StyleMac.com

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

Snow Leopard, hidden folder switching gem

B. Terhechte — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:22:48 +0000

There’s a neat new function in Snow Leopard, that I haven’t seen reported anywhere else yet. In previous incarnations of Mac OS X, some apps allowed you to access a specific folder by typing cmd+shift+G. This keystroke would reveal a small layer, where you could simply enter the directory you wanted to switch to (i.e. /Users or /usr/lib or /tmp). This didn’t work in all applications, though. Now with Snow Leopard and the Cocoa Finder, this works across the OS – even in Carbon applications like iTunes. Just press cmd+shift+G, and you can enter any (even hidden) directory on your system. Oh, and you’ve got full tab completition, just like on the Terminal app.

Update: A co-worker just told me that this feature has already been in the Finder before Snow Leopard. My fault. It may be new, though, that it works in every open- and save-dialogue now.

StyleMac 2.0

B. Terhechte — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:25:06 +0000

Back in 2005, when StyleMac started, we had high expectations. We wanted to create a Weblog that was primary based on the topics of Apple / Mac OS X, Design and Software Development / Unix. Touching all subjects that someone interested in creative work might find interesting. As StyleMac started to grow, however, it became ever more clear, that continuing on said ideals was impossible next to a day-job as StyleMac has always just been a evening project. And since the Site couldn’t hardly pay our rent, we decided to cut the time we spent in the site. From that point onward, StyleMac has seen ups and downs – mostly downs. With little content having been added since the inital first 5 months.
Now, almost 4 years after going life, StyleMac will change. Instead of trying to offer news on above topics, it will lead as the hub for all the Mac and iPhone applications we developed over the years. So the StyleMac News Blog will transform into StyleMac – Joyful Apple Software.
In addition to that, there’ll be interesting tidbits on Cocoa, Apple, Unix or Software Development. But always only then, if we encounter it in one of our projects.
Wrapping it all up: StyleMac is Dead, long live StyleMac. From now on this site will function as the information hub for our Software Developments. And since we needed something to celebrate this event, we rewrote our Safarilicious Software from the ground up, and released it just as well today:

Safarilicious 1.0
Rewritten from the ground up, universal binary, Leopard compatible, way better UI and lots of new features. Enjoy!

And a major update for OweMe is also in the works.

PS: You’ll notice that the links for our products will lead to subdomains of www.terhech.de. That’s an unfortunate side-effect of the previous state of the old StyleMac but will be resolved soon.

Thanks for your patience,
Benedikt Terhechte

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.

iPhone Experiment One: Happiness

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:42:24 +0000

Back in March last year, when the first version of the iPhone SDK beta appeared, I downloaded it, installed it, and hid myself in my room for a whole weekend in order to dig into it. Back then it wasn’t possible to applications test on the iPhone itself (except for those lucky few, who were allowed to join the Developer Program), and given the reports of differences between the real device and the simulator I decided against continuing iPhone development until I could test on the device itself.

Some months ago I finally got into the iPhone Developer Program and started developing applications again. Since I’m most of the time rather busy with my job, university stuff and other things I couldn’t really invest too many ressources into this.

However, I finished my first application recently and got it into the App Store: Happiness.
Here’s the description:

Need a mood change? Are you in a sad or bad mood and need an uplift? Something happy, comforting, delightful? This is where happiness comes in. This app will change your mood within a few seconds.
The basic idea has been verified in many scientific studies. If we see a smile, if we hear leughter, and if we experience a relaxing situation, then this will lead to more happiness and joy.

Happiness creates a happy mood through comforting pictures and the relaxing sound of many a laugh.

It was a very interesting and fun project. I learned a lot along the way and even managed to bring in some of the things I learned at the university (mood management theory).

In case you’re interested, feel free to visit the details page or head directly for the App Store Entry.

Steve Jobs taking a medical leave

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:24:12 +0000

The NY Times is reporting that Steve’s rumoured health issues seem to be more complex than initialy thought. Thus Steve will take a time out until June in order to treat the ‘hormon imbalance’.
Let’s hope that we’ll see a healthy and fit Steve Jobs at this years WWDC.

via the New York Times

Code Collector Pro

B. Terhechte — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:02:47 +0000

Many developers often face the tedious task of collecting difficult or complex code sequences in some sort of library or list. Most development environments already feature the one or other snippet function to allow for including this task into the workflow. This doesn’t work out though if you work with several programs or even do things via ssh in VI or Emacs on remote systems.
Enter Code Collector: An application focused on the sole task of collecting, keeping and sorting your snippets, functions or code sequences. It nicely integrates into OS X to help in collecting code from different applications as well as inserting it:

Code Collector Pro looks after all your code snippets, letting you quickly reference them whenever you want. With support for Smart Groups, Tagging, TextMate Bundles and much more Code Collector Pro is the best way to store, organise and share code snippets on the Mac

Find the App here