the stats are clear. cafe hoping makes for rapid and fun deploy of iPhone apps albeit with hard task of staying focused. even after three months to build and deploy the CloudCatcher iPhone and iPad Universal app i leave it to two days before the name expiration on the AppStore. it’s true! if you setup the AppStore iTunes Connect to sit on an app name, you have only 120 days to upload a binary. well given CloudCatcherLite as already out, i couldn’t lose this name without loss.
i’d been working on the paid version of CloudCatcher on and off the past few months and crunched most of the coding Friday night and all of Saturday. that’s 98.44 percent of the work completed one day before the name expires.
come Sunday 10am at the library i start the main screen, by 1 pm the setup screen is started. come 5pm the email screen is started at the Chit-Chat Cafe for the decibel challenged courtesy of a cool local band. Xcode Organizer validate and submit time: start 10pm with a tethered Droid for internet and end Sunday 8am on wifi after seven failed submit attempts.
why stop there?
iViewMe had the same name problem in the AppStore since i registered both app name on the same day.. 118 days ago. i left the hard work to submit the binary 15 minutes before the name iViewMe was about to be available to other developers.
a strange thing happened today at 5:45 when i walked into Green, my favorite vegan restaurant in the whole world. the fellow behind the counter recognized me by saying “hello Raul nice to have you back”. i thought i heard a familiar voice with my name spoken but i barely recognized him from a previous visit two months ago. i asked him how he knew my name and he said he’s got a good memory for people’s names. but the place gets packed daily by veggies wanting their dinner veggies! how curious.. i didn’t want to order the same-o Thai Peanut and asked him what’s spicy and hot but then interrupted by saying it’s not fair that he know my name and i don’t know his. “Jeff” he said and proceeded to suggested a top menu item. awesome Stevie, who saved the life of my iPhone 4 when i left it on the counter on a previous visit, watched curiously. I later learned her name talking at the end of the app deploy when she described her fashion hobby at http://meatmarketvintage.com.
while still at the counter ordering. Jeff asked me if i worked with computers cause he remembered that from me. then i said yes that i’ve been coding the iPhone lately with my first app released in the App Store this morning and proceeded to show both him and Stevie ADHDBuddy. then it occurred to me to show my other app for restaurants under review (name later). i was there to wrap-up my third iPhone app which i hoped to release this evening. he said he wanted an iPhone app for his blog at http://screwjeffowens.com and i said it was easy to create one cause i had an app in the making capable of expressing his uploaded images, if he wanted to spend a few minutes helping to design it. i finished signing the receipt and Stevie gave the Ok for Jeff to spend 15 minutes with me talking to design his app. i needed a few minutes to get a tea drink and settle my computer. he came right afterwards and we talked while i ate a mock chicken soy texture. i referred to the software mantra of “release soon, release often”, little did i imagine “soon” would be less than 2 hours later. after a few rounds he said i may have a misconception of his desired app. he wanted an iPhone app that showed his blog. that’s it. “oh that’s easy too” i said. “we just put a UIWebView to show your web page”. so far that was 45 minutes into my stay at Green.
Jeff returned to busing tables and i got busy creating a prototype from the View Xcode template. 4 or 5 UIWebView snippets off of google searches and the app was operative thanks in part to Interface Builder. we needed art work and Jeff volunteered an image native to 512 x 512 pixels from his 5 years running the comic blog. i popped out Adobe PhotoShop CS4 and proceeded to trim the image then produce PNG images for 512×512, 57×57, and 29×29. apparently forgetting iTunesConnect now only requires the 512×512 image. i secured the distribution provisional certificates with ready drag and drop to the Xcode dialogs. build and inspect the Build Result codes looking for the term “Distribution” in the code signing paths. i zipped the distribution app file, ready for upload as the last step in an App Store deploy. an oops moment came when i remember to check for leaks. no leaks popped-up from the massive three lines of xcode i copied and pasted shamelessly into Jeff’s app.
Jeff came by a few times between busing to provide keywords and a description. i’d forgotten to capture the screen so Jing did the iPhone simulation screen capture and Photoshop did the crop. that was it! Jeff wanted it free to the world and i was happy to beat my record of one week from design to deploy. the goal was one day – geez i never imagined to deploy in a little over two hours.
upon starting the “Application Loader.app” file to upload the file “screwjeffowens.app.zip” into iTunes Connection, two minutes of MacBook Pro battery life remained – any second of which a mac shutdown could have sent Jeff’s dream to a corrupted binary hell!!!
oddly we started our table conversation about another vegetarian restaurant in Davis, California where the seating waiter said “today is a beautiful day” and then added “it’s also a good day to die” with an impish smile. today is a good day to die too but i’m thinking to live another day for another app or 10.6 (== 24hrs / 2.25hrs) apps. well actually that’s not too far from the truth, i’m at home hoping to deploy the app i walked into Green to finish before bedtime.
it’s great to be back in normal programming mode to create a Python and QT draw animation tool to help me with an iPhone game. is the Python and QT combination the best of breed tools? Safari Books Online has a “Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt”. digging in – it ought to be a fun alternative to Java Swing.
i really, really enjoy teaching even if it’s online because being one step ahead of student ideas makes me put my thinking cap on. after a little ruminating about and talking to friends on how to balance a sweet spot of daily iPhone Xcode programming and teaching, i thought to offer a online iPhone classes every Saturday 10-6 at $99 per month. that’s great for anyone wanting to learn a bit more about the iPhone and great for me in dedicating a relaxing afternoon teaching online. the cost is awesome for an eager iPhone student too at an unheard rate of at $3/hr (= $99 / (4 wks x 8 hrs/wk)).
last week my friend Ryan suggested to code a little app in Python. i was blown away by the simplicity of the code structures. looking into the language was quite a refreshing treat. i’m now immersed in Dreamhost installation instructions with the ultimate goal of creating a new web application.
MockApp.com has a mac Keynote iPhone template i used to create wireframe screens for my latest app. i prefer to use keynote and not PowerPoint although the PowerPoint template appears workable. At what point is it worth creating wireframes? At the start of an app development. With a template it’s still possible to miss a ‘look or style’ for the your app. for example the MockApp iPhone TabBar needed a simpler design that can be achieved by blending an icon with the background so there is no boxy button.
this past week Ryan coded a bezier curve python animation for a game. it’s got anchor and control points xy binomial expressions for the anchor and control points. the code has been ported to AirPlay for deployment to the iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.. working in C++ is a refreshing break from convoluted code in XCode.
game programming for the AirPlay SDK in C++ is wickedly cool! did game programming this past week in Sedona coding a new interactive game to deploy on the iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.. every target Airplay supports. go to http://www.airplaysdk.com and check it out. cost is $99 per machine. my mac’s mac address was used to register the product so the license can only applied on this laptop. boo hoo but it keeps cheating to a minimum for the Ideaworks Labs folks.
the iPhone and Android Open Source Club at ASU developers have been meeting weekly and the time has shifted to Fridays at 6pm in the MU (we really do like coding).
