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iOS application icon naming conventions

Christian — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:31:44 +0000

A short reminder on how to name your iPhone / iPad app icons properly. Sure, you can always specify those names specificy in the application info.plist. But why not chose convention over configuration to make life easier

Icon.png (required) # 57x57px ... standard iPhone icon Icon@2x.png (required) # 114x114px ... retina display iPhone icon Icon-72.png (required) # 72x72px ... standard iPad icon Icon-Small.png (recommended) # 29x29px ... standard iPhone Spotlight search icon Icon-Small@2x.png (recommended) # 58x58px ... retina display iPhone Spotlight search icon Icon-Small-50.png (recommended) # 50x50px ... standard iPad Spotlight search icon

Just drag the files into the “Supporting Files folder” within Xcode and allow Xcode to copy the files into the proper directory of your app.
If you also want to adhoc distribute your app – like, in beta testing – you should also include the following iTunesArtwork-file in your source. If you want it to render with the shiny Apple effects in iTunes you need to provide a JPEG file, if it should be rendered untouched just use a PNG. The iTunesArtwork file must not have a file extention:

iTunesArtwork # 512x521px ... iTunes icon used with adhoc distributions

And don’t forget to exclude the file in your iTunes-Connect distributions to the AppStore. There you upload the PNG file separately within the upload process in iTunesConnect!

Hope this saves some time

Video of the special event: A celebration of Steve’s life.

Christian — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:09:47 +0000

Apple just published the video of the tribute to Steve special event at the Apple Campus on October 19, 2011. So kind, that the Apple folks are sharing the event with us. Thanks. It’s really moving.

Picture: Apple

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish … RIP Steve Jobs

Christian — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:06:43 +0000

Thank you for so much, Steve.

I was deeply moved by Your commencement speech in Stanford as I am when I watch it today …

“Let’s talk iPhone” … 4s Apple Special Event Video Stream

Christian — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:31:21 +0000

Sure, it’s not Steve Jobs presenting on this special event … but I think the mixture of Tim Cook, Scott Forstall, Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller giving the presentation works out quite well. But see it for yourself by watching the official video-stream from Apple about the iOS 5, iCould, iPhone 4s, Siri & all the other details.

P.S. Hope Steve Jobs health recovers!

Offical Apple video stream of WWDC 2011 Keynote

Christian — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:44:43 +0000

Here’s the Quicktime video stream of this years WWDC 2011 keynote about Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud … and how it all works together. So, tune in to see Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall presenting the newest software developments.

Liveblogs: Steve Jobs WWDC 2011 Keynote on Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 & iCloud

Christian — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:00:45 +0000

This years WorldWideDeveloperConference WWDC 2011 sould out within 8 hours. So, bad luck if you’ve been on a transatlanic flight at that time. Today, the lucky ones of the iOS & Mac developer community, who managed to get a ticked this year, gather at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco. Probably, Apple will share the videos of all of the WWDC sessions for free with their registered iOS & Mac developers, like they did last year. And even if the Cupertino guys won’t stream Steve Jobs keynote live, we’ll get a video stream short after the event. For real live coverage we can rely on the all those people blogging from the keynote. The keynote begins at 10:00 AM PST (07:00 PM CET) and there are a lot of things to cover: The next version of Mac OS X called Lion, the next version of iOS for iPhones & iPads and Apples new cloud service iCould.
Here’s my link list for live coverage of the event:

Tim Stevens & Darren Murphy for Engadget … Tim & Darren start their pre-keynote-roundup at 07:30 AM PST via UStream videostream and continue with the keynote coverage
(Liveblog technology: UStream (not via iOS) & ? iOS-friendly engadget cms ?
Ars Technica … live blog will start with the keynote
(Liveblog technology: ScribbleLive, disabled for iOS).
Greg Kumparak for TechCrunch … live blog will start at 08:45 AM PST – 17:45 CET
(ScribbleLive, not iOS optimized).
TheNextWeb … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
(ScribbleLive, iOS friendly).
Jason Snell & Dan Moren for Macworld… live blog will start with the keynote
(Liveblog technology: CoverItLive, iOS-friendly)
Technologizer … live blog will start with the keynote
(CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
MacLife … live blog will start with the keynote
(CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for ZDNet … live blog will start with the keynote
(CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
Arron Hirst for RazorianFly … live blog will start at 09:30 AM PST – 18:30 CET
(CoverItLive, iOS-friendly).
Gizmodo … live blog will start at 09:00 AM PST – 18:00 CET
(Liveblog technology: unknown, iOS-friendly).

As soon as the keynote is available as a Quicktime stream, you’ll get an update here

Coding: .gitignore for Xcode 4

Christian — Sun, 01 May 2011 06:36:04 +0000

Finally, Apple introduced native Git support in Xcode 4. Git is now the standard version control system you can use within Xcode. The Apple engineers did a great job in integrating Git into Xcode 4 … but there is room for improvements Tools like gitx still are essential for me to keep track of all the branches in the Git-repository.
If you want to use Git as the version control system for your Xcode projects, you definitely should use a specific .gitignore file to keep your Git-repository clean.

That’s the content of a Xcode4 optimized .gitignore text-file:

# Exclude the build directory
build/*
 
# Exclude temp nibs and swap files
*~.nib
*.swp
 
# Exclude OS X folder attributes
.DS_Store
 
# Exclude user-specific XCode 3 and 4 files
*.mode1
*.mode1v3
*.mode2v3
*.perspective
*.perspectivev3
*.pbxuser
*.xcworkspace
xcuserdata

HowTo: Delete many pictures from your iPhone

Christian — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:27:19 +0000

Sure, the iPhone can not cope with the image quality of a good digital camera … but it’s great for snapshots and ShakeItPhoto- or Hipstamatic-experiments. That’s why I’m collecting a lot of pictures on my iPhone from time to time. Sometimes I sync the pictures with iPhoto. But I’m not always using the delete-after-import feature. The current version of iPhoto does not have any problems with that if you use the “Hide Photos Already Imported” option: iPhoto just ignores the old photos and only downloads the previews of the new ones in the import section.
But there is no way to delete all or a selection of these old photos in iPhoto, iTunes or on the iPhone. But the only solution to delete these photos one-by-one on the iPhone is not working with hundrets of photos. So, what to do?

Every Mac ships with a standard Apple utility which helps you out It’s called “Image Capture” (or on German Mac OS X systems “Digitale Bilder”). This utility shows all images on the iPhone. You can select all or only a selection of these pictures and you’re able to delete them right away! Here is how to:

Connect your iPhone via USB with your Mac.
If iTunes or iPhoto starts, wait for the sync, and press the iPhone-disconnect button within the itunes window. Make sure, that you quit iTunes and iPhoto.
Open “Image Capture” from the applications folder.
Select your iPhone in the left column and a list of the iPhone photos will be displayed on the right.
Select the photos, you want to delete – or select all pictures by pressing command-A.
Now press on the red delete button just beneath the list. If you’re sure, that you want to delete the pictures you can confirm the deletion. WARNING: You cannot recover the deleted photos – so be sure, that you imported them to iPhoto before!

How to update WordPress even with a “Fatal error: Out of memory”

Christian — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:47:40 +0000

The automatic update function of WordPress makes it super easy to update the wp-installation. Most of the time
If there’s an update which is not working as requested, you do not need to switch to manual mode and search for your FTP-access on the server immediately. A small trick helps you to get rid of the “Fatal error: Out of memory”:

Before you start updating WP … don’t forget database update!
Deactivate the active WordPress-Plugins in the admin section under “Plugins”.
Now, you can start the automatic update of your WordPress installations.
Now it’s possible to reactivate the deactivated plugins: Select “Plugins” and “Recently Active”.

The WordPress community and your own blog readers will enjoy a new level of cyber secrity

Streaming Video of the iPad 2 Special Event, March 2, 2011

Christian — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:35:21 +0000

Great to see Steve Jobs on stage again. The presentation is about three blocks of information:

The market: Steve presents some amazing numbers … 15 Million iPads sold, 100 Million iPhones sold, 100 Million iBooks downloaded, 200 Million Accounts on the iTunes/AppStore/iBookStore with credit cards, $2 Billion payout to AppStore developers.
The iPad 2: Apple listened to their customers and integrated most of the features iPad users are demanding. But they also kept the prices and the battery life. The new A5 Dual-Core CPU is up to twice as fast and the graphics performance up to 9x. With the HDMI-cable accessory, it’s possible to mirror the iPad 2 screen to a flatscreen or beamer. This is perfect for live app demos and presentations. The iPad 2 is now equipped with a front and a rear camera. The new design of the iPad 2 and the magnetic covers speak for themselves. The design team of Jony Ive did a great job.
The software: iOS 4.3 is shipping with a lot of improvements under the hood. By introducing iMovie and Garageband for the iPad Apple shows, that the iPad is not only a consuming device, but also a device to create things.

But I only can recommend to watch Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, Randy Ubillos and Xander Soren on the Quicktime streaming video yourself. Sorry PC-folks: The streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later.