Lone Sentry

Build & Archive Shell Script

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:54:52 +0000

I’ve worked out how to replicate Xcode’s Build & Archive command as a shell script, suitable for running from the command line (i.e. from a continuous integration server such as CruiseControl.rb)

Whilst it’s pretty hardcoded to my personal requirements, I’ve released it as a gist under the MIT Licence, so feel free to fork it and make improvements.

I hope it’s useful.

A great redesign of iTunes 10 found on Twitter. Although...

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:06:31 +0100

A great redesign of iTunes 10 found on Twitter. Although iTunes is way too big a program (I would love Apple to split iTunes up — have a ‘store’ app, a music app, a video app, a separate iDevice organizer, an eBook app, a Ping app, etc. — this layout is much clearer than what we have now. Maybe next year.

A Smartphone Retrospective

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:29:42 +0100

A Smartphone Retrospective:

Marco Arment considers what has happened in the smartphone market in the last three years, and then wonders what the netbook market will look like in 2013.

Git for the Lazy

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:55:08 +0100

Git for the Lazy:

I’ve been busy the last few weeks, which is why this blog has stalled a little. But I’m back with a real gem. We’re using Git at my current place of work, and it’s a superb Source Control System. Unfortunately, it can be a bit ‘alien’ (and verbose) when encountered via the Command Line (it’s Linux origins showing though, I think). But this page walks you through what you need to know quickly & easily, and I particularly like this nugget:

When dealing with git, it’s best to work in small bits. Rule of thumb: if you can’t summarise it in a sentence, you’ve gone too long without committing.

What's New in Xcode 4

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:19:57 +0100

What's New in Xcode 4 :

Apple have put a public page describing the new features in Xcode 4. They’ve also released a developer preview version to those of us, like me, who couldn’t make it to WWDC this year.

Changes

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:03:00 +0100

After a lot of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that the time is right for me to make a change in my job. I thought long and hard about what it is I want to do and where I want to be in future. So I’m leaving Rockstar and setting up Lone Sentry to focus on iOS development full-time.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve been at Rockstar Leeds for nigh-on six years now, years that will doubtless figure prominently in my life for years to come. There were some rough patches, as there are with any job, but on the whole it’s been the best job I’ve ever had. I got to work on some of the most rewarding projects anywhere, alongside some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I had the thrilling privilege of playing a small part in building the world’s best handheld games.

However, I’ve been a Mac fan for as long as I can remember. Please indulge a short trip down memory lane: I’ve been programming on obscure systems since I was a teenager in the 8/16-bit days (Amstrad CPC, followed by the ARM-powered Acorn Archimedes). But when I saw an Apple PowerBook Duo 210 laptop in the early 90’s I was just blown away. And after I actually got to use System 6 on the little 9” Black & White screen of a Mac Classic II at university, I was hooked. I bought my first Mac in ‘95 (a Performa 6220CD running System 7 in colour) and loved it. I had Metrowerks CodeWarrior, read the original 1992 Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines religiously, and considered the User Experience of an application to be paramount.

But there wasn’t a lot of work for Mac developers when I graduated a couple of years later. Instead, I happened to pick up the Apple edition of Edge magazine, and saw a bunch of adverts for games developer jobs in the back of it. After spending a year of my university course working in OpenGL for the BAe Farnborough Cockpit Group, I knew that I could fit right in to the games industry. So I did, and got stuck into Visual Studio and Playstation development.

But a decade later, after working on some of the biggest games in the industry, Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone SDK and the App Store. And I saw an opportunity to go back to developing for Apple devices. Being at Rockstar’s handheld studio was a great position to be in, but eventually, I realised that I needed to focus fully on the iOS platform.

So here I am.

ShareKit

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:24:23 +0100

ShareKit:

ShareKit is an open source package for quickly adding share features to any iOS application with just 3 lines of code.

It supports popular services like Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, e-mail and as it’s all open source, it looks pretty simple to add new services as required.

The kit enables sharing images, URLs or files and only displays the appropriate services for the type of the content.

Oh, and, if that wasn’t useful enough it looks simple to customise the UI to match the look of your application and it works offline as well (sends the pending items when there is a connection).

I’m really impressed by this, and I hope a lot of developers choose to use it in future.

HTC 1 Design

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:22:00 +0100

HTC 1 Design:

Andrew Kim comes up with a a really Ive-eqsue design for an HTC handset. It’s pretty much the first Android phone design that I would actually consider. Pity it doesn’t exist.

(via Engadget)

Xcode 4 Leaked Info

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:09:29 +0100

Xcode 4 Leaked Info:

Oliver Drobnik scours Twitter for snippets on information on the new XCode 4 announced at WWDC.

Generally developers love that Xcode 4 appears to be a total refresh, lots of thought is apparently being put in, all the more reason to look forward to it.

From the features listed here (git support!) I’m very eager to get my hands on it.

Reverse debugging with GDB 7

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:33:00 +0100

Reverse debugging with GDB 7:

Speaking of features that would be more than welcome in Xcode, upgrading it to gdb7 and integrating reverse debugging would truly be magical.

We can find out where it was changed by setting a watchpoint and using the reverse-continue command. This works just like you would hope: the program runs backwards until the point at which p was changed.

Rumour has it that Xcode 4 will be shown at WWDC next week, so here’s hoping!

Xcode UI Improvements

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:18:00 +0100

Xcode UI Improvements:

Brandon Walkin comes up with some great ideas about how to improve autocomplete & documentation in Xcode.

In this post, I’ll explore some improvements to how documentation and autocompletion is integrated into the development workflow and how Xcode could provide specialized interfaces for working with system frameworks.

I know I’m in the minority, but I prefer Xcode’s documentation viewer & autocomplete to Visual Studio’s anyway, but these ideas, if implemented, would push it into another league.

2010/2011 Apple Wishlist

Wed, 26 May 2010 00:46:00 +0100

2010/2011 Apple Wishlist:

Vinny Coyne nails it:

The recent Google I/O event got me thinking about features that Apple could be working on for iPhone OS and their other platforms. I thought it would be interesting compile a list of few of my most wanted features here and see what Apple comes up with.

I agree with all of these (I would also like to see MobileMe turning free if it turns into a Dropbox-style service as well, so developers can rely on it, pretty much.)

The Gap Scenario

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:39:00 +0100

The Gap Scenario:

John Battelle’s thoughts on how having ubiquitous networked computing devices like smartphones will change how people interact with the real world and how marketing and shop service could change along with it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been using what I call “The Gap Scenario” to illustrate how marketing is going to change in the next few years, in particular as it relates to the intersection of physical and digital spaces.

Very interesting thoughts, and I can see a definite niche for apps which support this kind of interaction in future.

Platform Control

Sat, 01 May 2010 21:44:00 +0100

Platform Control:

A great post by Mark Bernstein on why he thinks Apple is acting the way it’s acting over the whole “no-Flash on iPhone OS” thing.

This is the key to modern Apple. It’s a big company, and it’s now wildly successful. It assumes that it can write a successful software product in any niche.

Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:01:00 +0100

Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash:

Steve Jobs has written one of his (very) occasional ‘blog’ posts that addresses the fight between Apple and Adobe:

Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

More of this kind of thing please, Mr. Jobs.

Creative Space and iPad

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:51:22 +0100

Creative Space and iPad:

Matt Gemmell on how the iPad fits into a developer’s lifestyle, and how it addresses work/life balance into the bargain as well.

iPad arguably fits uniquely well into the lifestyle of living the “indie dream”. It’s a support email-handling and ticket-managing machine, it’s great for quick UI sketches, you can use it for firefighting server admin tasks, and so on and so forth.

Introducing SproutCore Touch

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:07:00 +0100

Introducing SproutCore Touch:

The SproutCore framework is a way to build HTML5 web apps quickly & easily, and now it supports the iPhone, iPad and other touch devices.

SproutCore Touch is the first edition of SproutCore that includes complete support for touch events and hardware acceleration on the iPad and iPhone.

I’ve had a quick play, and it looks like a great set of tools.

iPad

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:17:32 +0100

Lots of people have already written reviews of the iPad, but since I live in the UK, I hadn’t seen or held one in the flesh until recently. Not my own, unfortunately, as the UK iPad won’t be released until late May.

Firstly, the hardware itself is beautiful; like a Macbook Pro lid or a 1st generation iPhone, it’s all aluminumn & glass. Several people have said it’s smaller than they expected, and most have also said that it’s heavier then they thought too. But not too heavy; just a nice “heft” — I find it similar to holding a moderately sized hardback textbook. When you walk around with it, you do feel like you are from the future.

The screen is fantastic, and as wide-angle as advertised. It’s glossy, and despite being oleophobic, it seems to pick up fingerprints far more than my iPhone. The solution to both those problems seems to that it has a nice bright backlight which pushes the image through smudges and glare easily.

When I first played with it, I was slightly underwhelmed. It looks just like a big iPod Touch, as everyone has claimed. But it turns out, that’s no bad thing.

The increased screen real estate makes a big difference. Web pages now feel very much like they do on the desktop, eBooks can be read easily and games are much more detailed and easier to control. And Google Maps is just breathtaking, which I was suprised by — it’s just a map, after all.

And the speed — the glorious speed. This thing is *fast*. Like *really* fast. The iPhone isn’t a slouch, by any means, but the speed increase makes the whole experience of using an iPad so much smoother.

The iPad is something that gets better and better the more you personalise it, I think. Having all my apps and personal info in it would make an already impressive experience superb. It’s like meeting a charming person who grows into a close friend the more you spend time together. (Does that anology make me sound a bit weird? Probably)

The lack of Flash isn’t something I really care about. The websites I do visit just don’t have annoying Flash-based ads, which is a win in my book, and stuff like YouTube, Vimeo and so on all work fine. The lack of Farmville means that my wife shouldn’t steal it too much. I think a native Farmville app would be massive on this thing, however.

I would certainly reccommend the 3G version to my father-in-law apart from one thing; the lack of video codec support. He gets a lot of ‘funny’ videos emailed to him from friends and family members, and they are often in AVI format, which the iPad doesn’t natively support. On the Mac, the great Perian takes care of that, but there isn’t any way of adding in QuickTime components on the iPad. I’m hoping somebody comes up with some kind of official VLC app that hooks into the email system soon.

But overall, this is a great bit of kit, and I’m certainly going to be using it for Sofa-Surfing, PDF/eBook reading, and light productivity work. Now I just need to wait until May.

iPhone HD Mockup

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:03:00 +0100

iPhone HD Mockup:

Dear Apple, this is pretty much exactly how I would like the iPhone HD (aka iPhone 4) hardware to look.

Prerelease iPad App Screenshots

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:48:00 +0100

Prerelease iPad App Screenshots:

A gallery of lovely looking iPad app screenshots from the Boy Genius Report. BigOven Pro really seems to follow the Apple design guidelines with great success, I think.