The Road to the App Store

I'm doing a 101 in 1001 project - that is, I set 101 goals for myself and have 1001 days (about 2 years, 9 months) to achieve them. One of those goals is to write my own iPad app! I have a few app ideas, but the simplest one (a good place to start) will actually be the app I wish I had when making this list of goals. Right now I'm using Task PRO to keep track of them, and it's a great app that I like a lot but there are a few features I'd like to have specifically for this kind of goal list.

Now, I haven't really programmed much since I took 6.001 (Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs) my freshman year at MIT - and that was well over a decade ago! And it was taught in Scheme, an obscure variant of Lisp (already an obscure programming language) that is pretty much only used in 6.001 and classes around the country based on it. I programmed a little in plain C in high school, but I've never really used an object-oriented language... Unless you count NetLogo. Yes, that's a descendant of the Logo that had you telling a turtle to turn right 90 degrees in elementary school. Unlike original flavor, NetLogo isn't the worst intro to OOP you could hope for, so there's that.

What I'm trying to say is, I understand the theory but I don't know any useful programming languages.

So this is going to be a fairly big project.

I'm getting started by taking the Stanford iOS development class from iTunes U. Even that is proving to be tricky, though, since I run OSX 10.6 on my desktop. Why does that matter? Well, the most up to date version of the class, which covers iOS 5, requires Xcode 4 for the assignments - and to get Xcode 4 my options seem to be upgrading to 10.7 (which I'm hesitant to do for various reasons that I won't go into here because this is an iPad blog, not a Mac blog) or paying the $100 developer fee now. I'll have to pay it eventually anyhow, I was just hoping to put it off since it's an annual fee.

So I'm watching the lectures now and mulling what to do about the assignments. I'll keep you updated as I progress, for anyone interested in seeing the app development process from total noob to App Store.

iKeyWi HD - The tweak I've been waiting for!

For the longest time, one of the main jailbreak tweaks I have really, really wanted is a keyboard with arrow keys. Sometimes, especially when you're moving (or have a baby bumping the iPad), it's really hard to get the cursor exactly where you want it. It's easy to get it within a couple characters, but that doesn't cut it if you've placed it before the stuff you want to delete.

Thanks to iPad Help, I discovered that such a thing finally exists! iKeywi HD (link will take you to Cydia) adds a fifth row to the keyboard as well as arrow keys in the lower right corner, and makes all non-alphabet keys completely customizable. The tweak costs $3.

This is exactly what I've been hoping for! Not only arrow keys, but numbers on the main keyboard as well as the ability to make all kinds of symbols easier to get to. The keys are smaller because you're fitting more into the same space; for some people with big fingers this might be a downside, but for me it just makes it easier for me to type one-handed in landscape!



Now, I was all set to tell you that, unfortunately, the tweak is buggy to the point of being unusable. BUT - I went back to Cydia to check for an update, and sure enough, the worst of the bugs have been fixed! Yay for developers who are on the ball! There are still a few problems to watch out for, though:

- At first, it had problems capitalizing words at the start of lines or sentences. Now the only issue is if the word needs to be autocorrected, it gets corrected to lowercase.

- The arrows weren't working for me in many apps - now they work almost everywhere. They still aren't working for me in Mail, or on some website text boxes in Atomic.

It's also a bit sad to lose the ability to swipe up from the . and , keys to get to ' and ", but since everything is customizable I can still get to those with the shift. The other feature I'd like is being able to actually turn the keyboard on and off in Settings - right now the only way to revert to the standard keyboard is by deleting iKeyWi entirely.

Now that the worst of the bugs have been fixed, I think this tweak is definitely worth the $3 if you've been wanting a better keyboard. I came for the arrows, but I'm staying for the ability to assign entire HTML tags to a single key.

Really, ESPN?

I present to you ESPN's "tablet" site:





In the immortal words of Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers - really?? ESPN, did you design this in 1996 in the hopes that tablets would one day be invented? Or maybe it was made for a prototype web browser on the Newton. Either way, ESPN, do you really think that a modern machine like the iPad, or even various Android tablets, is capable of loading nothing more complicated than a list of text links? Really?

Now, to be fair, a more normal-looking tablet site loads in Safari (the above is in Atomic). But Atomic loads the full desktop site no problem, so I have no idea what ESPN is doing here.

What a temptation!

I wasn't going to get an iPad 3, really I wasn't. I'm just not an upgrade-every-generation kind of girl. I still use a PowerBook G4 for work, and my desktop was a CRT eMac until 2010! At most, I was considering trading in my wifi model for an identical 3G - used, even. The retina display is cool and all, but I can wait another year for it. Maybe even two.

But Apple had to go and throw in the one thing I really wish I had. They went and upgraded the rear camera! Nooooooo!

I've seen people make fun of this upgrade, I've seen people question the existence of the rear camera at all. I agree that the iPad is a bit awkward to take photos with. But here's what it comes down to for me: I have my iPad on me almost all the time at home. I do not have my camera (or even my phone, which takes slightly better pics than the iPad) on me all the time. When my baby does something cute, I can either run and find the camera, wait for it to power up, and possibly miss the cute, or I can switch to the camera app and capture the cute now, but at low quality. I do a little of each - but with a decent rear camera, I'd never have to choose again.

But is that convenience worth $330 (assuming I could get $300 for my current iPad)? I'm still not sure. Luckily, I wouldn't buy one til it's jailbroken anyhow, so I've got some time to think...

iPad 3: Tactile display? Nah, couldn't be.... Could it?

I would just like to call your attention to this thread over at the MacRumors iPad forum.

The OP gives fairly compelling evidence that a tactile display is not outside the realm of possibility for next week's iPad 3 intro. Apple even may have obliquely referenced it in their event promo tagline: "We have something you've really got to see... And touch." The tag line for the iPhone 4S/Siri announcement was "Let's talk iPhones." It was innocuous enough on the surface, and only after the fact was it clear that it was foreshadowing Siri. "Something you've really got to see" is likely the much-anticipated retina display, but why the "and touch?" iOS's touch interface hasn't been something worth noting in years. Could it be a tactile display?

Eh, probably not. It seems like a very cool technology that will make it to the iPad in another year or two, but I'm not convinced that it's ready for prime time just yet. But I wanted to post this so that it goes on record that, if Apple pulls this particular rabbit out of its hat, Zweimeter totally called it.

Thank you, iFile!

I write and post most of my posts using the BlogPress app, and it has served me well.

But today it didn't. When I tried to post my last entry, it hung. It eventually claimed to have posted it, but the entry didn't appear on the blog. I tried again, and the same thing happened. Then BlogPress crashed. When I restarted it, my entry was gone! Because BlogPress thought it had been posted, it was deleted from the list of drafts. But since it hadn't actually made it, it wasn't in the list of current posts either!

Enter iFile, a Cydia app available to jailbreakers that gives you actual access to your iPad's filesystem. I managed to find, in BlogPress's documents folder, all the drafts I'd saved today as text files and copy the text out to PlainText for safekeeping until I had time to try and repost. Success! A half hour's worth of typing saved!

For those naysayers who claim that the only reason to jailbreak is for silly cosmetic improvements - this is why I jailbreak!

My new addiction: Fairway Solitaire HD

Back in college, at one point everyone on my dorm hall was addicted to a solitaire game called Tri-Peaks. The cards are laid out to form three pyramids with only the bottom row face up. You turn over a card from the draw pile and can play the card above or below it from the board, earning more points for longer runs. Like most solitaire games, it's the perfect balance of mindless clicking with just a hint of strategy to keep you paying attention.

I have a Tri-Peaks app on my iPad, and it's fine (and free). But just the other day I ran across a game that takes the Tri-Peaks concept to a whole new level: Fairway Solitaire by Big Fish Games. First off, almost every level uses a new and unique card layout, and some are much harder to clear than others. I found the level full of "52 Card Pickup" boards especially challenging:

Second, they add in a few trick cards to slow you down - in keeping with the golf theme, things like water hazards, sand traps, and roughs. This board has blue water hazard cards, all of which must be cleared to unlock the rest of the cards:

But to make up for these difficulties, you get those clubs down in the bottom right corner - playing a 4-iron puts a 4 down for you to play on, etc. You find these randomly, or can buy them (and other helpful add-ons) with golf bucks.

Which brings me to something I really appreciate about this game. There is an excellent balance between the rate at which you earn golf bucks and how badly you need the helping items you can buy. Unlike many "freemium" games, it's never impossible to play without buying more golf bucks with real cash (although, of course, that is an option). If you want to use clubs constantly you'll need to, but if you're playing smart and using your clubs judiciously you'll find that you can usually afford them when you really need one.

The free version of the game comes with eight full courses of 3-9 boards each, and due to the inherent nature of solitaire games the replayability is very high. But this game was so addicting, not to mention well-designed, that I had no problem paying the $3 to access all 50+ courses (plus extras). And I rarely pay for games!

The one complaint I have is the low value of long runs. Runs of 5 or fewer cards have no value aside from the cards they clear, and runs of 6 or more are worth only a paltry number of golf bucks. You only get a major reward - 1000 gb - if your runs (only those of 6 or more each) add up to at least 20 on one board. In traditional Tri-peaks, even runs of 3 or 4 can be worth significantly more points than individual cards cleared, and a long run of, say, 15 is worth quite a lot. I'd like to at least see runs of 10-20 cards rewarded more heavily here.

Overall, though - well done, Big Fish!