Categories

The following items are in the Advice category.

iPhone multitasking

It’s no secret that “multitasking” is one of the great new features of iOS 4. Unfortunately, many people have a misconception about what Apple has implemented. Hopefully this short essay will help you understand the restrictions and the good reasons for having these limits.
On your desktop, multitasking means that any application or process can run [...]

Don’t design for early adopters

If you’re like me, the iPad has changed how you look at computers in just a matter of weeks. The possibilities for this device seem endless. It’s natural at this point to start thinking about the future, and to do that thinking in terms of the past.
As an example, we’ve been getting plenty of feature requests [...]

Waving a red flag

As a result of my last essay, it has come to my attention that there is a simple and effective way to get Apple’s attention for critical bug fixes. An email to appreview@apple.com that explains the critical problem and which product is affected will help speed your update through the system.
Use this email address only [...]

Trendy

If you’re reading my essays, it’s likely that you’re selling some kind of software on the Internet. (Or soon will be.)
To be successful at this endeavor, you need to monitor your sales and plan development around the revenue. Ask anyone who’s had success with a software product, and I can guarantee you that they have [...]

Sharing iPhone projects

The latest version of Xcode has a “feature” that prevents you from specifying a wildcard name for the Code Signing Identity. (This feature does make it easier for new developers or people working alone, so I’m not going to write a Radar for this behavior.)
When you have multiple people working on an iPhone project, this [...]

Release day

Unless your Internet tubes are broken, you’re probably aware that we released Frenzic for the iPhone today. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re all very proud of what we’ve accomplished—and very grateful for the great feedback we’ve been getting. As always it’s been a great pleasure working with Wolfgang Ante on this game.
But [...]

Debugging with backups

If you’ve written an application for the iPhone, you’ll eventually encounter a customer problem that you can’t reproduce. Of course, you’ll want to get a copy of the customer’s data and preferences so you can replicate the environment they are working in. And then you’ll realize that it’s a total pain in the ass for [...]

Plug-ins the Cocoa way

For many graphics applications, plug-ins are a way of life. This essay presents a method that minimizes the amount of work required to support different host applications, or even different versions of the same host. I used these techniques in our IconBuilder plug-in for Photoshop. These instructions have already helped one fellow developer; with the [...]

Don’t feed the raccoons

Piracy is a fact of life for software developers. There are always douche-bags who think they should get your hard work for free. Sometimes this takes the form of distributing serial numbers, sometimes it’s kracking the application to eliminate the checks. I’ve come to accept this as part of running a software business.
Recently, however, a [...]

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