iOS Development Goodies

Camera+ Sales Figures Defy ‘Sophmore Slump’ — Against the usual odds, tap tap tap’s camera app makes another $250k after its second months of sales. The app has been at a $1.99 ‘introductory price’ ever since its launch. 8/10/10

iPhone Camera Capture Access in iOS 4.0

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Joost Schuur

Erica Sadun recently put together a small Camera Image Helper class to stop and start a camera session, following a discussion about a recent Apple policy change on the use of UIGetScreenImage, which will force a number of apps to drop support for older versions of iOS and thus some devices not capable of running 4.0.

The helper class doesn’t help with that dilemma, but after using it, you can simply request the last image captured, or ask it for an embedded preview in the current session. A sample project showing it all in use is provided.

The topic will get further coverage in the next version of Erica’s popular iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.

Posted in Code | Tagged advanced, camera | Leave a comment

HTTPClient — If you’re ever doing any amount of web service calls in your app, HTTPclient, from the developer of the site specific browser Fluid will come in handy. It lets you issue HTTP requests of any type, allows you to set and read all the headers and you can even save requests as files and replay them later. 8/10/10

Goodie Roundup – August 9th, 2010

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Joost Schuur

Interesting iPhone and iPad development, design or even marketing items. Often new, sometimes old.

The Able Pear blog explains how to load device specific XIB files in a universal app.
Parade of Rain covers creating automated builds using the xcodebuild command line utility.
Similarly, there’s a post on the Carbon Five blog on how they do continuous integration testing for iPhone apps with TeamCity.
BusinessInsider tells us everything they know about iAds, including advertising costs, conversion rates and initial feedback from developers that have used it.

Have a goodie to share? Send it in!

Posted in Goodie Roundup | Leave a comment

Multiple Activity Indicators with DSActivityView

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Joost Schuur

David Sinclair, developer of the Tweeps app, recently released his DSActivityView class for iPhone and iPad developers to the masses as open source.

DSActivityView comes in several different styles: a simple horizontal-style loading view, an animated, rounded rectangle and a view that goes over the on-screen keyboard. The ability to update the text displayed while the activity is in progress is also provided.

David credits Matt Gallagher’s article on showing a loading message over the keyboard as the inspiration for his work. For a video of the sample app showing off all the different style variants, head over to David’s blog post.

Update: iOS 4 compatibility was added in a later update.

(via Open Source iPhone Directory)

Posted in Code | Tagged activity, intermediate | 3 Comments

Open Source iPhone Directory — A directory of open source iOS frameworks, applications and tools. New additions are also posted to @openiphonedev on Twitter. 8/9/10

Glyphish 2x iOS Icon Set Completed — The Kickstarter funded project for high res versions of Joseph Wain’s Glyphish icon set completed last week, producing 400 icons for iPhone and iPad developers. The project landed an astounding $27k on pledges, despite the original funding goal being set at only $2k. No word yet when they will be available for non backers, or at what price. 8/9/10

speedlimit Slows your iPhone Simulator to 3G and Edge Speeds

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Joost Schuur

If you’re creating a network intensive iOS app and want to test how it works under 3G or even Edge bandwidth conditions, speedlimit is a Mac OS preference pane by Mike Schrag that slows your network connection all the way down to dialup speed, allowing you to keep testing apps in the simulator instead of the device:
Since you get to define the affected hosts and ports too, you can simply leave it running in the background without affecting your other apps.

Posted in Code | Tagged intermediate, networking, utility | 3 Comments

Goodie Roundup – August 7th, 2010

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Joost Schuur