Innovation My Way

iOS 5.3 Features

2011-07-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

XCode 4 is here

2011-03-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hey all, our favourite. Apple has just released its new IDE - Xcode 4. This time, its not only availsble for the memberd of iOS and Mac Developer program. Anyone, who is not having developer account can so get it for $ 4.99. Not bad though :). Members of iOS and Mac Developer programs will get it for free, others can purchase Xcode 4 in App Store for 3.99 Euro ($ 4.99). Cheers & happy coding

New iPad 2 From Apple

2011-03-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

Everything you need to know about the iPad 2 | http://ti.me/h7PTek (via TIME)

Apple's Mew Invention - iPad

2010-01-29T22:56:00.000-08:00

Apple introduces new $499 iPad tablet computer

2010-01-28 07:10:00

Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off the new iPad during an Apple event in San Fr...

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company's much-anticipated iPad tablet computer Wednesday, calling it a new third category of mobile device that is neither smart phone nor laptop, but something in between.

The iPad will start at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts were expecting. But Apple must still persuade recession-weary consumers who already have other devices to open their wallets yet again. Apple plans to begin selling the iPad in two months.

Jobs said the device would be useful for reading books, playing games or watching video, describing it as "so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart phone."

The half-inch-thick iPad is larger than the company's popular iPhone but similar in design. It weighs 1.5 pounds and has a touch screen that is 9.7 inches diagonally. It comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in.

Jobs said the device has a battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge.

Raven Zachary, a contributing analyst with a mobile research agency called The 451 Group, considered the iPad a laptop replacement, especially because Apple is also selling a dock with a built-in keyboard.

But Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he does not believe the iPad offered enough additional features for consumers to justify buying yet another gadget, or to call it a new category of device.

In an e-mail, he criticized its lack of social features, such as ways to share photos and home video and recommend books.

Sitting on stage in a cozy leather chair, Jobs demonstrated how the iPad is used for surfing the Web with Apple's Safari browser. The CEO typed an e-mail using an on-screen keyboard and flipped through photo albums by flicking his finger across the screen.

He also showed off a new electronic book store and a book-reading interface that emulates the look of a paper book. That puts the iPad in competition with Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and e-book store.

Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. called the iPad a great multipurpose mobile device — and the first tablet with a chance of success with consumers.

But Bajarin said Jobs' presentation only touched the tip of what the iPad could do for newspapers, magazines and book publishers, three industries struggling in the transition to the digital age.

A new newspaper reader program from The New York Times and a game from Electronic Arts Inc. were demonstrated during the event. The iBookstore launched with titles from Penguin, Simon&Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan, and will open up to other publishing houses.

Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon&Schuster, called the iPad a "terrific device" that gives readers the ability to adjust the typeface and turn pages by touching a finger to the screen, as opposed to pushing a button, as the Kindle requires.

Applause rang out as Jobs stepped onto the stage to introduce the iPad to hundreds of analysts, bloggers and other guests at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Accompanied at times by executives from Apple and other companies, Jobs played showman throughout the hour-and-a-half presentation, slowly revealing details about the iPad. When he announced the price — lower than what had been speculated — it was accompanied by the sound of glass shattering.

Like iPods and the iPhone, the iPad can sync with Apple's Macintosh and Microsoft's Windows computers. Jobs said the iPad will also be better for playing games and watching video than either a laptop or the small screen of a smart phone.

Unlike a laptop, the iPad has an accelerometer, so gamers can tilt the device to control what's happening on the screen. And the iPad is lighter and easier to hold for long periods of time while watching a movie or TV show.

Its large screen makes it much easier to touch type than on a smart phone, and it is extremely responsive to finger swipes and taps for easy scrolling through Facebook, photo albums and news articles.

The iPad comes with software that includes a calendar, maps, and video and music players. All seem to have been slightly redesigned to take advantage of the iPad's bigger screen.

Still, tablet computers have existed for a decade with little success. Jobs acknowledged Apple will have to work to convince consumers who already have smart phones and laptops that they need the iPad.

"In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks," Jobs said. "We think we've got the goods. We think we've done it."

Applications designed for the iPhone can run on the iPad. Apple is also releasing updated tools for software developers to help them build iPhone and iPad programs.

"We think it's going to be a whole 'nother gold rush for developers as they build applications for the iPad," said Scott Forstall, an iPhone software executive.

The basic iPad models will cost $499, $599 and $699, depending on the storage size, when it comes out worldwide in March.

Apple Inc. will also sell a version with data plans from AT&T Inc. in the U.S.: $14.99 per month for 250 megabytes of data, or $29.99 for unlimited usage. Neither will require a long-term service contract.

The iPad models that can connect to AT&T's wireless network will cost more — $629, $729 and $829, depending on the amount of memory — and will be out in April. International cellular data details have not yet been announced.

Shares of Apple rose $2.04, or 1 percent, to close Wednesday at $207.98. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's shares have more than doubled over the past year, partly on anticipation of the tablet computer. Shares in Amazon rose $3.27, or 2.7 percent, to $122.75.

Jobs, 54, a pancreatic cancer survivor who got a liver transplant last year, looked thin as he introduced the highly anticipated gadget, though he seemed to have more energy than at Apple's last event in September.

Apple had kept its latest creation tightly under wraps until Wednesday's unveiling, though many analysts had correctly speculated that it would be a one-piece tablet computer with a big touch screen.

___

AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

Android, Linux & Real-time Development for Embedded Systems

2010-01-20T00:24:00.000-08:00

At first sight, Android appears to be (yet) another operating system for smart phones, joining all of the others that are vying for supremacy " such as Symbian, Windows Mobile, WebOS and various flavors of Linux.

However, it would be better to think of Android as being a software platform for the construction of smart phones, as it is freely available and highly configurable. To be more precise, it is a software platform for building connected devices.

Android is an application framework on top of Linux. We will look at the details of the layers of the framework, shortly. It is supplied as open source code, but does not bind the user with the constraints of the GPL " there is no requirement for developers to make public any code developed using Android.

Another way to look at Android is to take a historical perspective. In the early days of the PC, the operating system was DOS. A programmer writing applications for the PC had some significant challenges, as the services provided by the operating system were quite limited.

For example, the developer of a spreadsheet application would need to provide drivers for every possible printer that users might wish to deploy. This was a significant development and support overhead.

In due course, the release and wide acceptance of Windows (version 3 onwards) addressed this problem very effectively. In many ways, Android does for Linux what Windows did for DOS: it provides an intermediary layer between the application program and the operating system.

Android History
As Android seems to be a hot topic of discussion at this time, it is hard to remember that it is quite new. It really started when Google acquired Android Inc. in 2005. They established the Open Handset Alliance and announced Android in 2007, with the first handset appearing the following year. The source code was released at that time.

Android has now reached version 2.1 and enjoys widespread support, as more devices " mainly handsets " have been announced. The latest, and certainly the most talked about, being Google's own Nexus One device.

Android Architecture
An Android system consists essentially of five software layers: 1) Linux; 2) Libraries; 3) Runtime; 4) Application Framework; 5) Applications

Linux . The bottom layer is the Linux OS itself " version 2.6.3x with 115 patches, to be precise. This provides process and memory management, security, networking and an array of relevant device drivers.

Libraries. A set of libraries reside on top of the OS. This includes Google's version of libc, called bionic, along with media and graphics libraries and a lightweight database " SQLite.

Runtime. Alongside the libraries, on top of the OS, is the Android runtime " the Dalvik VM. This is not strictly a Java virtual machine, though it serves that purpose. It was designed specifically for Android and is register based to conserve memory and maximize performance. A separate instance of the Dalvik VM is used to execute each Android application. The underlying OS is used for memory management and multi-threading.

Application Framework. This layer provides a number of services to applications: views, content providers and resource, notification and activity managers. These are all implemented as Java classes. Any application can "publish" its capabilities for use by other applications.

Applications. A number of applications are routinely distributed with Android, which may include email, SMS, calendar, contacts, and Web browser. All applications have the same status " the supplied ones are not "special".

Applications are generally written in Java and processed with the standard Java tools with a converter being used to translate to the Dalvik VM bytecodes.

Google's "Super Phone" Nexus One Unveiled

2010-01-06T01:28:00.000-08:00

In an effort to shake up the mobile phone market, Google has unveiled the Nexus One, the latest smart phone running the company's Android operating system. Yet questions about Google's larger goals remain, notably in the advertising world.

"The Nexus One belongs in an emerging category of device we call super phones," said Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management for Google. It is the first phone in a series of devices for the search giant from various manufacturers and carriers, all of which will be sold in a newly announced Google store:www.google.com/phone.

The phone can be purchased today with service from T-Mobile at $179, or without service for $529. The company plans to add more countries as well as devices from more manufacturers and providers, in the next few weeks, including Verizon Wireless and Vodaphone.

Many analysts cite Google's purchase of mobile advertising firm AdMob as evidence that the company intends to further its position in the nascent mobile advertising market, however. They argue that Google-branded phones may allow the company to more closely control advertisements to users.

The phone highlights the Android 2.1 operating system (which carried the cute code-name "Éclair") that first shipped on the Verizon Droid, meaning this new phone incorporates all the same functionality as that device. Android features multitasking, letting applications run in the background, unlike the iPhone's one-app-at-a-time behavior.

Google explained that the Nexus One is designed to showcase the software the company has been working on for Android, as well as the many widgets that run on the Droid platform. For example, a live wallpaper function enables interactive, moving images as the background wallpaper for the screen.

In addition, the ability to group photos on the phone by category highlights the company's strengths in searching, organizing and displaying an individual's content.

Light and proximity sensors add power saving functionality (Google dims the display based on ambient lighting or proximity to the skull). And there's active noise cancellation through two separate noise sensors, which eliminates background noise when walking down the street.

Google cites innovation around the voice experience as well. The "search by voice" app lets you speak a query rather than typing it. Saying "navigate to Ikea" executes a Google search for the term and automatically returns a map with turn-by-turn navigation to the nearest store. The Nexus One builds this level of voice-connection to other apps: Speech-to-text integration in e-mails is a welcome feature.

A yet-unreleased Google Earth for Android app has promise as well.

Quotes

2009-10-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

1 ) He who forgives ends the quarrel.

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2) Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

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3) If you only love someone when they give you what you want, you don't love them, you love getting what you want

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4) I hate when I'm waiting for a text and then my phone vibrates but it's not from who I want.

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5) Sometimes you lose everything to see that you've finally found yourself, which is everything.

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Don't choke your watchdog

2009-10-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

Your application will be terminated if wasting damn too much time in applicationDidFinishLaunching.

360iDev MapKit Presentation

2009-10-04T23:06:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation :

360iDev MapKit Presentation - Denver 2009

View more documents from bdudney.

Quotes

2009-09-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Love is never wanting to lose faith, never wanting to give up, and never truly moving on. Love is knowing and praying in the deepest part of what's left of your heart that they feel the same.

CourtneyJo Wright
17 year old girl
more famous quotes

Apple’s 1.5 billion apps and why you should care

2009-09-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Apple’s 1.5 billion apps and why you should care
By Harinder SIngh

Apple kicked off Tuesday morning by releasing some of the latest download numbers from the App Store. You may be thinking that’s just another press release slinging a bunch of numbers around, but you should really stop and take a look at these.

Let’s get the reported numbers out of the way first. Apple says it has more than 1.5 billion downloads with more than 65,000 apps and more than 100,000 registered developers in the iPhone Developer Program.

And that is all within the first year the store has been open.

Consider this. Apple sold its 1 billionth app on April 23, 2009 and at that time it had 35,000 apps in the store. That took nine months.

In the next two and a half months it sold 500 million apps and almost doubled the amount of apps available for download to 65,000. That is an incredible amount of growth in a short period of time.

So even if Apple continues on as it is right now, it will be on course to sell 1 billion apps every five months. And that’s without factoring in the incredible growth it is continuing to see.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs summed up the company’s success in two quick sentences. “The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Jobs. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

It will definitely be very hard for others to catch. During his WWDC keynote address, Apple’s Phil Schiller listed the amount of apps available for each of its main competitors. Android had 4,900; Nokia was at 1,088; Palm had 18; and the BlackBerry just passed 2,000 last week. The App Store had 50,000 at that time.

What this means in the broader scope of things is that Apple took on an entrenched cell phone industry and completely changed it with its hardware and software. It also revolutionized the way apps are bought and sold.

In fact, Apple has done it so well that its competition is trying to copy everything it does. Sadly, for RIM, Nokia, Android and Palm, copying another company’s successes is no way to build a business.

Apple is on the leading edge with the iPhone and App Store, and they have proven they can maintain the momentum. Now the question is, what will the competition do?

Retain, release. A guide to Cocoa Memory Management

2009-09-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

Retain, release. A guide to Cocoa Memory Management

Intro to Cocoa memory management

For those coming to the iPhone (and Obj-C/Cocoa) platform, especially those coming from any platform with garbage collection will definitely get caught out by Cocoa’s memory management model. This will probably hit those developing using the iPhone SDK hard, with its limited memory catching leaks will be ever more important as when memory runs low your app will have to clean up after itself and exit .

For those reading Cocoa code for the first few times calls to methods such as -retain, -release and -autorelease might seem somewhat bizarre, but they form the basis of Cocoa memory management. Cocoa uses reference counting to keep track of memory and the code that uses it, a common practice in low memory devices. These calls are all you need to make sure you aren’t causing memory leaks in your code.

Method	Description
`-retain`	increases the reference count of an object (by 1)
`-release`	decreases the reference count of an object
`-autorelease`	decreases the reference count of an object by 1 when possible
`-alloc`	allocates memory for an object, and returns it with retain count of 1
`-copy`	makes a copy of an object, and returns it with retain count of 1

Basic Rules

Good things come in three, so here are the three golden rules for memory management for iPhone development

Within a block of code, the use of -copy, -alloc and -retain should be balanced by use of -release and -autorelease.
Objects created using convenience constructors (e.g. NSString’s stringWithString) are autoreleased.
Implement a -dealloc method to release the instance variables you own when your class is destroyed

Examples

Maintaining the reference counts for an object

<
- (void)helloWorld{
NSString *string;
//alloc the memory for sting object
string = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"Hello World"];
// we created string with alloc so we need to release it so the
//referance count for this code block match
[string release];
}

Creating an object using a convienience constructor, autrelease is used.

- (void)helloWorld
{
NSString *string;
// object is created with a convenience constructor, will be autoreleased
string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Hello"];
// autorelease, no need for release
}

Working with arrays, and objects stored in arrays. Objects placed inside an array in can be released after addition since the array object will add 1 to the reference count

NSMutableArray *array;
int i;
for (i = 0; i <>
{
NSNumber *n = [[NSNumber alloc] initWithInt: i];
[array addObject: n];
[n release];
}

New Threat Found on iPhone

2009-08-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

A potentially catastrophic security flaw in the SMS function of iPhones is being reported across the Internet. Thursday afternoon, researchers are planning to reveal the currently unpatched bug in the iPhone's handling of SMS text messages that could allow for hackers to completely hijack any iPhone in the world.

Note: Due to some recent commenting on MacFixIt, I feel compelled to assure you that this is not a sensationalist story. This is a real security threat for users of Apple's iPhone and should be taken with a great deal of seriousness.

The Story
Forbes reports that researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner will reveal the iPhone SMS exploit at tomorrow's Black Hat conference, being held in Las Vegas.

"If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly."

The article goes on to explain the threat, stating the the exploit can send mostly invisible text messages resulting in hackers gaining access to near complete control of the iPhone's functionality which, "includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking."

Apple has reportedly been aware of this exploit for about six weeks, though no patch has been released. This attack is unique in that the hacker would not need the user to do anything to enable the malicious code. All the hacker needs is the phone number of an iPhone user--everything else is done via SMS.

PC World also has an insightful report on this story.

Again, please take this seriously. If you receive the suspect text message, turn off your iPhone immediately. Of course, we will keep you posted on this story and let you know if any patches are released.

Project NATAL : A revolutionary new way to play

2009-06-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

By:- Harinder Basra
June 12, 2009

Video game players with less-than-dexterous thumbs will soon stand a fighting chance, with Microsoft Corp. on Monday promising a new method for controlling the action with full body movements.The Redmond, Wash., software giant unveiled a technology for its Xbox 360 video game console that, as early as next year, could let people toss aside the baffling 12-button controller. Instead, the system's camera and sound sensors detect movement of faces and body joints as well as voice commands.

The company unveiled "Project Natal", which uses a camera to track a user's movements via full skeletal mapping. It also recognizes voices and vocal commands.The technology obviates the need for a controller or remote device to enable a player for instance to drove a car in a game, interact with a character on screen or show pictures and information to other XBox 360 users over the internet.

Microsoft showed off the feature, an answer to the Nintendo Wii's motion-sensing remote and pressure-sensing balance board, at a news conference that kicked off the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, this week in Los Angeles.

In recent years, Microsoft has added family-friendly features, including easy-to-play, arcade-style games and the ability to watch movies or TV shows on-demand via its Xbox Live online store.

Microsoft wouldn't say how much the camera and other sensors packaged with Natal would cost.In another prototype, a player can talk to a virtual character who picks up on the player's facial movements to detect emotion and converse based on what was said, as well as what may have been implied. The technology can also potentially recognize objects, such as a piece of paper, read what's on the paper and integrate the content into the game.