Wrapping Up my First iPhone App

So the past two weeks have been the first in over a year that I’ve had completely free — I’m not under any full-time contracts currently and have been devoting my time to developing riactant’s first iPhone app — iTick. It’s a time and expense tracking app for independent contractors. I’ve put in about two weeks of development so far and it’s almost done. Attending the iPhoneDevCamp really was critical to my momentum on this project and I’m so pleased to see the number of apps that have been released in just the past three weeks.

A little background on iTick: I’m using Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe PhotoShop for the front-end work; on the backend I’m using Microsoft Active Server Pages (no, not ASP.NET, old ASP 3.0 out of old habits and the fact that I have a library of custom VBScript functions I’ve developed and used since 2000 which makes things alot faster for me to develop). SQL Server 2000 is the DBMS. All of it runs off a 2×433MHz Pentium-III 5-U Compaq Proliant server sitting in my garage.

A Personal Mac/PC History

I’m not a complete Mac neophyte. The Mac was the first computer I ever used. Back in 1984 when I lived in New Carrollton, Maryland, I’d spend hours at the computer lab at the New Carrollton branch of the Prince Georges’ County Public Library. They got a brand new 128k Mac, along with an Apple IIe, and an IBM PS/1, all crammed into a little room back near the Reference section. One could sign up for two hours of use on a computer. I got to know the senior citizen volunteer that ran the room daily in the summer of 1984 and he’d give me time on a standby basis when folks wouldn’t show up for their appointments or if they were 10 mins or more late. The daily routine during the summers of 1984-1986 was me waking up, riding my Sear’s 10-speed bike the mile over the hills to the library and hunkering down in the computer lab, sometimes until it closed at 9pm.

Unfortunately, my love affair with the Mac dissipated as I entered Suitland High School in 1987 and was introduced to the PC during my first programming class (Fortran with Larry Schlude). I briefly used the Mac again when I worked at the US Deptartment of Agriculture as an intern in 1990 when I wrote a small genetics hybridization calculator for Dr. Thomas Devine, soybean geneticist extraordinnaire. My next run-in with the Mac was at the University of Maryland computer labs when I was very much into SimMars by Maxis. It was during this time that I experimented with the NeXT machines the University of Maryland has as well.

Not too long thereafter I was headlong into a future full of Windows. In 1993 I bought a new Gateway 483DX2/66 for a whopping $2800. It came with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Then in 1995 I did the whole wait in line at midnight thing for the Windows 95 release. Since then it’s been a Windows 98, XP, Vista blur. Until last October when I got my MacBook. The fun and excitement of computing has returned finally.

My transition to Mac

So those of you out there, like me, who have purchased a Mac in the past year and attempted to make the switch to Mac entirely will probably find this most useful. I’ve been a die-hard Windows guy for nearly 15 years, most recently because my many corporate clients demanded it. But last October I decided to buy a black 13″ MacBook because I just wanted a “fun” machine — one I could do all of my recreational computing on without all the hassle that comes with a Windows machine (e.g. weekly spyware scans, etc.).

Well, over the past nine months I’ve struggled with the switch, spending weeks going back to my Windows laptops, mainly because of some app that I can’t get for the Mac. It’s been a back and forth adventure, all the while I really have loved the Mac more and each time I used the PC having pangs of guilt. This past week really was a defining week — I upgraded one of my Windows laptops to Vista which I had used for 6 months continuously before but ditched it because I couldn’t live with all its problems. My last week on the Vista machine has been a nightmare (the details are best saved for another post when I can see straight again).

So in a fit of rage I put my most beloved nearly brand new ThinkPad T60 up on Craiglist today — I’m getting rid of it and replacing it with a 15″ MacBook Pro. I know I’ll inevitably be dragged back into Windows and that’s ok — but that’s what Parallells is for right?

Design in the Pre-Digital Age

Lest we forget, there were many talented designers before the advent of the computer. One of the most outstanding examples of design in the pre-World Word II period came from the automotive industry. If you haven’t seen what could be done with a pencil, some drafting tools, steel and elbow grease check out the vintage autos featured in the Adatto Auto bookstore.

Adobe AIR Bus Tour Reaches Seattle

This morning I’m at the Adobe AIR Bus Tour event in Seattle. Finding the event seemed a bit like looking for a Freemason’s meeting — from 1st Ave S in Seattle there was no indication an Adobe event was going on and it wasn’t until I went around the back side of the bar where it’s being held that I saw the Adobe AIR bus. No markings on the door other than a sign telling regulars the bar was closed for a private event. I wonder how many Microsoft spies are here. No sign of Robert Scoble — he must have jumped off the bus somewhere south of here.

They’ve had several really informative code demos. I’ll try to get a link to them for everyone’s convenience.

Adobe AIR Bus Tour Seattle

The Adobe AIR Bus tour pulled into Seattle last night and this morning I’m at the developer event at Elysian Fields bar next to Qwest Field. For all the online hype the event is surprisingly undermarketed on-site — several times I drove by the building on 1st Ave S and there was absolutely no indication from the front that an Adobe event was in progress. I must admit finding the right door was kind of like trying to gain entrance to a Freemason’s meeting minus the secret handshake and passphrase.

Listening to an eBay guy demo their San Dimas app, which is eBay on AIR.

iPhoneDevCamp Wrap Up

I spent the entire weekend at Adobe’s posh San Francisco office along with about 400 others eager to develop for the iPhone. The real miracle of the weekend was that I didn’t have to pay for one meal or cup of coffee — thanks to the many sponsors of the iPhoneDevCamp event all sustinance needs were taken care of. A weekend of Red Bull, pizza, and playing with the iPhone.

On Friday night at the meet and greet I had the pleasure of meeting and sharing opinions with famed tech blogger Robert Scoble. It was no surprise that the foremost topic of conversations was the iPhone missing Flash support. I think we all want to believe that Adobe and Apple are very close to having this worked out and a release date on the calendar when we’ll all get our firmware update via iTunes ringing in the beginning of iPhone support for Flash; but just in case all of that is wishful thinking I mentioned to Robert Scoble that you better believe the boys in Redmond will have the Silverlight runtime installed in the next rev of Windows Mobile. It would seem reasonable that Apple wouldn’t drag their feet that long on this issue because I can’t imagine a world where there are Windows Mobile devices playing rich content via Silverlight and iPhones supporting nothing beyond HTML/CSS/JavaScript being acceptable to Steve Jobs.

Many developers worked on their first iPhone apps over the weekend. Thanks to a very cool JavaScript/CSS library created by Joe Hewitt that allows webapps to behave like native iPhone apps, I, along with many others, crafted some new apps. “New” in the sense that existing webapps were mostly being “iPhonified.” I worked on a foreign language phrase assistant called “Lingua” — it’s not completely baked by gives a good example of how easily apps could be built on Joe Hewitt’s CSS/JS foundation.

One of the nicest results of the iPhoneDevCamp was the skyrocketing membership to the iPhoneWebDevGroup Google group. This is such a great place to share ideas, discoveries, and experiences developing for the iPhone.

Alas, no Flash Player on the iPhone…yet

Naturally, the very first thing I checked on my iPhone was if it supports Flash content…a resounding “no” unfortunately. But the iPhone plays YouTube videos you say! Ah, it does but only via the dedicated YouTube app that comes pre-installed on the iPhone. I’d bet that the same .swf files on YouTube are what play in the YouTube app, but it seems the YouTube app uses an embedded Flash player. It’s good to see I’m not the only one eager for Flash support on the iPhone.

Here’s why I think Apple will be forced to eventually support Flash on the iPhone.

The iPhone Experience: Day One

I was one of many thousand who experienced iPhone activation problems with AT&T. After 26 hours and almost a dozen phone calls, I finally clawed my way out of activation limbo by having AT&T cancel my previous activation request and starting over. The general consensus across the blogosphere is that AT&T’s activation servers crashed and thousands of activation requests were orphaned leaving iPhones waiting for the AT&T mothership to send down the activation signal which, alas, would never arrive.

Nevertheless, using iPhone is really a joy. Learning to type on it is easy and already I’m typing faster on it than any previous small keyboard I’ve used before. My biggest complaint with my Motorola Q was that it could not keep up with my typing, no doubt thanks to Windows Mobile. It was always several letters behind and often would lock up. iPhone, however, runs Mac OS X and it’s just a speed demon — it’s impossible to outtype it.

Not to be a killjoy, but I already have a list of enhancement requests which I hope will make it into subsequent firmware updates:

• Text select, copy/paste functionality
• Ability to shoot video with camera
• Digital “back of napkin”/sketching functionality in Notes app
• Ability to save images from Safari
• Ability to attach images from within new message (currently the workflow is to choose an image from the Camera Roll, then choose Send via Email)