Update iPhone to iOS 4.2 installation Error

If you are having some fun and games getting iOS 4.2 onto your iPhone then the following may help.

It seems the quick'n easy way to get the new OS onto your device for testing your Apps will no longer work. You'll find that downloading the updated OS and then restoring the phone in iTunes will partially complete, but right at the end you'll receive an error (often error 10) which leaves your iPhone in a state that needs fixing (restoring back to iOS 4.1 in iTunes).

Here's what you need to do:

- BACKUP your device.

- Ensure you have downloaded and installed the latest beta XCODE.

- Run XCode and connect your iPhone.

- Click 'USE FOR DEVELOPMENT'

- You may need to authorise with Apple using your DEV account.

- Once you are done, you'll get the option to restore the iPhone in XCODE. Ensuring the right OS is selected in the drop-down (other > select OS 4.2 that your downloaded from Apple), click restore.

- Once restored, fire-up iTunes and restore your backup. You 'may' have to try this a couple of times as sometimes the first time fails (don't panic!).

- Test away.....


Personally I think what we have to do now makes sense, it was too easy previously for anyone to hack-about and play with the new OS (non-devs just to get the latest features). Bringing it into XCode somehow makes me feel happier.

NOTE: no guarantees, do at your own risk!

Playing with iPad

Unfortunately we don't have an iPad yet (Apple, Mr Steve! can we have one please???) but, what we do have is the beta of the new SDK for iPad development. And.... it's beautiful.

We are of course under an NDA regarding new features so I cannot say much. However, I do think I am able to share the following with you.

The iPad is of course (at its most simplistic) a giant iPhone device, although the larger screen and improvements/additional features Apple are providing allow for much richer software experiences and usability for a lot of applications that could never function properly on an iPhone. This is mainly down to the physical size and the resolution of the screen you have to work with. That sounds obvious, and it is. 'Serious work' on a display the size of the iPhone's is difficult. The iPad make it not only feasible, but also useable, and in many cases, probably pretty enjoyable. That is massively important.

One thing that I'm sure you can understand Apple are likely to encourage with the iPad is the way applications adapt themselves to the physical handling of the device by its users. Many iPhone apps only run in a portrait mode because it is more useable for viewing lists of information or data entry and more often than not offers a better user experience for non-media content than landscape views do. This is mostly negated with the iPad because of the high resolution. In practice, for the first time with an iPhone OS device, you can have landscape views that are more useful than their portrait cousins for all kinds of applications. Showing more information and alternative information in a useful manor. I'd suggest that all iPad applications (except maybe games) should work in whatever orientation the user is holding the device in, and give the power back to the user.

Porting an existing iPhone app to the iPad can be either a relatively simple task, or a more complicated task - depending upon what the app is and what resources it contains and needs to work with (especially image resources e.t.c. which must be provided in much higher resolutions). This is mostly obvious because of the massive difference in the physical resolutions of the displays. The iPad does allow you to run existing iPhone apps natively at either their original size (smaller rectangle in the middle of the iPad screen), or zoomed in to fill the iPad's screen. This does not automatically gain you any advantage in terms of the actual screen space you have to work with because you are ultimately just looking at exactly the same as you would be on an iPhone.

iPhone apps which consist mainly of table views and lists of information (which so many do) are far easier and more efficient to port to the iPad. Other apps will likely require much tweaking, additional resource provision/creation and even more thought because you now have an iPhone OS device which is close to the screen size offered by your laptop. That's much more than a phone and you need a different mindset when thinking of the possibilities.

With some of our current 'play time', I have ported most of one of our client's apps to the iPad (I won't tell you what app it is because they don't know yet and now isn't the time!). As it's largely a data entry app, the process was more trivial than most ports are likely to be, but there is still much to do in terms of images used and the original assumption of an iPhone's 320x480 pixel display when designing, preparing and developing the app.

Whilst I have a few personal doubts about whether many people will feel an absolute need to own a product that fits neatly between their iPhone and MacBook/PC laptop, there is no doubt that the iPad is a lovely thing - and I'm sure anybody with an income that allows them to purchase a lot of new shiny things will be snapping one up. We're looking forward to getting our hands on a real iPad ASAP (whether Apple or Mr Jobs send us a freebie or not remains to be seen - come on Steve, go on..... you know it makes sense).

iPad App Development

Unless you have been incommunicado for the past few days then you'll know that Apple have released the iPad.

A new device that sits nicely between the iPhone and Mac range, we are anticipating a new range of customers utilising this smart device (along with existing Apple users enjoying it).

Based upon the iPhone OS most Apps can be natively run out of the box on the iPad. However, to make use of the new screen-size updates can be made to give a nicer user experience. The iPad also introduces some new features which will only function on the iPad (you can either build explicitly for the iPad or universally for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch).

We're looking forward to porting and creating new Apps for this marvellous little device. If you want an App for the iPad then contact us to find out more.

p.s. Just in-case you have missed it watch the promo Apple iPad video.

Renaming an Xcode project

If you're anything like me, you always start off your lovely new iPhone project in Xcode by giving it a cool name with a space in it somewhere - quite why I don't know, but I always do.

That's fine for when you're working in your development environment, but before you submit your App to Apple you have to ensure there is no space in the executable name. One way of doing this (that I've used many times in the past) is to create a new project and then drag all your code and resources back in.

This got a bit tiresome, so I thought I'd write a little script to automate it - but before doing so had a quick Google.... and Monte Ohrt has the ideal solution, a bash shell script to rename Xcode projects.


usage:
renameXcodeProject.sh <OldProjectName> <NewProjectName>


You can find it here. Perfect.

SDK 3.0

We're really happy with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK and have already begun experimenting with some of the new features being opened up to us developers.

Sure, we 'could' get access to some undocumented areas of the iPhone, but this was not really a great area to explore.

Now, we have access to a few more api calls which will allow us bring more great features to our Apps and our customer Apps.

As an iPhone user I am also looking forward to seeing some of the Apps I use get updated to make use of the new features...

Apps like Omnifocus, RunKeeper, fringe or AIM. I'm also really pleased to see copy & paste which will allow me to operate in a more natural and intuitive way.

Thanks Apple - it's looking good.

Want an iPhone App?

Do you want an iPhone App?

No, it's not an offer of a free iPhone App download or anything (for a free download you need to look to iChoose).

"Want an iPhone App?" is our offer to all of you companies out there that are looking to out-source iPhone development for your wonderful products and ideas.

Maybe you don't have the time to develop iPhone versions of your existing products? Or, maybe you're primarily a design/advertising company/agency that doesn't have the in-house skills required? Or, perhaps you're a great ideas person that needs a hand?

Whatever your situation, get in touch and ask about our iPhone Development Services.