and change colors of the rings on a shake.
More in the next few days!
Also planning on picking up a copy of Windows 7 so I can bootcamp the MacBook and do my .NET work on it as well (plus play a few games).
Might not need the day job if this works out!
By the way, I got Pirates and played the cr@p out of it on my iPad. What a fun game! I can totally see why people got addicted to it so often over the years. I feel like starting a new game as the Dutch and taking over the world now.
Yeah Pirates is good times! I'm playing Mega Mall Story on the phone and Pocket RPG on the iPad right now. Not quite at the level of game programming yet!
I've heard that Mega Mall Story is good. I really enjoyed Game Dev Story, which was the initial release by that developer. Those are some really fun, simple sims.
How about this for an App, Joe?
I want some type of App that I can type the name of a movie or TV show and it will pull up who carries it (for rental, streaming, purchase, etc.) and the costs of each. For example, say you typed in the last "Star Trek" movie (2009). I think it's on Netflix streaming, Netflix DVD rental, Amazon (probably streaming, and purchase digital and physical), and of course retail places like Best Buy, Target, etc. Heck, maybe even show if it's airing anywhere on Cable too.
Is there an app like this - yet? IMDB??
That's an idea. It would depend on the ability to get the data from the various sources. I know Amazon has a very robust web service API (I've used it in my jobs). Netflix may also have a publicly accessible data feed. I'm almost certain there are third party sites that do the major cable network schedules as well.
It's definitely an idea, I don't think anything like that exists currently (especially since the whole netflix things has just been announced).
Been busy getting Fran ready for school the past few weeks but I'm back 'at the books' this week! More posts upcoming!
This is a great idea, I was just looking for the movie Texasville the other day (the sequel to Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show) and can't find it anywhere. It would be great if there was an app that could say if it was going to be aired or offered somewhere sometime.
Hm, so netflix does have an API (http://developer.netflix.com/ (http://developer.netflix.com/))
Amazon streaming movies seem to have ASIN numbers (which are basically amazon product id's) so they are likely searchable via Amazon web services.
The thing I'm unsure of is where to get cable listings, though I am certain those resources exist.
I wonder if an HTML5 mobile siute would be better then a native iOS app for something like this.
Depending on what resources you used, you'd be prey to the whim of any site that chose to tweak their formats. I guess published APIs should be OK but, to date, I've only come across TV schedules put together via distinctly amateur means.
Having said that, the EpisodeCalendar site referenced in another thread seems to draw its data from somewhere else that looks pretty well structured.
The flaw in all of this (for me) is that any app would be market specific and no-one would write one for the UK!
Many Apps are market specific. The reason I thought this App would be a great idea is I get tired of searching in multiple places for a movie or TV show I want to view. Pulling up Netflix, Amazon, Redbox, Vudu, Blockbuster, etc. each time is a pain.
So get to it Joe! I'll just take a small 10% fee for the idea. :)
lol! Will you take 10% of the loss too until we get bought out by Google? :D
It's definitely something to look into though. Project for the weekend!
Not really relevant, but once upon a time I did write a PalmOS app that took a TV schedule and presented it as a searchable TV calendar. Fun project.
Cool! As I said above, I'm thinking an optimized HTML5 site. That way it would be platform-agnostic.
Hm, this wiki bears some more investigation: http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject (http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject)
Quote from: billybob476 on September 21, 2011, 06:16:18 AM
Hm, this wiki bears some more investigation: http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject (http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject)
I'd need to go and find my old USB stick to refresh my memory, but I think that was where I got my listings from. I used a rather simple word macro to reformat it into the defined input format for a freebee .PDB format converter IIRC and then fed the output from that into my PalmOS app on the device.
Of course, everything's a lot more connected these days so it should be a simpler process to do the same thing (fewer steps at least).
Quote from: billybob476 on September 21, 2011, 06:16:18 AM
Hm, this wiki bears some more investigation: http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject (http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject)
This is great resource, known about it for a while. A lot of apps and plugins use this for their data and I think it has worldwide support if I remember correctly. I knowvsomenof the Media Center gus I know have used it to fill in the listing gaps that Microsoft doesn't get.
Quote from: Feathers on September 21, 2011, 08:40:54 AM
Quote from: billybob476 on September 21, 2011, 06:16:18 AM
Hm, this wiki bears some more investigation: http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject (http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVProject)
I'd need to go and find my old USB stick to refresh my memory, but I think that was where I got my listings from. I used a rather simple word macro to reformat it into the defined input format for a freebee .PDB format converter IIRC and then fed the output from that into my PalmOS app on the device.
Of course, everything's a lot more connected these days so it should be a simpler process to do the same thing (fewer steps at least).
Processing XML is quite simple these days. That's the point of it! To create structured data.
Quote from: billybob476 on September 21, 2011, 09:14:32 AM
Processing XML is quite simple these days. That's the point of it! To create structured data.
Yeah, it's nearly creeping onto aircraft systems. Just another five years and we'll be there I think ;)