Category Archives: Technology

Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS – Introduction

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Tom

Other blog sites probably have content about this subject, but I felt a desire to share my two-cents-worth.

Now I’ve begun to learn Google’s Android OS and it’s helping me appreciate Apple’s iOS more.  Another reason, I found a blog with some good info on it yesterday and had an article something like “10 great things for ____”, and the author created a list of 5 things, and finished the list saying “I’ll get more written soon.”  That was 2 years ago.  Nothing was posted on the blog afterward.  Seems like one of those late-1990’s websites that were PERMANENTLY “under construction”.

So, this is the beginning of a number of writings about the two mobile smartphone operating systems, and I’m writing a bunch of this now, but posting it separately.

Topics:

  • Introduction
  • Hardware
  • OS & Software
  • User Interface
  • Apps
  • … more later, possibly!!

 

Introduction

Recently, I chose to put effort, serious and dedicated effort, into learning the Android OS for smart phones.  When doing development, it helps very much to have one of the real physical devices to test and give a sense of “yes it works!” excitement, and the money expense also helps force the progress, since a financial commitment has been made.

So I now own an iPod Touch 2nd generation, iPhone 4, and Acer Liquid E running Android.  These are my mobile development devices, and I am really getting to understand them both more than I could with only the simulators.  Having the iPod touch for two years before the iPhone 4, and having that 2 months before the Android phone, I would think I understand most everything in terms of how it works on iOS, and be irritated when the Android environment is different.  Well, it’s true in most cases, there are a lot of things I prefer about iOS than the Android OS, but the interesting thing is: I realize that I don’t appreciate Apple’s operating system as much without having something different to compare it to.  Thus I am now beginning to understand some philosophy behind the design in iOS, and how it is different to the Android philosophy.

The main difference is the open-versus-closed models; Android being open-source and you can mess around with the OS and recompile it, and install it on the phone, making it do what you want. That’s for the way-out-there developers, but people can install apps anyway in their own home, downloaded from the internet and installed using the Eclipse IDE, if a person is ambitious enough, and patient enough to go through the necessary steps.   The iPhones and iPod Touches can’t have any app downloaded from the internet and installed… they must be downloaded through the device’s App Store app, or through iTunes on the desktop/laptops and synced onto the phone.  Apps are developed in Xcode on  Mac computers, and can only be installed on the device if a person has paid $100 for a yearly subscription to the “iOS Developer Program”.  Then you can download sample apps from the internet, and install them on your device.

Most the other differences are under the hood, which only developers will see or understand.  For example:  Apple expects apps to be singular, and it’s the normal way of apps on a desktop like Microsoft Word or Firefox/Safari/Google Chrome.  You double click an icon for the program,  or a file that is viewed by the program, and the program opens.

With Android, an app can have different bits that are each disconnected from each-other, but are loosely joined together… for example an app that is designed for note taking, allows you to write notes.  But it can also convert notes to PDF files, and you can email those PDF files with the app.  The PDF part is secondary to the note-creation, and yet the app can be made so that any other app can “create a PDF” and this app will be run, but instead of showing the standard note-taking component, ONLY the PDF converter component will be activated.  I haven’t seen this in practical action yet, because I’m only just learning, but this is the way it is according to the introduction on http://developer.android.com.

So those are two examples of philosophy differences, each with a description for Android and iOS.

 

Next, the more useful information begins.

 

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Transfer files from Windows to Mac With Proper Ownership

Posted on January 8, 2011 by Tom
Here are two computers for work: a machine running windows XP for web development, and art and media development, plus a machine (laptop) running Mac OSX 10.6 for iOS development.
This past year I’ve done a lot of work on the Windows machine and transferred it to the mac to a publicly shared folder on the mac.  Trouble is, Windows Explorer on the Windows machine was always connected to the Mac machine in the regular method, through the standard sharing of folders, etc.
On the Mac, I navigated to System Preferences > Sharing.  Selected and made a checkbox in “File Sharing”, then added folders in the Share Folders box.
On the right, “Everyone” had Read Only access, but for some folders I chose Read & Write.
I was still always connecting as an anonymous account, grouped under “Everyone”.  Tonight I figured out how to not do that.  Numerous sites around the internet give instructions to do various tasks, but I had to read a number of them and put all the bits of suggestions together to form a complete solution.
Still within System Preferences > Sharing, in the top “Computer Name” text box, I put a short simple name for this mac computer.
Then, I created the name for this mac to show up under Windows networks.  I clicked “Show All” to return to System Preferences, and click on “Network” within “Internet and Wireless”, then clicked the Advanced button.
Finally clicking on “WINS”, I arrived at the place where I set the NetBIOS name and Workgroup, and set the NetBIOS name to be the same as in the “Computer Name” text box, and the Workgroup was set explicitly to the same as the Windows XP machine.
Finally, the icing on the cake: control exactly how the windows machine silently logs into the mac machine.  It’s almost always silent, and also silent when connecting to another windows machine. For years I’ve struggled with this.  And it’s all good now.
On the mac, the system username of my account is what shows in finder beside the house icon.  On the windows machine, click on Start > Control Panel > User Accounts.  I selected the account I use to sign into Windows (an Administrator account), and in the upper-left of the User Accounts window, under “Related Tasks” appeared a link “Manage my network passwords”.  I clicked on that, then reviewed the window that appeared “Stored User Names and Passwords”.  I clicked on Add, then typed in the name of the mac computer for Server, then for the username,  I entered [name of mac computer]\[my username on mac computer], and also my password in the last box, and clicked OK.
Now, when I attempt to access the mac machine, windows automatically uses the specific username for the mac, and the password, and files that are transferred have the proper ownership on the mac.
This suits my needs perfectly.
After this, I can easily setup a mapped network drive to any of the shared folders on the mac, and have better file management.
Yahoo!
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The app customizing job is complete

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Tom

The customization of a pre-existing app to a new app for the Apple AppStore is complete.

Technical words:
The cron-job is properly working. It runs the check-feeds script, that loads a CSV file of urls and last-modified headers from each feed url. Then each url is checked if the last-modified date is newer, and if so, or if there is no existing saved feed file, the check-feeds script downloads and saves the feed as a file.  After all feeds have been downloaded (or not) then they’re all loaded and processed, and a static file is created that contains the data pulled directly into the app.

Translation:
I’m going to sleep.

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And now for something completely different

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Tom

Here’s a switch from the first 6 months of 2010… I am working on a different iPhone/iPad application.  Part of it includes building an RSS aggregator.  This post is going to be included in the collection and display of the aggregator.   There is much to be done when building an aggregator.  The entire Google Reader system is a world-class aggregator, but as of this point there is no public, released API.  So primarily, I’m working on simply collecting the data, sorting it all by date, and then saving it as a flat text file for the app to collect.  Wahoo!

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The experience of writing a game

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Tom

I am typing this post on my iPod touch, just to let everyone know incase I have spelling errors.

A person suggested the possibility of me writin about the process of developing a game app, or perhaps more about the experience of it than the details.
Well, it is a good idea!
One thing that comes to mind almost immediately is the time consuming tasks.
I find that graphic design takes a lot of time, but it is a very fun process.
Anoter thing that comes to mind is all the late nights up, awake, working on one of the many problems. Like tonight.

Good night!

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The organization of a game app

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Tom

The central-most Objective-C class in this game I’m developing is called “HBDGame”. The main source file has gone beyond the previously-mentioned 6000 lines and is now over 7200 lines. It seems a lot (for my own records).

Now I want to make a quick post because I will forget if I don’t… and because I do not want to write about this in detail right now.

There is a difficulty in maintaining strong organization when I have over 40 classes and dozens or hundreds of images, giant world map files (around 10/25 made so far) with dozens of configured elements within each, and a handful of soundeffects.

So I have probably 100+ pages of hand-written notes and diagrams and pencil illustrations, plus all the source mockup files for the computer graphics, and e-documents typed to keep myself organized.

And it’s becoming very challenging. I make constant use of text-based two-way references. That’s one of the best helps for me to keep track of execution paths in the program. blah. Now this is really starting to sound technical.. hah.

The major point of this post is simply this: the source-code and information hierarchy model I’ve found myself using (and pretty comfortable with) is something like this:

  1. Main game class is HBDGame, and it is the ultimate boss, next to the app delegate itself.
  2. There is a layer of persistent data (game settings that are important to keep the same for every game-session, like music volume and choice of accelerometer control versus touch-screen control). This persistent data is saved and loaded by 3 different simple functions.  The HBDGame controls these, and every class that wants stuff saved goes through the boss class.
  3. Significant game components, including the GamePlayer, menu systems (main menu, pause menu, quick popup menus) and other significant game objects.
  4. Interaction layer which handles the inputs to affect the game.  Some of this goes through the boss, and the boss passes off the inputs to the proper recipient.  Other times it goes directly to the recipient (specifically in the case of menus).
  5. Finally, the graphics themselves.  The graphics are controlled almost all completely through the main game components.

Probably doesn’t qualify as a model-view-controller layout.  More like a Global support-storage-model-controller-view.  I think the model-view-controller is a great model for software, but it seems complex projects have blurry lines of communication between the three concepts.

Perhaps there is a better way to organize what I’m doing, but right now I’m still finishing up the core of the game.

I’ll try to write more about this, with concise details, later on.

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Custom rotation/orientation, and almost too much code

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Tom

I have my major iPhone project game-app organized in this manner:

Custom class for appplication delegate class (as all apps have)

it has a generic UIWindow as the view property.

To this window, I add a background wood image.

Then the app delegate creates an instance from a nib, of my main game object view-controller-subclass.  I actually use this view controller subclass as the main model of the game, instead of separating it out to form a more appropriate model-view-controller relationship model.

The game object has a custom UIView subclass, NOT the one for the OpenGL view.

This view is permanently in UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight (the default orientation set in the Info.plist).
Extra trivia: when an orientation change occurs, I manually rotate subviews of the main game view individually.  This is done by  picking one of my five global CGAffineTransform variables created with assigned values

CGAffineTransform transRot0 = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( 0 );
CGAffineTransform transRotMinus90 = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( – M_PI / 2 );
CGAffineTransform transRot90 = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( M_PI / 2 );
CGAffineTransform transRotMinus180 = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( – M_PI );
CGAffineTransform transRot180 = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( M_PI );

The two 180s are very important, only if using animations to transition with style.  And that’s what I am doing (in some cases).
The UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight is the same thing as UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft (when you rotate the iPhone or iPod touch from having the home-button down = portrait, to having it on the right-side = device landscape left, the interface must rotate the opposite direction = landscape right, to maintain the same upward direction so you don’t have to tilt your head).  The direction of positive rotation is clockwise,  so if someone starts the app and has the home button down = device/interface portrait, the interface must rotate counter-clockwise 90 degrees, thus I assign transRotMinus90.
NOW IF the device is rotated again to device-landscape-right/interface-landscape-left, all my subviews including the play-screen and main menu will need to be rotated to a 180 degree transform rotation. But because the view was previously a Minus-90 degree, the next rotation should be a Minus-180 degree.  If using animations and assigning all subviews a 180 degree rotation from minus-90 degrees, rotating from portrait to device-landscape-right will have a terrible looking 270 degree opposite rotation.  Again, it isn’t important to do minus-180 if there is no animation.

That’s a long-winded orientation discussion.

And as mentioned, the game-viewcontroller has a custom subclass UIView.  It has two primary views added as subviews (there are other subviews which are not important for discussion).  The first primary view is a view from a custom subclass of UIViewController controlling the main menu, and the second of the two primary views is a custom subclass of UIView which is for the OpenGL graphics.

And I haven’t been working on this today, but I mentioned all of my game’s orientation methods are contained within the main game class, not the custom subview class.

All of this orientation code, and much more (multiple levels of initializing and setup, haha) combine to a pretty large line count – today I went over 6000 lines in this one file.

Everything is very well organized still, so I have no problem navigating or finding things.  Woohoo.  Otherwise, it would be a colossal nightmare.

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What should be paid-for, and what should be free?

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Tom

Here are two reviews of an iPhone app on the Apple App Store, copied mostly word-for-word

Fantastic game 🙂 ***** (5/5 stars rated)
Awesome music soundtrack, great gameplay, just pure love.  I agree that the update should be free, but I still bought the map pack because at least my money goes to the developer who really deserves it.

Pay for new content  *  (1/5 stars rated)
Game is good but having to pay for new maps is ridiculous.  Also saying 5 star rating will keep updates coming.  If I have to pay for updates, what’s the point.

Here I have discovered two immediately accessible cases of opposing attitudes of rating, but similar attitudes about product expectation. Myself, I found the game as a free promotional offer.  I assume it is normally a paid-for app.

I’ll say person A is the 5 star rating, and person B is the 1 star rating.

Person A has a good attitude.  There are a lot of apps out there that are good for fun or for usefulness and should be paid for, or tolerate any advertising that is present in the app to cover some costs of development or maintenance.

Person B expects too much.  What is the point of getting a game if expansions must be paid for?  Sounds like someone who might pay 200 dollars for the Nintendo Wii, or 300-400 for the Sony PS3 but expect 10 games to come with the console, or a full party-pack of controllers instead of the single ones that come packaged.

Maybe lots of people have expectations.  But when they’re very harsh opinions that get tossed into the public domain where anyone can be influenced, the problem that I recognize isn’t the unreasonable harshness or the 1/5 rating despite the first few words being “Game is good”… The real problem is the cultural expectation of what should be free and what should be paid-for.

This is something I’ve been thinking about recently, relating to my own project.

Personally, I think the paid-for content should be anything that is above and beyond the original scope of the project, unless it is an enhancement to the product that actually fits within the original scope.

Now I have been thinking of a number of specific examples of this idea.

When I submit the first release of this product to Apple for approval to the App Store, I am going to make it either free or paid.  My general desire is paid.  This way, NO one tries the app unless it is paid for, and my personal expectation is that only people who really like the app will pay for it because I’m going to have appropriate (but very limited) marketing- good example screen shots of gameplay, not just menus.  Also I plan on marketing a few videos on Youtube.  So it can be known what the game is like and people who want it will buy it, and those who wouldn’t like to pay will just go get something else, for free.  This is my reasoning.  More info follows.

Any app that has better performance developed, say bringing a game from 20 frames-per-second to 30 or 40 fps, is a great development upgrade, and that should be included for free.  It is something that is contained within the original scope because it has no extension to the project.  It is an enhancement of the product but not a true extension/expansion.

Any new artwork that replaces original artwork is also enhancement, but not expansions/extensions.

But any new levels that are adding to gameplay that are not included in the original app are extensions.  It is a good thing for the developer/publisher to have a price set, or make it free if they want.

Another expansion/extension is multiplayer.  This is one of the most significant aspects of a game.  But when is it appropriate to charge for multiplayer?  Seems like it’s always free!

Well, I would say if an app is released as single-player on the app sore, and is FREE, then the multiplayer should be a paid-for extension because the original app is already free for everyone to enjoy.  Adding multiplayer support within a game can be very complicated, and take many hours/days/weeks to setup and polish.  It is in so many games already for free, but most of these games are paid-for and so the consumer may expect multiplayer feature to be free.  I know I would.

So now for any free app, any extension is reasonable to be a paid extension, and even upgrades may be chargable.

The point of a free game is to have a free game.   Can it be any more obvious?  There should be no high expectations.

A paid-for game should have far more content than a free game.  extensions may be free, and some may be paid.  Deciding to make extensions free will be a very welcome thing to anyone who has paid for your app.  Making extensions paid must mean the extensions should be very, very good, sort of like the quality of a whole new app.  Something that adds new vibrancy to the game.

In my case, I am thinking of making large environments in the future, and will try selling them with a custom pricing model (say 1 sub environment for $1, 5 sub environments for $2, 10 sub environments for $5, and so on.

There are many different influencing factors, but one of the biggest influences is whether the app is free on the app store, or paid.

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iPhone app orientation (portrait vs landscape)

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Tom

Introduction

The UIInterfaceOrientation property that can be put in an iPhone app’s Info.plist file, has lead me into a confusing environment of iPhone app orientation design.
At the top level, there are two ways the orientation can be considered: 1- the physical orientation of the device; 2- the orientation of the on-screen user interface.
And when developing an app, these two things can be inconsistent, and confusing.
The iPhone has 7 different physical DEVICE orientations, 3 of which I am not covering (face-up, face-down, unknown).  The 4 device orientations that are considered in this writing are: landscape-left (homebutton is on right), landscape-right (home button is on left), portrait (home button is down), portrait-upside-down (home button is up).
The iPhone has 4 different interface orientations. Two are portrait and portrait-upside-down that equal the physical device portrait orientations.  The other two are the landscape-right and landscape-left, but these are the opposite: interface-landscape-right = device-landscape-left,  and the other is flipped too.  If the device is rotated one way, the interface rotates the other way, to maintain a consistent “up” direction.

Setup

The specifics of my app:
I have a subclassed UIViewController, and its main view property is assigned a subclassed UIView object.
The main view is added to the UIApplication’s window.
Standard setup so far.
The UIView subclass has an overrided – (void) layoutSubviews method.
The UIViewController subclass has a method registered by the app delegate to receive notifications on orientation change, through the default notification centre.

Testing

There is something inconsistent between the notification centre for orientation change, and the value of [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation value.
Now to test:
For a start, the Info.plist file has the UIInterfaceOrientation key set to UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight.
layoutSubviews will always fire first, and a check during the method for [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation shows landscape-right, as defined in the plist.
Then, sometimes-or-not, the orientation-change notification is sent to the registered object.
Starting the app while the device is physically in portrait, NO orientation change notification gets sent.
However, starting while the device is in any other physical orientation, then an orientation change notification is sent.
So it seems there is an expected default physical Portrait orientation, which cannot be manually defined, yet the default interface orientation can be pre-defined using [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation.
There are more haywire behaviours beyond this, if the device is then physically re-oriented after the app starts, more confusing behaviours.

Conclusions

Today was spent working on front-end app menu screens. My project originally started with the style and layout of screens drawn on paper in landscape orientation.  But, before today, I did not know it’s possible to use landscape-orientation images in Interface Builder nib files.  Now I know, and they can be displayed properly, if the right combination of settings are applied, such as the “Simulated User Interface Element-Orientation” setting in the inspector of IB, set to landscape, and interface orientation in the app.
Before today, I’ve done all my customized orientation positioning and rotation using the views’ center, frame, bounds and transform properties.
So, now, I can possibly adopt the built-in auto resize/rotation system.  Even if I don’t use that resize/rotation system, it could also make positioning easier.  It’s not difficult (now), to calculate the horizontal and vertical center of a shape, and position it within another shape whose width and height keeps changing.  Still, an easier way is always a good thing!
Working with all this is leading me to the following conclusions:
  • An app that has some parts that work only in landscape, and other parts that work only in portrait, should be upgraded so all parts work in all orientations.
  • An app that supports either (aka every) orientation, should not have the UIDeviceOrientation key set, because it leads to confusing situations (unless someone can suggest a good reason for it).
  • But, an app that supports any orientation … should, as a standard, start with the Default image designed to be portrait-oriented, not landscape, like so many iPhone games are that I’ve bought.
  • This final concluding point, personally speaking, is the the biggest problem to be solved: the conflicting desires or requirements: the desire to be universal and support either/every orientation (oh the bad memories of the browser wars come flying back), and the desire also prioritize one orientation with the other less-prioritized.

That’s all, folks!

Terrible conflict, but I am happy I could articulate this whole mess!
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