iOS Programming

iOS Developer/Game Developer

[ajaxgeek]

What companies have done wrong on technical interview for hiring an iOS developer?

▶︎ Many companies bet their new hire on a single question when it comes to technical interview. some questions I heard might look like. ✔️ "how to find a user location"? ✔️ "how do you use NSUserDefault"? ✔️ "How do you parse JSON data"? ✔️ "Why do you want to use GCD vs NSOperation"? ✔️ "Explain how Post Notification work"?

▶︎ If you get the question right, You are lucky to get a ticket to visiting their compus. I don't know how happy they are for those companies who use this type of hiring. Many of them are internet giants. I asked feedbacks from people I knew from those companies. Most of them told me that they were not quite satisfied the new hires they just recruited.

▶︎ Now, let's take a look what wrong with this type of hiring? If a developer happen to the question but nothing else. yeah, in most cases, this might be the case. what about for the developers who do have lots of experiences on iOS except the question you were asking. You wipe them out, right?

▶︎ No experiences on a MapKit, does not mean they couldn't do the job after few days of studying, right? If you ask a question on iOS 9 while apple just released it few days ago, probably no one can get the question, Am I right?

▶︎ So, what is so important to judge the skillset of iOS developers? Is it knowledge of specific API of iOS library or the knowledge on the fundamental of programming language itself?

▶︎ Base on my experiences, if you can answer following questions. You deserve to have at least a Senior Title.

1. What is design patten for iOS? 2. What is category and When do you use it? 3. What is a instance method and a class method, How do you call each method and when do you use which? 4. How do you pass data across multiple classes? 5. What is a lazy instantiation and when do you use it? 6. What is getter and setter, when do you want to use custom getter and setter? 7. How to define a custom delegate and when to use it? 8. How do you make an app work across all iOS devices? (except Apple Watch and AppleTV). 9. How does memory management work in iOS, when to use it and how to use it? 10. How do you debugging your code? 11. What techniques do you use to handle expensive network call and how?

✅ Update

▶︎ Again, those questions aren't really difficult. it's more like reflection of being a developer have to dealing with something everyday. if he/she knew all of these and use them in a right way and in a right place. you never have to worry about his/her capabilities of doing some specific job.

▶ in contract, if a developer knew all the concepts but never use them or use them in a wrong way or in a wrong place. What would happen to your app? buggy, sluggish, messy, hard to read and maintained.

▶ if he/she has a great foundation in general programming. Any specific API can be learned pretty quickly.

▶ I have joined some groups on Linkedin and Facebook. I see most of answers were linked out to third party stuffs. This made me thinking. do they really have ability to write some code on their own? "Do not inventing a wheel" and "saving time" as their greater excuse of their incapabilities and the bad habits.

▶ copy & paste type of developers are all over the facebook and Linkedin. So, you really want to hire someone that can actually code.

▶ Debugging

There are so many type of bugs while come to iOS Developing. just to name few. UI bugs, Memory leaks, random crashes, Performance issues, battery, Logic, type, Syntax, compile and dynamic runtime errors. most tough bugs are dynamic.

if the bugs can be seen by eyes. This developer probably have no idea what he is doing in this particular area. in my opinion, finding bugs on whiteboard is not important. it doesn't prove anything since it is too obvious. the most important things for developers to know is the way to finding each type of bugs.

Most posting I see from developers. they have little or no knowledge in debugging area. that's why they are always seeking helps from others.

[ajaxgeek]

Why are people using 3 party's frameworks like Cocoapods, AFNetworking etc ❓

▶︎ The Research: I just spent few minutes of my time checking the file size of some 3 third party's frameworks where everybody seems to be using. here are my search result for the frameworks I see people posting frequently on social networks.

✶ Cocoapods => 56M ✶ AFNetworking => 8M ✶ SwiftyJSON => 3M ✶ Alamofire => 1M

▶︎ The solution: ✭ I have few apps that require networking call and JSON parsing as well. ✭ The app with basic networking call and JSON parsing require less than 10 lines of code. ✭ The app with complex networking call require 4 - 5 methods or less than 50 lines of code.

▶︎ Average file size on app store: ✔️ 8M.

▶︎ Why file size matter? ✶ Base on my market research, the file size have larger than 8M with deleting rate are over 90% ✶ BTW, No apps on my phone that file size is larger than 8M❗️ ✶ if you want your apps on my phone, you have to work on your file size.

▶︎ The drawback of the third party's frameworks: ✖︎ Not being appeared on user's devices. ✖︎ On users deleting list. ✖︎ More files mean more objects that require more power, more memory, more CPU, more buggs, more memory leaks, more crash and poor performance.

▶︎ The puzzle: ❓ Help me understand, why people are using these frameworks when they can have the same job done in a simpler solutions with just few K in file size?

[ajaxgeek]

5 steps to make iPhone becoming a personal doctor

5 steps to make iPhone becoming a personal doctor 1. Collecting big data and classify disease by names, causes, symptoms and cures. 2. User input some symptoms 3. Checking user input against the database. 4. output the result by possible disease name(s). 5. Display the causes and cures in detail.

Make iPhone a truly AI machine 1. Machine learning => history study and analytic of large amount each disease life cycle. 2. Input all your personal health data over time. 3. Checking the data grid and graph for your health status. 4. send a alert to users to if any of health data reach to the high bar. 5. prediction of possible major diseases if condition are met.

This is just one of amazing things you could do with iPhone that might changing the world. doctors, You are fired!

note: if you want to use my concept to make it reality. I have no problem with that. just mentioning my name somewhere in your app. It would be greatly appreciated!

[ajaxgeek]

Who said Swift is better than Objective C?

I heard too much talking on how great the swift programming is. Well, there is not necessarily the truth until you know both languages very well.

There are some big problems with Swift I would like to share with the newcomers when choosing the language between two.

1. Data type conversion. Data type conversion will drive you crazy when you coding in Swift. why? because you are going to do this handreds of time in your code when you are working with objects.

2. Optional You need to decide when to use single question mark, double question and escalation mark. use force-unwrap in a wrong place will crash your program at run time. In addition, you have to do many many checking with optional value by using optional binding, optional chaining, Downcasting etc in Swift where there is no needs in Objective C.

3. Error handling in Swift is not an option. The ugly "try", "catch", "throw" is everywhere in Swift. This type of error handling should only be used in debugging mode in all other programming languages. It make your code much more messier.

4. Initializer is mandatory Initializer has too many rules to follow. You can easily to mess up. in Objective C, You don't need any Initializer.

5. Property in Swift, Property is associate with Enum, Struct, initializer and Class. You need 3 steps to use the properties. A. Create a Enum, Struct, initializer or Class. B. declare the properties. C. Call associate Enum, Struct or Class before access to the Properties.

in Objective C, one line of code, You will have getter, setter, instance variable all at a once. In addition, it looks cleaner, better to organize and easily to be understood about the project just by looking at the header.

6. No Nil is ever allowed in Swift. You app either won't compile or crash at run time with nil value while this isn't the case in Objective C.

7. Array and Set must be the same data type in Swift. if the data came from internet with mixed type such as mix of String with Number. You are going to have a huge problem with Swift. You are going to loss some hair right here for sure.

8. Tons of factory APIs are not available in Swift. Which means, many things can be easily done with Objective C, but not with Swift.

By the way, I have quit writing any Swift code. If you wonder why, read this article again.

Update Base On Feedback

I don't know if I have expressing problem or some of you guys have understanding problem.

Always get the question right I think I have made it perfectly clear on following a couple of points. 1. comparison between two languages, hence, which one is better especially for coding iOS applications. that's all you can do for now anyway. 2. seeing things from the angle of developers (apple engineers) who have made and shipped this product (swift) to the end users which is us.

In regard how to use Swift to solve or avoid each individual problem is not the topic of this article want to address.

Is Swift foolproof? if Swift is such an ideal as some of you said. so, there is no need for Swift 3.0 or 4.0. and you should have already published lots of fantastic apps in app store. don't be shy, show it to me.

Whose opinion count? Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, You got to have extensive knowledge on both languages plus a high level of programming background and theory in order to give a fair opinion on what language is better and why.

if you were a lousy programmer, regardless what language you use, you are aways a lousy programmer. so, the language itself won't matter for you anyway.

Personal preference don't count If you came from C like language background. I could understand why you might like Swift better than Objective C. that's a personal preference. It's also not relate to the topic of this article.

if you were on an apple Swift team, are you happy about current release? and how could you make it better in what area? If you can't think of any, meaning the level of your experiences is too far from writing a software like this.

Swift error handling issue in regard to error handling, what made you think user is care about seeing your errors message one after another? I do see lots of negative examples was given in WWDC talks in previous years.

if the program is doing what its suppose to. developers don't even need to see the error logs either in most cases. error handling in Objective C is handled seamlessly.

for instance, - (NSURLSessionDataTask *)dataTaskWithURL:(NSURL *)url completionHandler:(void (^)(NSData *data, NSURLResponse *response, NSError *error))completionHandler How many developers log the error code out and display it to either the users or yourself, anybody?

if not, do "try", "catch", "throw" really necessary?

Apple engineer manager on WWDC 2015 talks also said that never use "try", "catch", "throw" in your production code. it just make you code look messy. it really belong to the debugging.

nil value in collection someone is arguing nil value in an Array or NSArray. This is only a case for the lousy developers. If you don't know how to wipe out the nil value with Swift or Objective C. I would assume that you don't know how to wipe out nil value in any programming language. nil value means no value. of course it will throw out of bounds error in any language. therefore, I don't consider this is the case.

Dynamic typed language vs Static typed language We all know that Objective C is dynamic typed language. but most of you were wrong about Swift.

Swift is not exactly the static typed language like C, C++ and Java, It combined with both dynamic and static type. for instance, Downcasting, force unwrapping, dynamic dispatching and binding must be handled at run time.

Swift does help you catch some errors at compile time which is good. but added heavy checking, data type conversion will drastically slowdown your development. lots more headache before you can even see how your app look.

if you are an Objective C programmer, how many bugs are nil related in your app? and how many bugs you have mixed used a wrong type? common, somebody give me some numbers.

Auto code completion someone mentioned that there is no Auto Completion in Swift. it is a big deal for developers while I couldn't agreed more. You don't want to either memorize over 20,000 APIs or mixed type any. The reason I did not list it in the article, it was because it's not a language feature. it's more like Xcode issue. however, it does affect the speed of your development.

Mix and use I did noticed that apple used both Objective C and Swift in the presentation of WWDC talks on 2014 and 2015. If Swift is the future, why would they using both? and also make us using both? There are some limitation they just don't want us to know. You have to figure them out yourself after you have written lots of code.

Lastly For those of you who have worried about me. no, thank you! I don't have any issue with either language. I am the one who always helping others instead of seeking for help. It never happened to me before, I don't think it will happen to me in the future either. My head is super clear at what I am doing and saying.

[ajaxgeek]

xib vs StoryBoard, when to use which?

Both SB and xib were written in XML. when you are working on multi language supported application. you do need to editing the XML file manually.

Here is the huge difference between XIB and SB: XIB is a single UIView . SB is a mother of controller meaning it can have multiple controllers.

A controller is a mother of UIView. one controller can have multiple UIView. UIView must live in a controller in order to be showed on a screen. while controller is a class must be set or presented by another controller.

As you can see XIB is a grand children of StoryBoard. XIB are more flexible, reusable, portable, can be called or loaded onto multiple controllers.

I have an example of good usage of XIb. ➩ download it from github.

https://github.com/ajaxgeek/PortableApp

[ajaxgeek]

How to design a killer mobile app User Experiences?

✔︎ First thing first, what is exactly the User Experiences (UX)? in a short, When goal of users align with goal of the business. It could be a lousy user experiences.

✔︎ So what is the best User Experiences? when goal of user and business products are met.

✔︎ In formula: Business Goal + User Goals + UI + Technology ------------------------- = User Experiences

✌♫♪‹(•¿•)›♫♪✌ There are 5 planes of UX. ▶ (1) Strategy Ⓐ What is your goal or purpose? Ⓑ Define what users want. Ⓒ What business want

▶ (2) The Scope Ⓐ Migrating the strategy into requirement. How you can help users to reach their goal. Ⓑ What you want users be able to do. Ⓒ Knowing the users and providing the right task.

▶ (3) Structure => tactical Ⓐ Choosing a taxonomy. Ⓑ How do all pieces fit together and behave. Ⓒ How does user find what they are looking for in an intuitive way? Ⓓ What is the flow of action and interaction? Ⓔ Site map or user flow diagram help visualize what path and actions a user will take throughout the site of app.

▶ (4) Skeleton = > Blueprint Wireframe => Use Black and white Ⓐ Solidify the structure Ⓑ What content on the page? Ⓒ Where does button go? Ⓓ What type of call-to-action should we use?

▶ Skeleton Artifacts Low -Fi wireframe => Hand Sketch Hi - Fi wireframe => Fake app. user be able to interact with it.

▶ (5) Visual Interface => everything is built up in this point Tight all the components together. Such as color , font-face, images to use. How big of the button etc.

▶ The UX rules: ✷ Speak User Language. Avoid technical jargon. ✷ Make it simple. ✷ Don't make me think. ✷ Always ask yourself: Ⓐ what must users know first? Ⓑ Which actions do I want them to take? Ⓒ How can I persuade them to take those actions? Ⓓ How can I make the user feel good about the action they just took?

▶ On welcome page What am I looking at? What does the app do? What do you want me to do and How do I do it? Do you have too many actions on a single page? When I take the action, what happened? is this the something I was expecting or a surprise?

▶ Lastly Do not reinvent the wheel. The best user interfaces are invisible. Have you used a icon while users have ever seen in their life? Last piece of advice, Always bring it to the users you designed for further study and research.

[ajaxgeek]

What it takes to find top-notch mobile developers?

Making a Great First Impression

Your job description needs to do 2 things: 1 - Encourage qualified candidates to apply. 2 - Dissuade unqualified candidates from applying.

Here’s how: 1 - You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Begin with a job description template. 2. Tell people why your company is a great place to work. 3 - What are the minimum qualifications you’re willing to consider? This seems obvious but is often overlooked. Forgetting this is the easiest way to end up with a thousand unqualified candidates.

You don’t need to be the next Google to be a great place to work. Are you innovative? Do you invest in your employees? Elite mobile developers have plenty of opportunities, but if you provide an environment in which they can grow professionally and time to learn new things, you will win over competitors.

Forget your candidates, how good are your interviewers? You wouldn’t evaluate someone’s foreign language skills if you weren’t an expert in that language, right? The same applies for mobile developers. It’s nearly impossible to tell if someone’s a great mobile developer unless you are one yourself.

Consider the following: most users are expecting an app to load in 3 seconds or less. there are many reasons could be the cause for slow load time. Glancing over a candidate’s portfolio simply doesn’t cut it. Just because it works doesn’t mean it’s good. A poorly architected app or low performance is enough to sink your company.

The solution? Only seasoned developers will be able to test candidates on the nuances of mobile development.

Did you know that stale interview questions can be a deal-breaker? An interview is not an opportunity to see how many random bits of trivia your candidates know or whether they can recite entire APIs from memory. And don’t even think about asking irrelevant brain teasers. Asking poor interview questions can be the quickest way to get your top candidates to jump ship.

To establish a pool of outstanding interview questions: 1 - Choose technical questions that are as relevant as possible to your project. Take interview questions for iOS, Android, or any other platform and choose the ones that test understanding of a specific feature or architectural concept that’s important to your work.

2 - Test for problem-solving ability. This is one of the most important traits an elite developer needs to have.

3 - Above all, test for communication skills. This element is frequently forgotten, but is an extremely important indicator of how your hire will integrate into your team. Can they break complex concepts down and explain them to you in simple terms?

[ajaxgeek]

Dear Apple, I just made Model talk with a View

Nothing Impossible. I made it by keep trying. ➩ Why does it useful ?

Well, this is for few reasons. 1. Model and View can become an individual component! 2. Developers don't need to make so many controllers. 3. Each component has no direct relationship with one another. 4. Code that don't smell and can be easily read and deployed by any third party developers. 5. Avoid stocking many views on a Storyboard in a very complex application. 6. Solved constraint base auto layout problem and make developers life easier. 7. Pack them all together, make it a framework that can be easily deployed by any application.

What to see it in action. Here is the complete source code. https://github.com/ajaxgeek/PortableApp

[ajaxgeek]

5 Steps to take to becoming an awesome iOS developer

1. Learn the basic There are no building can be built up high without a solid foundation. same things in learning any computer programming languages including Objective C and Cocoa Touch library. Don't start coding without understanding the fundamental of Objective C and the design pattens for iOS.

The ONLY resource you should rely on is the document published by Apple. There is no other place you should visit if you want to becoming an awesome iOS developer.

2. Learn from the best Both harvard and stanford offering free online training courses on youtube and iTunesU.

3. Pick the right books By all means, The only book you should learn from is apple document. They never teach you the wrong stuffs or bad programming practices. This should be the only book you want to trust and depend on.

4. Write your own code, never copy other's If you let 10 programmers write a same piece of tiny software, believe me, all of them would be different after all. Follow the general programming guidelines along with design pattens and stick to it. Try figure it out everything yourself. Learn some quick and dirty debugging techniques. Avoid using stackoverflow or anything similar. You don't want the messy code appeared on yours.

5. Be greedy Always ask yourself a question, can I do better than this? Does your program run fast enough? do all spaces or memories useage are necessary? use proper tools to diagnostic in which piece of your code use lots of memories or run longer.

Learn modular programming, do you understand the code your wrote in year back? Does it concise enough and easy to be understood by other programmers? if not, how would you improve it?

[ajaxgeek]

Making a game menu with Sprite Kit - tutorial 01

in your viewController

#import "Menu.h" @interface ViewController() @end

- (void)viewWillLayoutSubviews{ [super viewWillLayoutSubviews]; [self loadScene]; }

-(void)loadScene{ // Configure the view. SKView * skView = (SKView *)self.view; if (!skView.scene) { Menu *m; m = [Menu sceneWithSize:skView.bounds.size]; m.scaleMode = SKSceneScaleModeAspectFill; [skView presentScene:m]; } }

in your Menu.m file

#import <SpriteKit/SpriteKit.h> @interface Menu() @property BOOL sceneCreated; @property (nonatomic) UIWebView *webview; @end

@implementation Menu

- (void)didMoveToView:(SKView *)view { if (!self.sceneCreated) { [self initScene]; self.sceneCreated = YES; [self setupBgPlayer]; // omit for this part.

} }

-(void)initScene{ self.backgroundColor = [SKColor blackColor]; self.scaleMode = SKSceneScaleModeAspectFill; [self setupBackground]; }

-(void)setupBackground{ if(UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPhone){ CGSize result = [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds].size; if(result.height == 480) { // iPhone Classic [self setupiPhone4]; } if(result.height == 568) { // iPhone 5 [self setupiPhone5]; }

} else if(UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad){ // ipad [self setupiPad]; }

}

// #### code for setup iPhone 4 ########## -(void)setupiPhone4{ // ############## bg for iphone 4 #################################### SKTexture *spriteBg = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"background"]; SKSpriteNode *bg = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithTexture:spriteBg]; bg.xScale = 0.5; bg.yScale = 0.5; bg.position = CGPointMake(CGRectGetMidX(self.frame), CGRectGetMidY(self.frame)); bg.zPosition = 0; [self addChild:bg];

// ############## bg for iphone 4 #################################### SKTexture *btnBg = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"playButton"]; SKSpriteNode *btn = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithTexture:btnBg]; btn.name = @"play"; btn.xScale = 0.8; btn.yScale = 0.8; btn.position = CGPointMake(CGRectGetMidX(self.frame), CGRectGetMidY(self.frame)-(btn.frame.size.height)/2); btn.zPosition = 1; [self addChild:btn];

SKTexture *rateSp = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"rateButton"]; SKSpriteNode *rate = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithTexture:rateSp]; rate.name = @"rate"; rate.xScale = 0.6; rate.yScale = 0.6; rate.position = CGPointMake(CGRectGetMinX(self.frame)+(rate.frame.size.width/1.5), CGRectGetMinY(self.frame)+(rate.frame.size.height/1.5)); rate.zPosition = 1; [self addChild:rate];

SKTexture *moreGameSp = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"moreGameButton"]; SKSpriteNode *moreGame = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithTexture:moreGameSp]; moreGame.name = @"moregames"; moreGame.xScale = 0.6; moreGame.yScale = 0.6; moreGame.position = CGPointMake(CGRectGetMaxX(self.frame)-(moreGame.frame.size.width/1.5), CGRectGetMinY(self.frame)+(moreGame.frame.size.height/1.5)); moreGame.zPosition = 1; [self addChild:moreGame];

SKTexture *upgradeSp = [SKTexture textureWithImageNamed:@"upgradeButton"]; SKSpriteNode *upgrade = [SKSpriteNode spriteNodeWithTexture:upgradeSp]; upgrade.name = @"upgrade"; upgrade.xScale = 0.6; upgrade.yScale = 0.6; upgrade.position = CGPointMake(CGRectGetMaxX(self.frame)-(upgrade.frame.size.width/1.5), CGRectGetMinY(self.frame)+(upgrade.frame.size.height/1.5)); upgrade.zPosition = 1; [self addChild:upgrade];

}

// ####### response to button touch event ################### - (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { for (UITouch *touch in touches) { SKNode *n = [self nodeAtPoint:[touch locationInNode:self]]; if ( [n.name isEqual: @"play"]) { [self gotoLevel_01]; } else if ( [n.name isEqual: @"rate"]) { [self rate]; } else if ( [n.name isEqual: @"moregames"]) { [self loadMoreGame]; // omitted. samiliar to rate and upgrade method. } else if ( [n.name isEqual: @"upgrade"]) { [self upgrade]; } else return; } // end of UITouch }

-(void)gotoLevel_01 { [self removeAllChildren]; SKScene *level_01 = [[Level_01 alloc]initWithSize:self.size]; SKTransition *door = [SKTransition doorwayWithDuration:1.0]; [self.view presentScene:Level_01 transition:door];

}

-(void)rate{ CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height); self.webview = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; [self.view addSubview:self.webview]; [self.webview loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snowyville-mystery/id790580665?&mt=8"]]]; }

-(void)upgrade{ CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height); self.webview = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:frame]; [self.view addSubview:self.webview]; [self.webview loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snowyville-pro/id786865681?mt=8"]]]; }

-(void)update:(NSTimeInterval)currentTime{ if (self.webview) { [self.webview removeFromSuperview]; } }

questions and feedback are welcomed! Here is the full game in app store made with Sprite Kit. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snowyville-mystery/id790580665?mt=8

[ajaxgeek]

Custom imageAlertBox popup alertbox to replace Apple default blue alertBox

Usages:

1. popup regular alertbox act just like default alertbox provided by apple.

You can create your own custom background images with any size, anywhere on screen you want it.

I also added fadeOut animation to it.

2. popup to let users to rate your app with your custom background images and buttons.

3. popup to let users upgrade to your paid app.

4. use it as advertising.

5. anything else I missed?

oh, This alertBox works on both iPhone and iPad.

  If you want the alertBox appear in different location and size. just replace my images with yours and modify CGRectMake(location.x,location.y,width,height);

CGRectMake(0,0,width,height) mean uper left corner.

That pretty much it. enjoy and happy coding.

  You can get it from here.

https://github.com/ajaxgeek/imageAlertBox/tree/imageAlertBox

[ajaxgeek]

M-Commerce is about to take off

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-growth-of-mobile-social-commerce-2013-2?op=1

[ajaxgeek]

Turn any web apps to Native apps in a minute

I just created an small project that turns any web site or pages to a native iOS app effortless. I used to charge people money for it. I now made it open source. You can download the entire source code from Github website. https://github.com/ajaxgeek/web2native.git You need Xcode to run it. It's free from Apple. any questions, feel free to ask.

[ajaxgeek]

Why Apple doesn't like third party's frameworks for iOS?

Don't waste your time on any third party frameworks.

The biggest reasons apple doesn't like third party frameworks is because of they are slow and defame apple's reputation. Apple want to see high quality and high performance apps on their store.

you might wonderding why they are slow?

well, if you have some kind of knowledge on multithreading and concurrent programming. You will get to the answers right away.

in real life, you go to grocery store and you often see lots of people wait in line for their turn. in a busy day, you have to wait much longer if there is only one line opened.

Same things to the iOS applications. if you use any third party's framework. you load everything onto the main thread. if this is a large application and has many functions, images or pages to load, the wait time is much longer. if network access is required. it is even worse.

Apple give you maximum 10 seconds to load your applications or terminate your app otherwise.

Apple provide cool features multithreading for developers to overcome this type of problems. main thread is really mean for UI. It is not suppose to be blocked in any way. all other contents should be loaded concurrently or under the backgrounds.  there is no ways you can achieve this without taking advantage of native iOS SDK by using Objective-C.

[ajaxgeek]

The opportunities for iOS developers

The iPhone-the most talked about and well-liked smart phone of our time-has a number of benefits to offer, not only to the user but also to the app developers. As we all know, iPhone keeps growing manifold with each passing day notwithstanding the fierce competition from other smart phones such as blackberry, androids, and window mobiles. The iPhone apps have seen a huge success in the app market which has boosted the job market that involves iPhone application developers. The growing demand of iPhone and iPad applications says it all. The sudden surge occurred mainly due to the growing popularity of iPhone app store and the easy accessibility of iPhone SDK from the store. Needless to say, iPhone SDK has given a fair chance for developers to come up with innovative apps as it offers many flexible and useful features for developing.

If you are an iPhone application developer or an iPad application developer, you have many chances to prove yourself. However, there you need to have some expertise and smartness to prove your worth as an application developer. The first and foremost is your ability to plan out the entire application process while having an unbeatable innovative concept in your mind. And of course, you can be successful in this direction, if you have up to the minute knowledge regarding the ever growing technology. As an iPhone developer it is very significant for you to brush up with upcoming technology. Also you should know the pros and cons that come across the path of your development. Certainly, you should know how to have a perfect balance between all these essential factors related to iPhone application development.

As the demands of iPhone applications and iPad applications skyrocketing, many companies are hiring app developers. Obviously, if they want to hire iPhone application developer, they look for those with impeccable knowledge on Mac OS. They hire those with expertise in various field of application development such as those experienced in developing games, business applications, and other entertainment applications. The apps range from sports to information and knowledge and all requires programmers with years of experience. All these utility factors give a boost in the career of those who have already chosen to walk this path.

Opportunities are galore with iPhone offering software development kits for creating innovative apps and more over the apps store help them out with popularizing these apps developed by these programmers all over the world. As a matter of fact, this flexibility and availability had really made the iPhone market to grow in many times greater. As a result, we can see the immaculate quality that is offered by the iPhone utility. The quality is palpable when we utilize the visual quality, voice quality, user interface, and its touch screen features. Well, if being a software engineer itself demands a lot from you, being an iPhone application developer gets you to a newer plane where you can experiment with the technology that is the need of the hour and demanded by millions of smart phone lover all across the world!

[ajaxgeek]

Willie Shi is about to release a Kickstarter companion

Here is the store I am working on a project called “Big Answers”. Basically what it does is to pulling the data from Yahoo Answers API display them on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices. I already have version 1.0 running on App Store. This is the only one app on app store. Base on many users request and feedbacks. I am planning to push out the next major release. I will be adding all the categories and subcategories for ease navigation and finding the content you need quickly and easily on a small screen. I will also allow you to save and sharing the contents to all major social networks, such as facebook, twitter, your email, SMS and whatever network Apple supports it on iOS6. in addition, I want to make this app available to the people around the globe in as many languages as I could do. Currently, It supports English only. I do plan to support Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese as this moment.

please download my version 1.0 on app store. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/big-answers!-powered-by-yahoo/id387546969?mt=8 please comment it, give me your though about this app. any features you would like to see in 2.0? any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a million!

[ajaxgeek]

Why third party iOS framework sucks

I have tried a couple of most popular framework in the past. here are some of major problems I experienced.

1. very limited functionalities, way far from what apple has offered. for instance, won’t be able to access to the hardware.

2. very low performance compare to native apps. be realistic, javascript always few seconds delay for the touch event.

3. Too many bugs that beyond developers control. okay, you work on an exciting project, later on you found out there are some tough bugs either crash your app or provide very bad user experiences. you talk to their tech support, bug is confirmed but the cure won’t be available until another 3 months.

4. third party frameworks always 3-6 months late than current iOS SDK from Apple, sometime even longer. well, you know iOS 6 is cool, you want to make a cool app for that. you land on one of there third party framework, you find out they don’t support it until another 6 months. by the time, you finally see they have started offering iOS 6 support. however, there are already tons of similar apps fill the shelf of app store.

5. Do not support ad or revenue share for your ad income. well, how would you make money if they do not support the ad network you want.

6. No game Center, no in-app purchase. or you have to pay extra fee to use that feature. well, look at the top 100 apps, nearly every one of them has that feature build in.

Conclusion: base on my experiences, those third party frameworks only good for making some very simple apps such as linking to your mobile site or making some simple puzzle games. but, don’t expect you apps will change your future.