stlplaceThis 9-month-old young lady.
Her first endeavor in Xcode
I think she is still a winner although there were 62 compile errors. You know why? Because Youyou tried (I am quoting my 5 and half years old niece).
This morning I received an email from a user saying that the app stopped working. After one round of back and forth, I realized I shipped the product with a serious (show stopper) bug: I was playing around with adding a comma separator around the time I made change for v 1.2, and I left the code there when it shipped. Now I break pretty much everyone’s nest egg if they run the updated (v 1.2) app.
This little incident again illustrate the thing I mentioned last week: testing
and another topic I would like to talk some time later: source code control.
Luckily, the fix was relatively easy: I comment out the code where I put in “exta comma” for numbers. Because the app persists the number to the file system, I need to do some String manipulation in Objective C (basically remove the extra comma) when reading from the file during app loading. Here is a StackOverflow discussion thread I followed on this topic.
BTW, the user has entered the opportunity to win the $25 Amazon gift card, as I said a bit earlier.
PS: it appears the ratios (saving progress; income ratio) are still correct in those cases, despite the error of dollar amount. Note the ratios are more important in reality, though I can understand the dollar amount are more important in most people’s mind.
PS 2: it’s interesting to see sometimes, when things are broken, it started to get attention. This reminds me a story in which an app got a lot of “ad click” because the useful data feeds were broken, and all the user can see is the Ads.
I thought this for a while, when I was in the Voices That Matter iPhone developers conference, I have seen the great interest from iPhone app developers, from indie developers (individual or small team development shop), to high school teacher who taught self programming and teaches kids on iPhone programming. They come from different background, software consulting, development, education, authors. Being from enterprise software development background and have created iPhone app on my own time, I think I can share some of my thoughts on “applying software engineering principle to iPhone app development”. Hopefully this can shed lights on the best practice of iPhone app development, and ideally those thoughts can be applied to software development on other areas as well.
The No. 1 thing I want to talk is testing. Why we need to test an iOS app?
As my old C++ professor said in the class: a program is a novel if it does not run as expected. We always want to test the software (aka app) if it’s a bit complicated and takes some time to develop. For simple iOS app sometimes we would just skip the formal testing process, and in some cases we just assume it works. I learned the lessons the hard way recently.
1) After I uploaded the binary via iTunesConnect, I found some problems with the app. So I rejected the app, fixed the problem, and uploaded it again. I did this 3 or 4 times in one case. After the last upload, my app was end up in “Upload received” status but did not automatically move into “Wait for review”. Waited anxiously for a few days. Finally I googled and found this article on StackOverflow and followed the instruction to contact Apple, waited for a few more days, and it got resolved eventually. Had I tested the app more thoroughly, I would not have to go through all the pain and the app would get reviewed soon.
2) More recently, I added a feature to the app and tested it on iOS 3.1.2. After it being released, I tried it on iPhone 4, and I found the feature does not work. Ouch.
How to test?
Ideally we should have a test suite and automatic test. But we don’t live in an ideal world. As I minimum, I would test the following:
for #iPhone #app #myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator (link at iTunes store) and receive an Amazon gift card (one winner per category).
I am starting this mostly for fun, three categories ($25 per category):
bug report; enhancement request; user story
Send email to uudaddy(No Spam) AT gmail DOT com. This runs until Dec 31, 2010. One entry for one person.
How the prize being determined
My 7 months and a half daugher gets to decide 🙂
Seriously, I will decide according the merits.
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Version 1.2 is coming
Just in time for annual benefits enrollment. The following is a glimpse. Note I purchased Glyphish Pro icons this time. So hopefully you can show this app to your friends without being embarrassed for lack of icons in version 1.0/1.1
F.A.Qs
I got this problem 2 days ago, exactly same as it being described at Stackoverflow. My environment: Xcode 3.1.4, iPhone OS 3.1.2, Mac OS 10.5.8 (yeah, I am a little old school).
Struggled a bit, tried creating new certificates, using old certificates, blah blah blah. Nothing, still see the same message after I added the provision (downloaded from iOS dev center) to Xcode: “A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found in your keychain”
I read that Stackoverflow carefully, also looked at the Apple Offical Q&A 1688. Finally I figured it out: I need to download the dev certificate approved (automatically) at iOS dev/provision center, double click it (to install on Keychain). It initially complained about “two certificates using same name” or something like that. I deleted the old dev certificate in Keychain. After that I fixed the provision for my apps, and download the relevant provisions, then drop those to Xcode => Organizer. I no longer see the error. Subsequent build and install worked beautifully.
A small battle was won.
#VTM_iPhone
The conference was hold in Philadelphia, PA. Note there was a VTM_iPhone conference this past spring in Seattle. This is my first time attending an Apple themed conference, my first time to hear names like Omni Group, Mike Lee, which are almost like household names in Mac/iOS community.
Ok, let me get to the topic, the people and topics of conference. First I want to thank Chuck and Barbara (and all other Pearson Publishing organizers, venue helpers) for their hard work on logistics (food, drink, website etc.), if there is anything could be improved, I think it’s the Wifi access point. Probably due to the overwhelming of iPhone/iPad, and laptop, sometimes we had difficulty connecting to Wifi. But that’s a minor thing, compared the quality of speakers, and the openness atmosphere of participants (Mac community is much friendly than some of the other dev community as I know of).
Technical sessions are excellent, sometimes I had hard time to make a choice but I like to attend all 3 sessions running at the same time. Eventually I decided to take more UI (user interface) and Graphics Design classes as that is my weakness, coming from coder/programmer background and not graphics Q. Here is the schedule of classes. Some of the highlights: Aaron Hillegass talked about the product cycle and going form “independence to interdependence” as business grow. Not entirely new topic, but good reminder to me. Mike Lee reminds me a Chinese guy names Lu Xun (after I gave it more thought): he fired at a lot of places and I think many of his points are valid criticism of “lack of effort/thoughts” in design. I think yesterday Steve Jobs’ fire at Android fragmentation is along the same line. When “Open” is just for business and marketing purpose, how meaningful really is open of Android?
The following are iPhone development blogs I often read. Note I used Google reader to get them. I also listed some of the blogs under “dev” category in the side bar (small).
Technical
iPhone development by Jeff Lamarche. Jeff is the author of the best beginners book for iPhone dev “Beginning iPhone development”. Recently I found his profile at LinkedIn, and found he was a law school graduate, which is total surprise to me. He is definitely not a lawyer type in terms of writing (blog) and talking style (from his tweets).
Cocoanetics (aka Dr. Touch): Oliver Drobnik, the former Windows Admin turned full time iPhone iOS developer lives in Austria (Europe). Note he recently changed the name from Dr. Touch to Cocoanetics. Regardless the name change, I found he has a very good sense of both technology and business: I think his article on Notifications and “Part Store” (he sold his components software like parts) are very interesting.
iPhone developer:tips written primarily by John Muchow, who is the author of Core J2ME (which is the primary mobile development language pre iPhone, it is still used on Blackberry platform, and note Android used a different Java virtual machine developed by Google). I think some article such as “rename Xcode project”, “Prevent application being placed in background” etc. to be interesting.
iPhone development blog: written by Nick Dalton who got into iPhone dev early. A lot of goodies include this iPhone iOS app store reject reasons. I believe he is a co-founder and CTO of a mobile development firm in SF (can not recall the company name on top of my head, you may google).
Ray Wenderlich: the blog bears the author’s name. It has a lot of meaningful tutorials (not those “Hello world” stuff). Besides that, I found this How to host beta test for iOS app” to be interesting.
Other Resources, news, gossips etc
iPhone developer news (Apple): get it from Apple iOS developer center. The official place for all the announcement etc.
Mobile Orchard: used to be good technical stuff, stopped update this April, just resumed blogging.
43 iPhone app development resources: the list is a bit dated, but still useful.
I will add more as time goes.
(Update 10-26-2010) I forgot to mention that app is available at iTunes App store since Oct 5. The product support page is at uudaddy. Sorry for my omission 🙂
(Original) I submit the collegeFund app 3 days ago. This app is similar to the myNestEgg ~ the retirement calculator, it helps parents (and other family members who are willing to help) to calculate the kid’s college savings fund vs. the retirement fund in the retirement calculator.
I got this idea more than a year ago when a close friend who is sending kid to college. I can felt financial burden of the father, while I can also fully appreciate the kid’s decision to go to a well known college instead of the college his dad and yours truly both went (btw, the job prospect of our alma mater was very good).
This March, our daughter was born, I was hoping I don’t have to be put into such as tough spot when my kid starts college (btw, her father will have to seriously think about the retirement plans then). Hence, I opened the Ohio 529 plan a month after her birth, and started to put away the money we received from family. Meanwhile, I set an automatic monthly deposit for her account.
Anyway, I wish this is a beginning for parents, grand parents, uncles, aunties etc. to plan for their kids’ college education. Now let’s hope the app gets approved soon 🙂
I started writing this post a while ago, after I bought Barnes Noble nook (e-reader), and Barnes Noble stock (NYSE:BKS). BN recently changed its brand of e-reader app on Android from BN to nook (it already use nook on iPhone and iPad), so nook is more than an e-reader, it’s at the center of BN’s digital book.
What’s up with Barnes and Noble stock
Stock was under heavy selling pressure, after announcing price cut of Nook e-reader, and fiscal 2010 Q4 result (2011 Q1 and full year outlook), before the announcement of potential “taking private” and Ron Burkle (its second largest shareholder) proxy fight. The stock bounced from as low as about $12 to $17 in couple months since the announcement.
But the fundamental problem facing the company: transition from traditional book to ebook is too high a mountain for BN to climb. Back in “printed book” days, BN can use its scale to get better rate from publishers and commercial real estate companies, beating a lot of mom and pop stores on the way. Now physical stores become a liability. Compared to Amazon (kindle) and more recent Apple (iPad), nook is not standing out (both hardware and software, read this Mossberg review on 3 e-reader apps for iPad), and can not win from scale, even presence at BN book store does not overcome Amazon Kindle’s TV commercial and Target store presence. Target is going to carry iPad soon. BN does have presence at Best Buy, but Kindle is coming to Best Buy soon.
Burkle criticized BN founder and largest shareholder Riggio almost anything (Riggio did the same to Burkle). At the dispute is the recent transaction of BN buying College bookseller (valuation discussion below). Valuation aside, I think Riggio is trying to salvage his empire by banded the retail stores with more stable business – college book store. College book stores are perceived as more stable because students have to buy textbooks. As long as college enrollment does not decline (this usually holds as nowadays college degree is necessary for most white collar jobs). The only thing is here digitization is happening too. BN does have some initiative, Amazon Kindle DX was trying to make a dent here (was not successful), but Apple iPad is posing a serious player. This is causing more problem for BN.
So who should you vote in the Proxy fight? As I said earlier both sides accuse the other side as totally moron. I think the truth is somewhere in between. I don’t think Burkle has a magic bullet here, and I don’t think Riggio really understand this facebook era. I can see Kindle has a facebook page, and BN has a facebook page, but NO facebook page for nook. WOW. Notice BN does not air commercial on TV as well (this is more understandable because they don’t have deep pocket as Amazon and Apple). But NO free facebook page (for marketing and brand awareness). Something is broken in the BN management.
more readings at WSJ.
College bookseller buy valuation
Graphics is very sharp
This can be demonstrated by the Netflix app. I installed it the first night right after I got home. Watched a movie, the graphics quality is very very good.
Installed apps
Besides Netflix and other usual stuff (google, twitter, facebook, linkedIn), I also installed NFL Score, Public Radio Tuner (a bit disappointed on this one, not multitasking enabled, so I can not read email and listen to the radio at the same time), Yahoo, iBooks, myWireless (AT&T), WSJ and VTT (Virtual Table Tennis) Lite.
fstream: this little program allows me to listen to Chinese radios via Stream, and it is multitasking enabled (can run in background). The only caveat is it eats the data limit in 2gb data plan fast, more later.
Weakness
Battery: per Apple iPhone battery page
“iPhone 4 offers up to 7 hours of talk time on 3G, 14 hours of talk time on 2G, 6 hours of Internet use on 3G, 10 hours of Internet use on Wi-Fi, 10 hours of video playback, or 40 hours of audio playback on a full charge at original capacity. In addition, iPhone 4 features up to 300 hours of standby time.”
This is about right, as I had to charge my iPhone 4 in the afternoon couple times (early in the week) as I was listening to the Internet radio.
So so speaker-phone? I had this feeling when I talked to my friend this evening.
AT&T Data plan
I picked the common 2gb plan. 2gb is a bit tight for me, I used 425 mega bytes as of day 3. Why? Because I was using this fstream app listening to Chinese radio stations. It’s cool, but it’s also a data hogger: for 64 k per second stream, it’s using about 25 mb in one hour per SuperUser. For the time being, I am using the following approach to relieve the data usage.