StyleMac.com » iPhone

New App: GlobeTrotter – The Timezone Calculator

B. Terhechte — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:42:56 +0000

GlobeTrotter is a new iPhone app for everyone who frequently has to work with or depends on people in different timezones. It offers easy and quick timezone calculations. Without hassle, without calculation errors. Set up unlimited timezones and see how they relate to each other:

What time is it in Tokio if it is 3PM in New York.

For everyone who finds himself calculating timezone differences ever so often because the built-in iPhone app doesn’t cut it, Globetrotter is the perfect, solution. Guaranteed.

Find out more about GlobeTrotter for iPhone or iPod Touch

OweMe – Money Lending Manager for iPhone

B. Terhechte — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:04:53 +0000

So after a small hiatus the first serious StyleMac iPhone application is out. OweMe, the Money Lending Manager has been created with a lot of attention to detail and based on a specific problem: I often experienced the situation that I lend someone a small amount of money (say $5) and forgot about it later on. On the other hand it just as often happened that I lend money from someone and forgot about it too – until I got a disappointed or even enraged call.
That’s where OweMe comes in. A slick and easy to use interface helps in quickly jotting down all these small amounts of money one owes or lends from time to time.

I’ve been testing the application for about 4 weeks now as I wanted to make sure it works as advertised before I submit it to the App Store. And I’ve already used it a dozen times. It really, really helps me in keeping track of all the small amounts of money I tend to get or give. I wouldn’t want to miss it on my iPhone.
Features:

Clean, simple and FAST UI, optimized for the task at hand featuring
seperate lists for Credit and Debit values
Add notes, names and due dates
Use the iPhones location info to gain additional information on the whereabouts of an entry
Secure your data with an optional access code
Set detailed options like sort order or currenc
Select between different wallpapers
…and more

You can find more information on the OweMe Website. The direct iTunes App Store entry can be found here.

Cocoa, Cappuccino and the Palm Pre

B. Terhechte — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:42:42 +0000

Palm’s Andrew Shebanow (former Adobe) on Cocoa on iPhone versus JS on the Palm Pre and it’s effect on application quality and developer interest:

That’s a complex question to answer. But the thing to keep in mind is that is not a zero-sum game: I expect many developers will work with both webOS and iPhone, and that is perfectly fine. But I also believe that we will be able to attract additional developers who want to leverage their HTML/CSS/JavaScript knowledge but can’t or won’t deal with the strictures of iPhone development.

I do think he’s right in that many developers will want to target both plattforms. In this case the Cappuccino Web Framework seems to be godsend.

It doesn’t feature everything that Objective-C 2.0 and Cocoa on the iPhone offer, but it should seriously ease transitions. Actually, if I was 280 North, I’d try to add the Palm Pre Javascript extensions to Cappuccino as quickly as possible in order to attract that horde of iPhone developers on their gold rush.

I for one am happy that I can target Mac OS X, the iPhone and Web Applications with one framework (more or less) and one language (more or less). Sometimes it drives me crazy to jump between PHP/Symfony, Python/Django, JS/Prototype/Ext and Objective-C/Cocoa.

Twitter clients

B. Terhechte — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:43:41 +0000

A detailed (actually even a brief) look at the field of Twitter clients for different systems leads to an interesting observation: There’re not only more but especially far better Twitter clients available for iPhone than for any other device. Take Tweetsville or Tweetie as the dominant examples. They’re a joy to use, offer great functionality and one can just feel the attention to detail and thought gone into their development.
A look at Mac OS X or Windows, on the other hand, reveals just mediocre clients which lack a lot of functions I’d take for granted, given the size of the userbase and importance of Twitter.

There is no simple monocausal reason to explain this. It might in parts be the (monetary) appeal of the App Store. Another aspect might be a strong usage of the standard Twitter website as a substitute for unnecessary advanced clients.
I do think though, that the primary reason is a direct hint at the latent needs, people solve via Twitter. Even more, I do think that the current state of Twitter clients offers a glimpse at the future of Twitter (or Microblogging, for that matter):
Twitter is the archetypical mobile application.
Currently, a lot of people still twitter while they’re browsing the web. Publishing liks to interesting pages. I do think though, that there’ll be more and more mobile tweeting. Think about it – as soon as Twitter moves beyond being just a tool to publish links; as soon as you start talking about your life, politics, business or local news; that is: as soon as you start using Twitter as it was intended to be, you’ll most likely need it when you’re not at home. The Mumbai terror attacks offer an insight into such a usage scenario (and I will use this example in more posts to come, as it serves as a very good example to understand the nature of Twitter).

This, of course, doesn’t mean, that there’s no need for a sophisticated desktop client. I’m pretty sure, that The Killer Client is already in the works (presumably for Leopard). The interesting conclusion to draw from the above observation is that, in the future, Twitter might very well become ubiquitous.

Google Objective-C Toolbox for Mac / iPhone

B. Terhechte — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:31:19 +0000

Google offers a potpourri of source code snippets from their varying Mac projects qua Google Objective-C Toolbox.
The Box contains Mac and iPhone compatible sources and offers several additions to Foundation and Appkit as well as new classes to aid in integrating Google services. In brief:

- Geometry libraries to manipulate NSRect, NSPoint, and similar.
- Additions to NSBezierPath, including GCPath conversions, round rects, and shading
- gzip for NSData
- HTTP Server
- HTTP URL Fetcher
- Regex Library
and much much more.

Especially the regex library is just what I need. There are several other external regex libraries for Cocoa, but just recently I tried to use one of those and they were either outdated, not maintained anymore, didn’t compile or lacked certain features. I didn’t try to Google library yet, but I’m hoping for a good solution. This comes in very handy, especially for iPhone.
You can find the library here.

The iPhone Nano

B. Terhechte — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:59:07 +0000

So, there’re new rumours regarding an alleged iPhone Nano. This time there’s even a picture illustrating the new device. I think that this is once again fake. For one, Apple just axed Steve’s speech at this MacWorld. If there really was an iPhone Nano, wouldn’t Steve Jobs want to disclose it to the public himself, instead of letting Phil Schiller do it?

Another doubt comes with the sole idea of a minimized version of the iPhone. A large deal of the iPhone experience comes from the App Store. These applications have been written for the specific display resolution of the current iPhone / iPod Touch hardware. A new device with a smaller screen wouldn’t be able to sufficiently run these applications. I highly doubt that Apple would want a differentiated device landscape, where every developer has to include countless special cases in his code to account for all the quirks of the different devices available (much like with web development).

So, given that there’s not Steve Jobs at MacWorld, and that an iPhone Nano presumably wouldn’t be able to run App Store applications, I highly doubt the existence of an iPhone Nano. I hope I am wrong though, as a cheap iPhone would expand the App Store audience even further.

iPhone 2, MobileMe launch

BradHall — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:10:52 +0000

Apple’s much anticipated iPhone 2 was released in the US today. As previously reported, the phone is on a 3G network and is half the price of the original iPhone. The iPhone 2 firmware is also available to download from Apple to install on the original iPhone for via the Apps Store. The firmware will.

In related news, Apple’s new MobileMe service went live on July 10th. MobileMe, which replaces .Mac offers email, calendar, and other services.

WWDC Keynote Update

BradHall — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:53:25 +0000

Today is the first day of the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. With over 5,000 people in attendance, this is one of the largest WWDC’s yet.

The House That Steve Built has some exciting announcements that have been coming seemingly every minute. Among the highlights are for the first half of the day are:

- Not only is iPhone 2.0 in beta with over 4,000 people in the beta program, but that there will be three parts to the SDK: Enterprise, SDK, as well as new features for the end users.

- Several demos from SEGA, Apple, eBay, Pangea Software, MIMVista, among others.

- SEGA shows off a video of Super Monkey Ball, which will be a launch title in the new App Store for $9.99 USD.

- MIMVista shows off a program designed to help medical students study and learn various parts of the body with almost realistic images.

- Steve anounces new iPhone 2.0 features, including contact search, support for Microsoft Office documents, and support for Asian languages. The iPhone is set to be released July 11th.

- Mobile.Me is the replacement for .mac, current .mac subscribers will be automatically updated to the new service. A 60-day trial of Mobile.Me will be included with the iPhone 2.0.

- The new iPhone will be thiner, sexier, include support for a 3G network, Enterprise support, more affordable, available in more countries, and have advanced GPS support.

- Target price for an 8GB iPhone 2.0 will be $199, a savings of $200 over the current price of the iPhone.

- Later in the day, Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard was announced, but would feature no new features, only improvements over older ones.

First Preview of the Android Plattform

B. Terhechte — Thu, 29 May 2008 09:18:01 +0000

Google’s Android, the imho only real competitor to the iPhone SDK, if it comes to the future of mobile computing, has so far been lacking information regarding usability and its interface. However yesterday, on the Google IO Keynote, lots of details were revealed. They demonstrated the Android touchscreen prototype and explained how the main interface, webbrowser and more works. You can find demonstration videos and pictures on slashgear. Out of all “so called” iPhone Competitors, this is in my opinion the first serious solution. The interface seems to be thoughtfuly designed and easily navigable by hand / touch. The Browser has interesting options to ease the information overload on such a small device.

The iPhone has obviously stirred the mobile marked in a big way (judge for example how suddenly every new phone is being compared to the iPhone, sometimes even by the manufacturer himself), competitors haven’t currently been able to offer a serious competitor though. The reason for this is rather simple: The lack of software. A quickly hacked and enhanced interface based on Symbian or Windows Mobile can’t compete with a Plattform like OS X iPhone, which is on the one hand based on years of Mac OS X experience, and on the other hand has been thoughtfully designed over years.

Android however seems to adress these issues. Google has the manpower, will and backing to develop a serious plattform, and smart decisions, like building on Linux, stress the future significance of this plattform. If Apple and Google play their moves right, there might be two major mobile plattforms in the future: OS X iPhone and Android – Symbian, Windows Mobile et al moving more and more out of significance.

iPhone SDK Update

B. Terhechte — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:59:42 +0000

Following on the fresh release of Mac OS X 10.5.3, version 6 of the iPhone SDK just arrived. Details regarding changes and additions can be found in TUAW’s liveblog. As we already speculated, there seems to be a strong correlation between the new SDK and 10.5.3, as it is a prequisite for installing.