McCarron's Infinite Shamrock

Three Years of iPhone Development

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:49:21 -0500

Three years ago I released my first iPhone application to the public, here is the story of how I got started.

Before I started dabbling in native iPhone development, I had started making iPhone games using web technologies. I had made a really simple web-based iPhone Blackjack game using AJAX, a few JavaScript frameworks and PHP. It was at one point going to be part of an online “Kombat Kasino” for my Mortal Kombat fansite The Realm of Mortal Kombat. But the web interface for the game just wasn’t cutting it for me. It didn’t feel right on the iPhone touch screen. It was then that a friend made a comment that stuck with me: “why doesn’t the game react to gestures like a real casino?” I figured it was perfect time to make it do just that using the recently released iPhone development toolchain.

My first steps in development were to draw an image onto the screen. I then had to figure out how to move them and respond to touching the screen. All this was being new to the platform and the language, I learned many things the hard way. Remember, this was all before Apple allowed us to write apps for the device. We only had framework header files and some shared Mac documentation. The OS that the iPhone was running on then was also far from ready for third party developers as it was an amalgamation of the new UIKit Framework and beta version of OS X Leopard. For instance CoreAnimation was still called Layer Kit. At that point I hadn’t done development for the Mac either, so both Cocoa and Objective-C was all foreign to me. Learning to do all this was the most rewarding programming I had ever done in my life. After a weeks or so of tinkering, I had a tech demo of playing cards moving around the screen randomly. It was cool, but it wasn’t a game.

It wasn’t until Lights Off! for the iPhone was released that I was fully inspired me to make this tech demo into a real game. Every evening for about two weeks I spent countless hours after work at coffee shops, book stores and my home office just trying to get the game into a playable shape. After lots of work and learning I eventually released the first alpha build of the game on August 28th, 2007 at just after midnight. I posted it up on my website and a few other places, and went to sleep.

Screenshot of iBlackjack Alpha 1

The release day was also the same day I was supposed to attend to the iPhone Tech Talks in Chicago. I was pretty tired when I arrived at the Tech Talks because of how late I was up. But the funny part was the entire day was dedicated to Apple developers showing showing us how to make web-apps for the iPhone, and by that time I had a native game. I eventually gathered enough guts to show the game to an evangelist there. He couldn’t tell me anything to help me out, but he pointed me to a great Chicago developer community CAWUG that I should connect with. He also told me more about the great C4 conference that Jonathan Rentzsch had held just a few weeks earlier. These resources I wouldn’t have discovered easily on my own especially when I was so heads down in development.

All versions of my game went on to get a combined total of close to a half million downloads via Installer.app over the next few months. At one point it even got featured on G4’s Attack of the Show in September of 2007 during a segment about third party applications:

From that point on iPhone development was a very exciting ride. In early 2008 I was hired away from my corporate day job to create iPhone apps full time for mobileAge. For them I have produced a bunch of great applications, and even more in the pipe. iBlackjack eventually was renamed Blackjack 21 and released on the first day the iTunes AppStore.

Blackjack 21 Screenshot

It honestly doesn’t feel like it’s been three years, as it’s been such a roller coaster ride watching the iPhone platform evolve. Since becoming an iPhone developer I have become friends with many fellow developers throughout this great community. There is lots of daily inspiration from the other great people also working on Apple’s platforms. I can’t begin to think what I would be doing if I didn’t take this career path, but I guarantee it wouldn’t have been as much fun as this journey has been.

Neven Mrgan on Beta Testing

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:33:43 -0500

Neven Mrgan on Beta Testing : Neven Mrgan writes a great article on software beta testing. Every software tester and developer needs to read it in full.

I’m probably not a great software beta tester. Most people aren’t.

We love the idea of beta testing, though. It’s a backstage pass to a movie set, a first draft of an upcoming novel, a rough sketch of a song. But, you know, unless you are prepared for them in a very specific way, those are all…

Andrey Subbotin: iPhone 4 @2x assets made easy

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:13:00 -0500

Andrey Subbotin: iPhone 4 @2x assets made easy:

Andrey Subbotin put together a great Ruby script for updating your app’s art assets for Retina screen on the iPhone 4. It is a great looking utility, I suggest you check it out.

We were updating our app’s graphics for the gorgeous screen of iPhone 4 the other day and it was a pain to update all the 163 PNG files we had and not to miss a thing.

So, I’ve come up with a simple Ruby script that checks that for each @1x image you have a properly sized @2x image.

markomni: Lightning strikes Chicago!

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:57:12 -0500

markomni:

Lightning strikes Chicago!

My $2.99 iPad Stand

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:06:15 -0500

While I’ve been waiting for the BookArc for iPad to ship, I had to find another interim stand to use for my iPad. After some scouring, I found a nice holder at Office Depot meant for plates or signs. It works in both Landscape and Portrait and allows for the dock connector to be used. Here is a look at it in action:

Are You Sick of 3D?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:07:21 -0500

Are You Sick of 3D?:

I think the studios will kill 3D my taking movies not meant for the format and “reformatting” them to be a fake 3D. Thus cheapening the true 3D effect and making viewers less likely to pony up the additional cash for it.

"If you want to get good at something, you have to put in the time and invest in yourself."

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:37:00 -0500

“If you want to get good at something, you have to put in the time and invest in yourself.”

- LIFE. IS. PAIN. by Daniel Pasco.

This posting by Daniel really struck a chord with me. I spent nearly every night for a few months in late 2007 teaching myself iPhone Development before there were books or even documentation back when the iPhone first came out. Heck, I’m still learning! I didn’t get a lot of sleep or see my friends for a long time, but I enjoyed working on something I was passionate about.

Over the past few years I’ve had many friends ask about getting jobs in the iPhone development, most of them with no experience to speak of. So thanks to Daniel I will now know where I’ll be pointing them when they complain about taking the time to learn Objective C, or why they should spend $25 on a book to get started.

"In many ways, it’s the things that are not there that we are most proud of… For us, it is all about..."

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:46:49 -0500

“In many ways, it’s the things that are not there that we are most proud of… For us, it is all about refining and refining until it seems like there’s nothing between the user and the content they are interacting with.”

- Jonathan Ive in the Time iPad article (via frijole)

ericsenf: Sorry, Flash, you’re out of luck. 03/21/2010 |...

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:59:03 -0500

ericsenf:

Sorry, Flash, you’re out of luck.

03/21/2010 | FoxTrot.com (via @McCarron)

"Don’t get me wrong I’m pulling for you, but this whole thing is a crapshoot at best...."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:58:41 -0600

“Don’t get me wrong I’m pulling for you, but this whole thing is a crapshoot at best. You’ve got some shaky studio execs back there waiting to pull the plug at any second.”

- Will Ferrell on the first episode of Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien, June 1st, 2009.

It seems there may be a Will Ferrell talk show curse.

Twitter Hit By BZPharma LOL Phishing Attack

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:36:12 -0600

Twitter Hit By BZPharma LOL Phishing Attack:

modernsecurity:

Twitter users are being warned not to click on messages saying “‘ol, this is funny,’ as they can lead to their account details being stolen. A widespread attack has hit Twitter this weekend, tricking users into logging into a fake Twitter page — and thus handing their account details over to hackers. Messages include Lol. this is me?? / lol , this is funny. / ha ha, u look funny on here / Lol. this you?? followed by a link in the form of http://example/ [dot] com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma [dot] net/login, where ‘example.com’ can vary. Clicking on the link redirects users to the second-half of the link, where the fake login page is hosted. In a video and blog entry, computer security firm Sophos is warning users that it is not just Twitter direct messages (DMs) that carry the poisoned links, but they are appearing on public profiles due to services such as GroupTweet which republish direct messages. Sophos also reports that the site being used for the Twitter phishing has also been constructed to steal information from users of the Bebo social network. Affected users are advised to change their passwords immediately.”

My Fifteen Years of Kovering Mortal Kombat

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:46:31 -0600

Fifteen years ago I published my first gaming FAQ guide to the Usenet, in this case it was a guide for the game Mortal Kombat 3, which was in beta testing at the time. I have been proud to be a part of the Mortal Kombat “Kommunity” ever since. To this day I still help run the now longest running MK fan site The Realm of Mortal Kombat aka TRMK. I sure didn’t think I’d be doing it still be covering the MK games for fifteen years, but I can say doing it has been a valuable part of who I am today.

I can’t say my early FAQs were any good, as I was just a pimply faced freshman in high school with no previous writing experience when I started. Today I can barely read the first FAQ without squirming. I learned quickly and my writing quality and accuracy increased over time, except for my habit for replacing C with K in many words. For instance one of my final MK3 FAQs is much less embarrassing. I went on to write guides/websites for non-MK games like: Killer Instinct 2, War Gods, Mace: The Dark Age, The Grid and Gears of War. My information was even published at times in various gaming magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Game Informer.

When Mortal Kombat 4 began testing around Chicago in 1997, I joined up with friends who ran the website The Realm of Mortal Kombat. I’ve been working on covering all Mortal Kombat games for TRMK ever since. We are the longest running Mortal Kombat website still in existence. We to this day are still trying to continue to help fans in the “Kommunity” as well as we can. It’s not easy to do right along side a real job, but I will continue to do this as long as I believe I’m contributing in some form or another. We’re currently anticipating the release of Mortal Kombat 9 which is rumored to be coming sometime around Christmas 2010.

While working on these guides I developed many key skills I use in work still to this day. I made the first of many computer applications, an Interactive Mortal Kombat 3 Guide for Windows 3.1 written in the computer language Clarion. I sadly have no pictures of this original guide anymore. Then with the expansion of the world wide web I taught myself HTML by backwards engineering HTML source code on various websites. I continue to grow my web design skills as the internet technology advances. All this technology use made me firm in my desire to pursue a career in computer programming. All the jobs I’ve ever had were working with computer technology in one way or another from support to software development. Currently, I’ve got an awesome job developing iPhone (and iPad) games as well as applications for MobileAge.

Through out the past 15 years I have also met and become friends with many great people. Everyone from the developers behind the games, members of the professional and amateur gaming press and of course all the other legions of game fans out there. Many of which provided great inspiration to me, and have been great friends over the years. I would make a list of these people who have helped over the years, but then I’m likely to forget someone. So I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey over the years, as without you I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. I really appreciate everything.

To celebrate this anniversary I’ll be giving away a few Mortal Kombat product packages to readers on The Realm of Mortal Kombat. So be sure to check there later today, or follow @TRMK on Twitter, for more details as I put the contest details online.

"It’s got to be so annoying to compete with Apple, at anything really, because it’s not..."

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:28:01 -0600

“It’s got to be so annoying to compete with Apple, at anything really, because it’s not like they’re doing something fucking crazy. Everybody’s had these ideas before. The difference, and this is grim if you are a competitor, but the difference is that everyone else spends a lot of time (and often, money) determining why those things aren’t possible. And then it comes out, for real, only you didn’t make it. Some other guys did. And when you come out with what is (on paper) a better version of the same thing, maybe even multiple times over, it’s too late. You made a “product” to compete with their “product,” tastefully arranging your regiment, only to discover that they hadn’t made a product at all - they made a narrative. A statement about how technology should interface with a life.”

- Jerry “Tycho Brahe” Holkins from the article that goes along with today’s great Penny Arcade comic about “The Tablet”.

"Indie+Relief raised $143,872 for charity!"

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:29:00 -0600

“Indie+Relief raised $143,872 for charity!”

- Indie+Relief: Thank You « carpeaqua by Justin Williams
140+ Mac and iPhone developers banded together in just six days to kick ass, sell their software, and donate 100% of the proceeds to help Haiti. Incredible.
(via chartier)

The reason we don’t need Flash for the web in the near...

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:29:16 -0600

The reason we don’t need Flash for the web in the near future… the Star Wars opening crawl done in just HTML and CSS! by guillee:

I’m done: Star Wars opening crawl, using only HTML & CSS. Caveats: It only works in Snow Leopard in Safari 4.0.4 and the WebKit nightly. Nothing else supports the CSS 3D transforms and animations I used, but I just wanted to see if it could be done.

The One Week Digital Cleanse

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:47:37 -0600

While reading Gizmodo earlier today I saw a post by John Mayer about doing a week long digital cleanse. It caught my eye as anyone who knows me I’m addicted to email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. So cutting myself off for a week to refocus and organize my mind was interesting to me. I think doing this will help me refocus on starting our new iPhone projects after returning from a long vacation. So unlike John, I will not start on January 1st but instead I’ll start it on Monday 1/4 when I return to work after my vacation ends.

jhnmyr:

Mention to anyone with computer savvy that your laptop has somehow gotten slower over recent months and they’ll ask you the same thing: “have you defragmented your hard drive?” Defragmenting works by taking small slivers of information stored in various locations and consolidating them so that they’re in the same place on the drive and thus easier to access in larger chunks. Hard drive fragmentation is a great metaphor for - if not a literal manifestation of - what’s happened to our brains over years and years of processing small bursts of information. 2009 took fragmentation to a whole new level given the rise of Twitter and the social acceptance of texting people as a substitute to making phone calls.

That’s where the one week digital cleanse comes in. I’ll be defragmenting my mental and psychological hard drive during the first seven days of the new year, and I invite you all to participate.

The cleanse will begin at 9am on January 1. This gives everyone a chance to text and tweet their new year’s well wishes, and theoretically begins upon waking up the morning of January 1. The cleanse will end at 9am on January 8.

Guidelines:

*email only from laptop or desktop computers

*cell phones can only be used to make calls, and no text messages or e-mails are allowed - if you receive a text, you must reply in voice over the phone. E-mails must be returned from a laptop or desktop computer.

*no use of Twitter or any other social networking site - this includes reading as well as posting.

*no visiting of any entertainment or gossip sites. (No need to detail which ones - you know what they are.)

I floated the idea last week on Twitter to see if anyone could envision themselves doing this, and the responses were interesting; some said they could definitely do it, but many were resigned to the idea, calling it impossible. If it is impossible, than my theory is already proven and we’re in big trouble as a society.

This can be done, people. Do it with me. When we pop back up on the grid on January 8, let’s trade stories on what it felt like, how hard it was, and maybe how hard it actually wasn’t.

JM

New TiVo Device to be called TiVo Premiere?

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:01:00 -0600

I just received a TiVo HD via the “Upgrade” program today for my bedroom, and inside the box I received instructions on how to “Setup TiVo Premiere or Premiere XL.” I immediately noticed this as I’ve never seen this product name before.

I figured it was a simple re-branding until I looked to the picture on the bottom of the page for where to put the CableCard. I already own a TiVo Series 3, which takes the two cards in the back, and the TiVo HD takes two cards in the front. So I was surprised to see this picture to show a single slot on the back. That’s when I noticed that this didn’t match my TiVo HD at all, and is in fact a new un-released TiVo model called the TiVo Premiere!

I assume that it will also come in an “XL” edition, as it says “Tivo Premiere or Premiere XL.” The main differences I can see is that It features only one Cablecard slot, which is said to be for Multi-Stream Cards only. It no longer has the S-video output and phone jack. It also seems a bit shorter than than the TiVo HD is, judging by the spacing of the component video jacks. The second page also shows the TiVo software’s CableCard UI with just the single slot on the screen, which is clear this is for a device with just one CableCard slot.

I assume this was accidentally inserted into my box during the shipping process last week. From the looks of it, it just appears to be a revised Series 3/HD model aimed to lower production costs. The inclusion of a CableCard slot leads me to believe this isn’t a new Series 4 model, which is supposed to have Tru2way. Either way, I bet we’ll see an announcement at CES next month. Those wanting to take a closer look, you can download a PDF scan (~10MB) of the document to look over yourself.

You can also read the discussion I started over at Tivo Community for more ideas/insight to what this may be.

Figures just my luck that TiVo releases a new unit sometime soon after I purchased a new one!

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither..."

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:44:08 -0600

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin (via ericsenf)

dunk3d: Let’s Enhance.

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:17:38 -0600

dunk3d:

Let’s Enhance.

UISearchDisplayController's UISearchBar has Wrong Orientation

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:24:00 -0600

iPhone developers have you ever seen your UISearchDisplayController’s UISearchBar acting like it’s in Landscape like below? I came across this in working on the latest update for our Leonard Maltin Movie Guide iPhone app and only after I would return to the view after dismissing a modal view that was rotated to Landscape.

In this case, the UISearchDisplayController view shouldn’t ever rotate. So after trying to figure out what I was doing wrong I chalked it up to a problem in UIKit and thusly started looking for a “fix.” After a few hours I finally found a way to make it work as expected (see below) and figured I’d share that information.

I found a few lines of code that can fix it, and are included in my Bug example Sample Code in the MainViewController class. It’s wrapped in a condition check on a kFixTabBarView constant so the error can be easily reproduced without my fix getting in the way.

The gist of the fix that you want to override viewWillDisplay:animated: in your UISearchDisplayController subclass. During that you’ll want to toggle setActive:animated: off and then on again to get the UISearchBar to redraw properly if the view exited with the search active. Below is some basic example code:

[self.searchDisplayController setActive:NO animated:NO];
[self.searchDisplayController setActive:YES animated:NO];

By doing this you’ll reset the state the UISearchBar was in, so you’ll have to reassign the search text and selected scope button to it’s previous state along with the table’s contentOffset. I also block out the call to searchDisplayController:shouldReloadTableForSearchString in this case to prevent the search from re-executing as the results already exist for that search. Again all code for this can be found in my Bug example Sample Code (it was too long for this blog).

I opened a bug report radar with Apple on this issue already, you can see the details of the radar over at Open Radar, Apple employees can use the link: rdar://7478456. I hope this finds the way to someone else with this problem, as I know it resulted in many hairs pulled out of my head.