The CSM Blog

Tips, tricks, refreshers, and information you may have missed.

[thecsmblog]

2014 SF Holiday Celebration

Hey there, sassafrass!

[thecsmblog]

TestFlight prepares for takeoff, now lets developers send 1000 public beta invites

Apple announced today that its TestFlight Beta testing service now allows developers to invite public beta testers. Developers can invite up to 1,000 testers (in addition to the internal testing fe...

[thecsmblog]

Mosaic Apps on iPhone 6

In case anyone was curious or not aware, iPhone 6 hardware (running iOS 8.x) does indeed blow up our apps to show on the entirety of the iPhone 6 device screen (no black bars).

Screenshot examples can be found here:

http://screencast.com/t/l36Lz5jI

http://screencast.com/t/015cMiUf5FIO

[thecsmblog]

A few images of the questionable decisions made here.  Enjoy!

[thecsmblog]

Just as a reminder, our new JIRA and Confluence consolidated instance is now live at both jira.pd.local and confluence.bbpd.io.  You can in the interim still access both of the these new sites via tix.medu.com and confluence.medu.com as there is a redirect in place.

Important to remember is that you'll need to be on VPN now or Bb Wireless/Ethernet to access either of those sites.  Use your Active Directory (email) creds to login to both VPN and the new consolidated Atlassian product sites.

Also important to note is that we temporarily will have access to tix.medu.com (old JIRA) via the link in the title of this post.  Note, that enabling access to tix (old JIRA) will remove the redirect to the new JIRA if you choose to edit your hosts file.  

[thecsmblog]

Newly Required Google Play "Featured Graphic" Info

Some useful info about the new required graphic, may be good to provide to clients.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/10/android-market-featured-image.html

[thecsmblog]

This has been bugging me for a while... solution link provided.

[thecsmblog]

Average iTunes Review Times

http://appreviewtimes.com/

This site tracks the average App Store review times for both the iOS and the Mac App Store using data crowdsourced from iOS and Mac developers.

Use this as a rough estimate for how long it may take for your app to be reviewed.

[thecsmblog]

If clients ask about OpenStreetMap

I recently had a client ask me if our native Maps options have any involvement with OpenStreetMap data/layout. I had never heard about OSM so I did a quick Wikipedia search and then of course asked Dickson and McGrath for their thoughts. Below is Dickson’s feedback should anyone else have clients that ask the same!

We do not directly use OpenStreetMap in any way. The client may see information such as this: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_in_MapKit, which tells you how to use OSM as basically what we do with Custom Maps. However, we do not support it and will not be adding it.

As far as how Apple uses it, there is a blog post from OSM with a little bit of information: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/. Basically when Apple built it’s new Maps solution they didn’t create all the data themselves, but rather pulled from various sources and it seems that OSM is one of those sources. As the blog post mentioned OSM was listed in the credits and they think they have spotted places where their data is used. However, as this is proprietary information to Apple’s business it’s unlikely that you will find any place that clearly defines where and how Apple used OSM.

From this I would say that while adding their data to OSM couldn’t hurt, it is very unlikely to propagate to Apple Maps and show up in MapKit.

[thecsmblog]

Indy Team Outing

Some highlights from the Indy team outing last week + Reggie Wayne.  

[thecsmblog]

Simulator Build Workaround Will Not Work on Xcode 6.

Xcode 6 has a different folder structure than 5.1.1 so the simulator build workaround will not work. We recommend uninstalling Xcode 6 and reinstall 5.1.1.

The link for the Xcode 5.1.1.dmg is available here: http://bit.ly/xcode_511

[thecsmblog]

Translation services for Non-English Speaking Clients

http://wikicentral.bbbb.net/pages/viewpage.action?title=Language+Line+Process&spaceKey=CSOI

use your Bb username and pw

[thecsmblog]

Use x86 Emulator Accelerator to Speed Up the Android Emulator

You can speed up your Android Emulator (if for some crazy reason you aren’t using Genymotion) by using the x86 Emulator Accelerator installed through the SDK Manager. Instructions on how to do so can be found below:

http://simonguest.com/2013/04/16/enabling-x86-android-emulation/

[thecsmblog]

Apple Rolls Out Refreshed iTunes Connect Web Portal for Developers

Apple late yesterday rolled out its overhauled iTunes Connect web portal with a new visual design and improved features to help developers manage the...

[thecsmblog]

Apple reveals the most common reasons that it rejects apps

Apple is such an opaque company that even app developers can be left, out in the cold, wondering why their app was rejected from the app store.

[thecsmblog]

Convert Almost Anything Online

Zamzar.com will let you convert any file to a number of other formats.

PDF to Word | PDF to Excel | FLAC to MP3 | DOC to PDF | MP4 to AVI | MP4 to MP3 |M4A to MP3 | WAV to MP3 | MKV to AVI | WMA to MP3 | JPG to Word | XPS to PDF |FLV to MP4 | AVI to MP4 | MKV to MP4 | AVI to MP4 | FLV to AVI | DOCX to PDF |MOV to AVI | MP3 to OGG | PNG to JPG | TIFF to PDF | AIFF to MP3 | JPG to PNG

[thecsmblog]

Test LDAP Server

Do you need an LDAP server to test Mosaic connectivity issues? Want to clear out an LDAP configuration?

Here is a publicly available one that you can connect to:

Online LDAP Test Server