A note on Objective-C singletons
13 January 2012
https://lukeredpath.co.uk/blog/a-note-on-objective-c-singletons.html
iOS App Marketing - Quick Tips
12 January 2012
Display ads - waste of money. The return on banner/text ads is very disappointing. Google has the best CTR. Facebook are well-targeted, but are expensive (if your app sells at less than €3, then it might not be worth your while). BuySellAdsallow you to purchase ad-space on some popular blogs - the service itself is great, but sites I've advertised on didn't give a good CTR.
Journalists - big blogs (Techcrunch, etc) are worth contacting but don't expect to get featured, unless you're VC backed and have raised a bunch of money. Focus on smaller, niche blogs - for example, a Russian iOS blog caught wind of a Muud.io sale and subsequently sales spiked 400% for couple of days. Local journos are usually eager to help out too.
App review sites - a handful of the bigger ones are worth contacting. A personal email works best if possible - press releases are usually ignored. Most are a waste of a promo code however.
Apple - extremely difficult to get noticed. Build a great app and you've a better chance, but don't count on getting featured. If you have any contacts in Apple, it's worth getting in touch - you might at least get your app in front of the iTunes editorial team for review (even so, you're still not guaranteed placement).
Twitter, Facebook, Google+ - Worth maintaining a presence. The more active you are the better. Twitter is #1 referral stream for visitors to the Muud.io website.
Scripting EirText for Mac in Terminal
25 November 2011
Using EirText for Mac's command line / Terminal commands:
All you need to do is launch EirText as usual and make sure that you have an account set up within the app. Make a note of your username and the network you're using (e.g. O2.ie, VoIPCheap.com, etc). You can quit the app once you have an account ready for use.
Here's an example of how it works:
/Applications/EirText.app/Contents/MacOS/EirText -uUSERNAME -nNETWORK -rRECIPIENT1,RECIPIENT2,RECIPIENT3 -m 'MESSAGE TEXT'
Now, just a quick explanation of those arguments:
- USERNAME is the username that you use to log in to your account
- NETWORK is the name of your provider/network, for example O2.ie
- RECIPIENT1… is a comma-separated list of recipient phone numbers
- MESSAGE TEXT is the body of the message, surrounded by single-quotes
So, for example, let's say I'm a Vodafone.ie user and my username is 0871234567. I want to text two numbers — 0861111111 and +447547777777.
This is what I'd type into the Terminal:
/Applications/EirText.app/Contents/MacOS/EirText -u 0871234567 -n Vodafone.ie -r 0861111111,+447547777777 -m 'Hi there. This is a message sent from the EirText app for Mac!'
Hit return and you'll see something similar to the following output to the Terminal:
2011-06-16 14:10:22.135 EirText[5155:903] 181 messages remaining.
2011-06-16 14:10:22.136 EirText[5155:903] Sending message to 2 recipients...
2011-06-16 14:10:29.182 EirText[5155:903] Message sending successful.
2011-06-16 14:10:29.182 EirText[5155:903] Quitting EirText.
Learning the road of iOS development
24 November 2011
https://minicorp.ie/blog/2011/11/23/learning-the-road-of-ios-development/
Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter
22 November 2011
https://www.stepcase.com/blog/2008/12/02/format-string-for-the-iphone-nsdateformatter/
I want to get started building iOS apps...
17 November 2011
If you've never coded before, have a look first at Visual Basic, then C++ or C#. You can get Microsoft's tools online for free. Just do a Google for Visual Studio. There are loads of tutorials online for VB and C# - I'd recommend trying out the latter as it's probably more relevant (C# can be used for Windows Phone programming). This also lets you try your hand at programming without having to buy a Mac.
Once you have a bit of coding under your belt, you'll be ready to move on to Objective-C, which is the iOS & Mac programming language. As you can guess, it's an enhanced version of C, but it looks quite different. You'll need a Mac for this, but you might as well go ahead and buy one — you'll thank me later :)
Apple supply a huge amount of sample apps with the iOS SDK. All you need to do is fire up Xcode, click on Help and then on Documentation and API. There should be a link to Sample code somewhere on the main page of the docs. Xcode is available on the Mac App Store for free.
Apple also offer video tutorials on iTunes U. Check out the Stanford iOS course on iTunes U while you're there. Jeff Lamarche's blog is a great resource also.
To be honest, you could read and read, but the best way to learn is to download the Apple samples and tinker with them until you get a feel for how they work. Try out code, break your code, and learn how to fix it… Unfortunately it all takes a bit of time, but it's worth it once you get your first app running on-device.
Some books:
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
Cocoa/Mac focused, but a great entry-level book)
https://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-Mac-OS-3rd/dp/0321503619
Beginning iPhone Development
https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430216263/
Best Developer at The Appys!
06 November 2011
Hello. If you've been reading about my win at The Appys (Best Developer, woo!) and Googled my name, you've probably been led here.
This is my personal blog.
My app development company, App Sandwich can be found at https://www.appsandwich.com and my latest app, Muud.io, is over at https://muud.io
You can also get in touch directly via email or Twitter.
A little bit of cross-promotion...
19 October 2011
If you haven't yet heard about my new app,Muud.io, here's a little bit about it:
Muud.io is a music app for iPhone & iPod touch that can recommend playlists, based on a given mood.
Simply pick a mood, and we'll build a playlist for you, using the music you love.
You can view a demo video (desktop-only for now) and screenshots over atthe Muud.io site.
Muud.io is available on the App Store (and is currently on sale at half-price for a limited time).
Wanted: Search and in-app purchase APIs for iTunes media on iOS.
14 October 2011
UPDATE: Apple have marked this feature enhancement as a duplicate of 7040203
Filed as Radar #10286028
Currently, apps have to jump into the iTunes Store app on iOS when prompting the user to purchase songs & video.
The user taps a "Buy in iTunes" button in the third-party app. This jumps into the iTunes app. The user must then tap the Buy button in iTunes and then enter their Apple ID password.
To reduce the number of user-actions and potentially increase on-device music purchases, Apple could create an in-app purchase API for music, similar to standard in-app purchases.
A native search API for iTunes could be created, which would mimic the current JSON API. A standard system UIViewController could be used to display search results and handle the purchasing experience. Songs downloaded would be added to the user's Music / Video apps.