Appletell

When it comes to developing for the iPhone, there’s no dramatic change in comparison to any other software development project. Aside from the technical aspects of programming for a mobile device, general guidelines have to be followed in order to achieve the highest chance of success.

This is the first of a short (I guess it’d be three of them) series of articles in which I will share some thoughts, explain some ideas, and lay out some strategies to deploy iPhone applications. I’ll be going through everything we need to start programming (ideas, time, skills, docs, tools, motivation, etc), and some of the best techniques to attack a problem and organize a team of professionals (developers, graphics designers, and more).

Learn more after the break.

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In a previous post, I wrote a little bit about the activities involved in the management of collaborative work using Subversion. That post was completely server-side oriented. 

Now, I’d like to address the other side of the coin, the client side of Subversion. I’ll be describing the most common activities related to SVN Clients for the Mac and the best way to use them, and will provide a few more useful tips from the perspective of, let’s say, a programmer.

Read on for info and tips.

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Nowadays, every experienced company or group of people dedicated to software development knows there are a lot of variables to handle when you work on a project from a collaborative point of view. The project leader has to handle every detail regarding time, costs, human resources, deadlines and quality of the delivered product. If you add to this picture a contractor, then your are adding more things to control, and, most of the time, more potential headaches.

There are many possible solutions for this scenario, but the one I’d like to address now is based on three main components: Subversion, Trac and a Mac. This proposal needs to be separated in two parts: on one hand we’ll have the server side, and on the other hand we’ll have the client side. We’ll now be focusing on the server side of the solution.

Read on for into and tips.

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Looking for a deal this summer? Indie Mac Software has what you need. From July 7th until the 15th, you can get 20% off select software by using the coupon code of DF2008. The companies involved in this deal include Azure Talon, Lucerne Systems, M Cubed Software, Wonder Warp Software, and You Software. These five companies are offering a total of nine different applications for you to choose from, so head on over to the site and help them out.  You can find out more about each app in detail after the jump.

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Do you hate having to wait for your PHP scripts and files to upload to your server to make sure they work? If so, you would get along great with the people over at MAMP, or Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. MAMP simply installs a local server environment in its own folder on your hard drive and doesn’t affect your main operating system at all. You can then run and test PHP scripts and other database tasks without having to upload the files to your server. MAMP is completely free and is licensed under a GNU General Public License.

Currently on release 1.7, this application comes with a simple to use widget to start and stop the localhost servers. It works just as you would expect, and I’ve had no problems with it on my machine. There is a MAMP Pro that costs money, but many of you will find that MAMP does what you need just fine.

If you are a developer who is sick of waiting for files to upload so you can test them, check out MAMP, and be ready to start saving a ton of time.

Product [MAMP]

Ergonis Software has just launched an application for Mac OS X called Typinator that will make designing websites a whole lot easier. With over 100 built-in abbreviations, web designers won’t have to type as much code, and therefore they won’t have to worry about making as many spelling mistakes. As Christoph Reichenberger, founder and CEO of Ergonis puts it, “Regardless what tool they are using, most web designers are typing plain HTML code all the time, sometimes at least assisted by their HTML editor. With the new HTML snippets set for Typinator, you can insert over 100 HTML elements without having to click through a list of templates. Just type a double less-than sign followed by the name of the desired HTML element and Typinator will insert the corresponding HTML code and place the insertion point appropriately.”

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iPresentee is offering five new iWeb Themes that are geared towards small businesses. These themes include Office, Global, Illusion, Papery, and Money, and come in at only $30 for the entire package or $10 each. In order to use these themes, you need Apple’s iWeb 2.0 or installed. According to the product description, “Each iWeb Theme for Business has seven templates: Home, About Us, Services, Support, Clients, Contact Us and Blank. All themes can be adapted for developing personal website.” There are plenty of screenshots over at their site, and most of the themes look pretty well designed.

iPresentee also offers other iWeb templates as well as different Keynote stuff (animations, themes, 3D graphics, etc). They all look pretty cool, so be sure to check out their site. If you have bought or used any of their themes or anything else, let us know what you think about it.

Via [Macsimum News]

Former Apple Senior Software Engineer Scott Kovatch, now Adobe’s Senior Computer Scientist, announced Tuesday at WWDC that he will be heading up a project within Adobe to help port Java SWT from Carbon to a Cocoa interface. Although work on the project has already started, Kovatch sated he will not join the group full time until mid-august. 

The Standard Widget Toolkit is a tool used to give Java applications native GUI for each supported platform. The Mac OS X version was written back when Carbon had a slight performance advantage over Cocoa, but that has changed, and support for 64-bit Carbon has been dropped entirely. In addition, according to this Mac OS X report, after 10.6 or 7, Mac OS will be entirely written in Cocoa Touch.

The Cocoa port of Java SWT is anticipated to be ready for the release of Eclipse 3.5 sometime in 2009, but nothing is official as of yet.

Via [Infinite Loop]

Momail, a Stockholm based company, is the first company to announce support for the “next big thing” smart phones. Those next big things are the 3G iPhone and the Samsung Omnia.  The following is from a WebitPR press release:

”These devices will sell large volumes and their specifications makes them very suitable for consumer mobile email and Momail. Our server based solution gives us the possibility to add support for new devices very fast and today we support over 80 percent of devices shipped. So, with Momail, iPhone and Omnia users will soon be able to enjoy the world’s smallest, smartest and most cost-effective mobile email, says Roger Grönberg, CEO of Momail.

The Momail service provides the user with a single mailbox for all of their e-mail addresses, in an “easy to use, fast, efficient, no spam environment.” Momail uses a Mobile Message Optimization & Protection Engine (MMOPE) to provide its users with speed and reliability, along with an IronPort to stop mobile spam and viruses. 

Momail already provides services for a range of other “super mobiles” soon to be released, including the HTC Touch Diamond, LG Secret, Nokia N96 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

Via [WebitPR Press Release]

The Keynote may be the main attraction at WWDC, but there is always much more to come even after Steve leaves the stage. In today’s WWDC happenings, the Apple team detailed the server version of Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The following comes from a MacNN report.

“As with [Consumer Version of Mac OS 10.6], Server will focus on making all aspects of the OS mutlicore-ready through Grand Central, with the option of tapping into GPU power via OpenCL. Because Server will operate on a 64-bit kernel, it should in theory support up to 16TB of RAM.”

iCal, Mail and Address Book will all be receiving upgrades, increasing their speed and stability. Other highlights include the addition of Podcast Producer 2, along with native programs and templates for creating blogs, wikis, mailing lists, and RSS Feeds.

Via [MacNN]