App Store
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
by lepton
My newest application is out on the iTunes App Store!
AirMote lets you watch video, listen to music, and control presentations on your Macintosh, using your iPhone or iPod Touch as the remote control.
Several remote control layouts are built-in, set up for controlling applications like Front Row, Keynote, iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime Player, and similar media players. Other layouts take advantage of Apple’s Mouse Keys, Full Keyboard Access, and VoiceOver features.
AirMote is fully customizable, so it can command your computer in all sorts of ways. It does it by sending keystrokes to your computer. You can make your own buttons that send what you want, and put the buttons onto remote control layouts you set up. You can only have up to twelve buttons on screen at once, but you can have as many screens as you like, and switch between them quickly, round-robin style.
The basic idea is you can sit back and watch movies, show photos, listen to podcasts and music around the house, or stand up and give a presentation, or demonstrate your software to your audience from across a conference room or auditorium, with your trusty handheld as the remote control.
AirMote uses VNC protocols every recent Macintosh can understand. You have to turn on permission and set a password in your Mac’s System Preferences > Sharing pane, then AirMote can make the connection over the WiFi LAN, or even across the Internet using WiFi or the cellular data network.
Here are some links:
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Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
by lepton
Now that the problem with synchronizing app updates between the iPhone App Store application and the Mac’s iTunes application is cured with OS 2.1, it doesn’t matter which you use to update your iPhone applications. But I’ve found using the iPhone’s App Store application is more fun.
On iTunes, you can click the Applications item in the left column to see the iPhone applications you’ve downloaded. Near the bottom of the screen, you can click a link that checks to see is any of the apps have updates, and then you can download the updates. You can also click on one of the app icons that have updates to go to the app’s page in the App store. The description there will include a section that explains what changes are in the update.
In the App Store application on the iPhone itself, this whole thing seems more fun, is handier, and perhaps shows more informative. Touching the Updates tab at the bottom of the screen takes you to an update section that automatically checks the store for updates. Available updates are listed on the screen, and if you touch one, it goes to a special screen that shows you what is new in the update, without showing you the entire main screen for the app with its old information. And of course another touch and perhaps a password entry gets the update.
This seems more streamlined, and it all happens on the phone, wherever I am, without having to sync. I have a lot of apps on my phone, and it’s actually exciting to check a couple of times a day to see if anything new is coming in! Who’d have thunk it!
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Sunday, July 13th, 2008
by lepton
So, your iPhone has that new App Store icon, and you’ve been loading it up with all those great new applications - so many applications that your home screen now has several pages full of icons. Here is a tip to help you scroll through them.
Most of us know we can move from one page of icons to the next by “flicking” a finger to the right or left to move from one page of icons to an adjacent one. But another way to move to the next page is to tap on the page indicator itself. The page indicator is that row of dots at the bottom of the screen that shows how many pages of icons you have.
Tap on the dots, and the iPhone will scroll to the adjacent page. You can tap on the right side of the dots to scroll to the next page, or the left side to scroll to the previous page.
This tip is especially useful while you are rearranging icons, because flicking pages, while it does work, is harder since if you don’t do it exactly right, might rearrange the icons instead of moving to the next page.
Do you know you can rearrange the icons on your Home screen? To do that, simply touch any icon and keep your finger on it for a couple of seconds until all the icons begin to wiggle. Now you can simply drag the wiggling icons around the way you want them. You can move an icon from one page to the next by dragging it off the right or left edge of the screen. You can also delete certain icons by tapping the little “X” that appears on them. And to move from one page to another, try the tap-the-dots tip! When it’s all the way you like it, touch the Home button to stop the wiggling and lock everything into their new places. Have fun!
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Saturday, July 12th, 2008
by lepton
Sure, the new iPhone is great, but it’s not new hardware that is the most significant thing that happened this week. It’s the App Store. The App Store is the key to this whole project, and I’ll tell you why.
This new phone has pretty much completed the hardware side of things. We have global positioning, 3G connections, and a non-recessed headphone jack. Sure, there will be hardware improvements down the line, like a higher resulution camera and so forth. But all the physical pieces are there.
There are still many things missing from the iPhone. Where is video recording, voice dialing, instant messaging? The thing is, the things that are missing are all software things now. And that is no problem.
Apple has a very solid mechanism for automatically updating the phone software, far better and easier than any other phone. People don’t have to go to a dealer to update the basic operating system, an update just pops right up when you plug it in at night to charge it. This means everyone will actually GET the updates when they are available. So if Apple adds instant messaging to the operating system, you’ll get it.
What if Apple doesn’t add instant messaging or those other things? It’s the App Store to the rescue.
The App Store icon has popped up on every iPhone, you can browse through hundreds of applications already. Just a touch and a touch, and you now have that AIM instant messaging application on your phone, in seconds, and for free!
The App store is going to fill the gaps in the iPhone system, and it will have just about everything imaginable. Soon there will be thousands, then tens of thousands of applications available. On day one of the store, there were already tens of thousands of developers applying to put applications in the store. We are going to see everything in there, good stuff and bad, free and expensive, clever and dumb. Pick, choose, and put whatever you like on your phone.
An entire industry will spring up based on iPhone applications, similarly to how an industry for physical accessories sprung up for iPods and phones. It si going to be big.
Apple seemed to take forever to bring out a development system, and another forever to let in most of the developers who applied. But when they deliver, they deliver!
The iPhone Software Development Kit (”SDK”) is amazing. It is a full-size, full-blown development system for software writers. It is as extensive and robust as the development system used to make full-sized Mac software. In fact, it actually IS the same development system, they simply added the ability to develop for a new platform, Cocoa Touch devices, of which there are two, the iPhone and the iPod Touch - so far.
The development system isn’t even in the same league as systems for most other phones. Symbian, no, Android, to early to tell. The Touch SDK is so good, we are going to see many desktop-class applications available.
It’s so good, it seems obvious - the system is destined for more than just a little pocket device.
When the Apple Tablet comes, and it will, it is not going to be a scaled down Mac laptop - it will be a scaled up iPhone. Mark those words. I’m thinking… January.
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