News tagged ‘developers’

Last week Alexander Vaughn from the AppAdvice.com resource had a chance to take a first look at the iBookStore. As you see from the screenshot above, late rumors about higher e-book prices for iPad are confirmed to be false. Moreover, 27 of the 32 books presented in the NYT's Bestseller section cost $9,99 which is exactly the same price as for Amazon Kindle versions.

To expand their market share Amazon chose a strategy of selling the most popular and newly released books at a loss. Now it seems that such a serious concession won't take a proper effect.

iBookStore is a platform for selling iPad e-Books. The working scheme is the same as for iPhone developers - publishers are free to set the prices they want, but Apple keeps 30% of it.

Starting today Apple will be accepting developers' iPad apps for review. If you want your application to be considered for the grand opening of the iPad Store, then submit it by March 27, 2010. Company says they will let developers know about the readiness of their apps so they will have a chance to make necessary changes before a final review submission.

Here are several screenshots from updated iTunes Connect interface that now allows submitting iPad applications.

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For some time people interested in the iPad's tech specs were wondering where the Dvorak keyboard support is. With iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 5 released on Tuesday developers finally found it. But on the evidence above it is clear that there is a hardware support, but not software (so you can connect external keyboard, but there is still no way to change iPad layout to Dvorak's).

It is interesting that though the hardware support is developed, there are no Bluetooth Dvorak keyboards produced at the moment to connect to the iPad (on the other hand you can always take usual keyboard and apply stickers to its keys).

To know more about Dvorak keyboard layour read here.

9to5mac reports that the latest iPhone 3.2 Beta 4 SDK has the new gestures folder. And there are two new types of commands (3Tap.plist and LongPress.plist), that are certainly not implemented in the iPhone SDK 3.1.

Apple will probably allow developers to use these new capabilities in the next version of the iPhone OS. We might even see these next month in the shipping version of the iPad.

Developers have found references to multitasking in iPhone OS SDK files. The below mention of a "multitasking dialog box" is just one example:

Actually many different Apple's built-in applications already multitask. For example, phone.app, iPod.app, Safari.app, Mail.app, etc. so theoretically, the dialog box in this case could refer to current functionality.

Apple recently released iPad/iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 4 to developers. Let's see what's new:

1. Application "Photos" has been improved. Here is text from official changelog:

"Launching the Photos application under the iPad Simulator will initially show three tabs: Photos, Albums, and Camera. The Camera tab represents photos available via the Camera Connection Kit for iPad, and is not relevant for the Simulator. The Camera tab will disappear after a few seconds. "

Apple actually specified what we had seen in 3.2 beta 3. The tab Camera is for the Camera Connection Kit, and does not indicate any front camera on the iPad.

The fonts have been also improved and there are some new Gestures added for images.

2. The function Add Bookmark in Safari browser works now (previously only allowed to link to home).

3. When you press the button twice on the lockscreen the iPod controls appear, just like on the iPhone:

4. With the iPad simulator is open, pressing "cmd + shift + space bar" will appear a list of languages. By pressing the space bar you can change language:

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Apple today released the iPad/iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 4 SDK.  The build 10M2144 is 2.5GB and can be downloaded from developer.apple.com/iphone.

One of the developers enabled a passcode lock in iPad SDK and then decided to type it incorrectly for a few times. After 5th try iPad proposed to make an emergency call.

This option looks pretty obscure but can be explained as a following to FCC regulations, that demand wireless phones to be able to make emergency calls (even in the cases when the device isn't currently active or assigned a number).

Jobs claimed at the iPad's keynote that it has a built-in speaker and mic, so does it really can make normal calls in addition to emergency calls?

What firmware version do you expect Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, to use on his iPhone? Probably something like 3.2 beta or 4.0 beta with many new unannounced features.

Mike from Macsoda got a response from Steve Jobs to his email wondering about the future of Final Cut Pro (40 Final Cut Pro developers were recently let go). Typically brief, Steve Jobs said:

No worries. FCP is alive and well.
Sent from my iPhone

Now let's look at the header information from the email as well:

The email looks legit as it originates from an internal Apple 17.x.x.x IP address. Here is an interesting part: Steve Jobs iPhone is listed as iPhone Mail (7D11) which means he's using firmware 3.1.2. That's not even the current version of the iPhone OS (3.1.3 - 7E18), let alone the 4.0 Beta we're were hoping to see.

Steve Jobs called Flash technology a 'CPU hog ' and an "old technology" with numerous “security holes.” On the iPad demo with the Wall Street Journal that took place in New York Apple CEO attempted to persuade the WSJ honchos to bring the issue to the iPad.

The parties discussed one of the stumbling rocks- the inability of iPad to support Flash technology. The point is that the Journal invested a great deal of money in Flash enabling to deploy videos, slides and other interactive media.

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Apple announced that it has added App Store support for 13 new countries:

You can now distribute your apps to more customers with the addition of App Store support in Armenia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Jordan, Kenya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda. Log in to iTunes Connect to view and update the countries where your applications are available.

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Apple decided to increase the limit of MB downloaded from the AppStore over 3G or cellular network. Previously applications could be bought if their size was less than or equal to 10 MB. Apps over this limit were available only through Wi-Fi. Many game and app creators deliberately whittle their software down to less than 10MB to make them more accessible to iPhone users.

This limit now has been doubled. Although it might not seem like a big difference for developers it is certainly a plus to both developers and end users.

If you are an existing member of Apple's iPhone Developer Program, you can login on their site and download the new SDK, which includes an iPad simulator for testing apps that are under development.

There are also available new iPad Human Interface Guidelines and iPad Programming Guide that introduces new iPad features and how-to about their implementing in applications. New user interface guideline outlines ""how to effectively use the new views and controls available to you to deliver unforgettable applications to your customers".

Apple also launches a new Universal Application binary format for iPhone OS apps. It will allow developers to create an app that can take full advantage of the features of the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. So the iPad and iPhone code will be wrapped into one app package making distribution and management much easier.

Just over a week ago, Apple published a table that showed the percentage of the number of applications that were approved and therefore also those that were rejected during the review. These numbers are a bit higher now: 98 to 97% for new applications and 99 to 97% for the updates.

There are more than 140,000 applications in Apple AppStore, so a change of 2 percentage points is certainly not as small as it may seem. The number of rejected apps might increase even more in the future. The most important concern for developers right now is the obligation to add metadata to their applications.

We have spoken several times about Flash CS5 that will allow to transform the Adobe Flash applications in real native iPhone apps ready to be distributed through the AppStore. This video shows a quick overview of everything that Flash developers will be able to:

The are many possibilities. The only limitation is the skill of the developer. You can create games using the accelerometer, a multitouch applications, apps with video, pictures or even Twitter. We are looking forward to Flash CS5 release.