NSArray *pathsForDownloadedFiles = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
 NSString *pathMain = [pathsForDownloadedFiles objectAtIndex:0];
 NSLog(@"main download directory is [%s]", [pathMain UTF8String]);

The first line lets you allow Apple to put the application download directory anywhere it likes. It will also be able to change it at will, without breaking your program.
The second line means that there is only one directory you need to access and its the first one. Remember in C arrays are zero based which means the first element of the array is at index number zero not at index number one.
NSLog will let you run the app in the simulator OR on your device and send logging information back to the debug console in XCode. Nice and integrated.

An alternative method:

 NSString *mainPath = [self getDataPath];

Uhhhhh yeah a bit shorter. Its not deprecated from what I see so one can use this method also.

Finally lets see where our resource is. Again, if you use this method, then XCode will be able to re-layout the resource directory structure anyway it wants without breaking your program. You KNOW they’re going to do this someday and they won’t tell you until its been done. So lets Program Defensively. Just like you drive defensively.
To find a specific resource that was compiled into your application:

 NSString *resourcePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"mission1" ofType:@"jmf"];
 NSLog(@"Path for mission file is [%s]", [resourcePath UTF8String]);

The AT (@) sign is the NSString constructor without declaring an NSString. In case you’re wondering.

Good Luck and God’s Speed to ya mates.

We have talked about Droid fragmentation and holy smokes this underscores the mess that is called Droid. Actually, its not Google’s fault, they are actively upgrading and maintaining the operation system. The problem is with the handset makers and carriers (who contract for handsets). They are not going back, testing the old droid hardware with the new OS, and then updating the new OS. We wish it were not so. We love Linux and want it to proliferate.

There is obvious demand for Droid phones, regardless the reasons for buying Droid, which are as varied as for buying the iPhone from Apple. The only way out of this mess is for Google to contract with a/some handset makers and create one phone that will step up against the iPhone. Google should be able to be innovative in this space. I would recommend that Sergey stop buying companies and put his creative genius behind this problem. A second option is to open “Google Operations and Update Program” (GOUP) that will update the OS for high volume handsets. This way Google will be able to help the handset makers, and themselves, improve the image of Droid as a mobile OS.

Sergey, you can’t be pleased with this situation. Change it.

Update 1/20/2011 10:07pm

Well the boys pulled the trigger finally. Larry is going to run the company and Sergey is back to the creative work that he is genius at. Hooray, a return to a more exciting Google. Good work guys.

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In your viewDidLoad or if you call any method to do “things” before displaying then the variable that points to the text field should have the becomeFirstResponder message sent to it.
Example:
In the .h of your viewcontroller or class
UITextField *tfJoroto;

In the .m of your viewcontroller or class
-(void)viewDidLoad {
[tfJoroto becomeFirstResponder];
} // viewDidLoad

This should also set the focus to the UITextField.

Good hunting.
-T-

1) Create a View Based app
2) Name it of course.
3) Drop down the targets folder in the project explorer. Its where it drops you after project creation.
4) Select your named project as the target.
5) Go to the top menu drop down the Project menu.
6) Choose “Upgrade Current Target for iPad…” selection.
7) Choose One Universal Application. It is already selected.
YAH MULE. Head thumping music going now. Very loud is better.
Click OK . Umm duh
9) Holy smokes Batman it auto-created the MainWindow~iPad.xib for you. Waycool.
As my speakers blow. Joroto will buy me another set right? Part of the “support you local programmer” program. Right!?
It also created a Resources-iPad Group folder for you. It is in your BEST interest to keep your assets separated. Ya know the graphics, etc.
10) It is autoset for a device. Use the drop down on the left under the window control buttons to change to Simulator, and then choose iPad.
11) Build and Run. Everything is ok.
12) Close it and choose the iPhone simulator. Build and run. Everything is ok.
13) You have an icon for your app right? RIGHT!? Double tap the (your project name).plist.
This is the file that tells the app store and the iPlatform OS where to start when running you app and showing things when the app isn’t running.
14) Fifth line down it says “Icon file”. Double tap the blank line on the right and enter the name of your icon. You don’t need the extension, it assumes png. No path is necessary.
So how does it know where the graphic is?
15) Right two-finger tap the Resources Group line. The context menu comes up. Move the cursor over Add, then choose existing file. Now find your file and choose Add (lower right hand corner of the Finder window). A Dialog pops up. I always choose the ALSO COPY the file into the project. This is so all my projects are self contained.
16) Now we want a splash screen, because your bloated code (unless you grew up on CP/M and embedded systems like I did, or had an excellent mentor) will load too slowly.
In the editing of the (your project name).plist where you placed the icon information:
Double finger tap and choose Add Row.
From the list choose “Launch Image (iPad)” selection.
Tap the blank box to the right and enter the name of your splash screen graphic.
Import that graphic into the project using the technique in step 15.
You’ll need a splash images sized for the iPad and then ANOTHER for the iPhone. Graphic Artists are loving this.

Ok you’re cooking with gasoline. Build and run on each simulator. You should see your splash screen, then hit the round button at the bottom of the simulator and you’ll see your icon on the simulator home screen.

Naming convention, although I have yet to fully test this.
(Image name)-(orientation)~(device)@(size).png
For ours its:
Splash-Portrait~iPad.png
Splash-Portrait~iPhone.png
Splash-Portrait~iPhone@2X.png

“Remember, No matter where you go, there you are”
Buckaroo Bonsai

Peace. Unless war is necessary.
-T-

Anyway, my impression is that it is a larger iPlatform device. The larger size allows several things like a larger keyboard, and they had a piano simulator loaded. Pretty neat.

I also played pre-loaded video and YouTube video and it was seamless. No jitters. Very nice quality. Definitely a kid-in-the-car device. The kids will never again ask “Are we there yet”. Most likely they’ll say “Wait, I’m not done with my video. Do I HAVE to go into the hotel?”

I have big hands/fingers. Not FAT mind you, umm just big. I was in the market for a netbook. Something to hold in one hand and type with the other. Yes I can type pretty quickly with one hand. I know you can’t (and you’ll have other reasons why the iPad sucks), but that’s tough. I could type full speed. The key, it seems, is that the device is sensitive enough to notice my tapping on the glass.

Yes there were games, but I was looking more for productivity. I need to use this on the train ride into work. Have you ever tried to write while the train is jostling around? Not neat, and sometimes impossible to read. Voice is bad because others can hear what one is speaking into a voice recorder.

Overall, I “need” one. It would make the idea sessions that I have on the train more convenient to record. With the wifi I could email it back to the Guild.

If you’re not convinced, then you may not have a need so don’t get excited and buy one. If you don’t have an iPod, and have the cash (stay off the credit card) buy the iPad.

Edit 5/8/10 08:21pm EST

I’ve decided to get the 3G + Wifi model ($629). Lord help me if this happens to me. Help me . . . Spock. . . Help . . . me. . . .

So back to what was supposed to be the topic which is “Why isn’t Flash allowed on mobile devices?”. Well, to be direct. . . IT . . . IS . . . A . . . PIG. Yep I said it. Everyone dances around it, but that is the reason. Mobile CPUs do not have the power to run their OS as well as this virtual machine. That is truly all there is to it. HOWEVER, this is NOT Mr. Jobs’ issue with Flash. His issue is somehow personal and he, in some way, hates Adobe and wants to destroy it. Maybe when he was at Next, Inc. or the early days of Apple, when he was working on WYSIWYG technology that he was burned. Back then one HAD to PAY FOR fonts. Adobe had a lock on the early fonts.

I have to wonder if Steve is vindictive like this or not. However, the way Bill Gates did him in the early days, he probably playing Payback. Well, he has the right, and he definitely has the money to destroy some of his early foes. May I coin the term “Steve the Destroyer”?   Mwahahahaaaa I LOVE IT !

I would love to work with Steve or at least talk with him regularly. He doesn’t mince words, it seems. He demands excellence from his people, and he seems to pay them well for excellence. I say let the Apple machine crush their enemies under their treads. Most other companies that get large do that too. Apple is not different, why should they be? Google wanted to be different, it was for a while, and now it is like the rest of the companies. This truth is as inevitable as there is change in the Universe.

As far as HTML5 goes. I’m not an expert, but I’ve done a TON of Adobe Flash work. HTML5 addresses a small segment of what Flash offers. I would EXPECT it to be more efficient. It is the difference between a mobile phone OS and a Desktop OS. I don’t understand why this would be so profound to some people. I guess many people don’t think deeply. To all of you who love to think only about the surface of problems and offer only surface solutions, please grok your subject before talking about it. If Flash were only about presenting videos on the web then I would accept that HTML 5 is a replacement for Flash. Good luck to ya. Sounds like there is still “some” variance in “how” HTML 5 is implemented unlike in Flash that it is the same on all platforms. Just like PDF. The reason people use PDF is because one is guaranteed to have it displayed the same (or extremely similar to the original) on every platform where it is displayed. Flash runs the same everywhere. HTML 5 does not yet. Umm I would assert that HTML 4 does not, nor any of our standards. Microsoft always tries to muck up the works. Why do we not see articles that SilverLight (Microsoft’s attempt at replacing Flash) doesn’t run on platform XYZ? Because no one uses it.

Concerning Gruber, though, he had stated that for iPhone developers there will be “No change. If you’re a developer and you’ve been following Apple’s advice, you will never even notice this rule.” This is quite myopic to me. This can only apply for indie developers who are supporting themselves or there might be a couple of developers who are just targeting one platform. As far as an evil mean greedy company goes, we try to develop one app that can run on as many platforms as possible. This allows us to spread the risk across platforms and hopefully to recoup the development costs and *ghast* make a profit.

This issue is emotional out there in the developer world. I wanted to see what Steve Jobs would say and possibly write him myself. Well, he has chimed in (above first link) and said that its because these intermediary IDEs that generate code for a target platform produce mediocre code/apps. It just might be me, but XCode (THE IDE that Apple tells us we must use to develop with) does this too. You may target the SDK version that you need to target. So XCode falls into 3.3.1 and should not be used either. So really, we should ALL be coding with a simple text editor. Steve, is Notepad++ ALLOWED????? It would be an intermediate program between me and the OS, I really don’t want to think you still aren’t the god of the platform.

Btw, I like Steve. He’s amazing and has completely created, due to his force of presence, a MACHINE that is reshaping the consumer electronics world. He has entered the cell phone market at the smirk of Microsoft. And he has won. He contracted with AT&T for a piece of the pie where no one else was able to. And he won. He faced off with the record labels for $1. And he won. Yes he has slid back a bit, but one must admit he was the single force that blew the doors WIDE OPEN for MP3 song downloads on the Internet. He has done the same for the book market. However, I don’t think Amazon was that bad with their ebooks. He was not even NEAR first with a portable MP3 player, yet he blew the doors off the market.

Therefore, I am not a Steve basher, nor am I an Apple fanboy. I am, and Joroto are consumer advocates. This 3.3.1 policy is not good for consumers. Steve, doesn’t want crap-apps in his store. He already had them there and has been culling the herd for the last several months. He doesn’t want a crap-app in the store, then so-be-it, he needs to train his people to dump the crap-apps. However, this is bad for the consumer, in a way, because it limits choice, which is why Steve is a lightning rod for bashing. Steve, if this post actually makes it to your eyes, contact us (Joroto), and we’ll help you establish a policy that balances the needs of developers, the iPlatform/Apple, and consumers. There is PEACE to be made here, and we can help.

You need to drop this last policy change for the code generators. Its bad mojo for the iPlatform. It actually makes me, of all people, not want to develop for the iPlatform anymore. What I may establish is that the iPlatform will be done last because all other platforms can use an IDE, then we have to reprogram some of the code in order to make it work on the iPlatform.

Steve, you’ve lost sight of something here.

Update 3:30p

Here is a link from SlashDot on this issue. It explains that Steve has said “intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform”. I believe in context he’s talking about Flash. Following the Slashdot link is the Tao Effect Post. It seems like “most” developers agree that an extra layer on the iPlatform would be too much processing for those CPUs and “mostly” do not begrudge that decision. However, for most of these cross-platform IDEs that also target the iPlatform, they produce native code. In the case of the iPlatform, the one I was looking at produced native Objective C++ that gets compiled under XCode. So there is NO RATIONAL REASON why Steve needs to implement this policy, other than “because he can”. If a developer has a complicated project that some component or feature of the iPlatform will perform, but other platforms don’t, then one must make a decision as to how essential that feature it is. If it is essential, then it gets programmed in, and the other platforms will either: 1) No have that feature (common), or 2) the developer will need to code that feature into that other platform.

Again, I don’t fully understand this decision to implement this policy.

Update 4/13/10 9:05p

Simon over at Bloggasm emailed in a link to his blog discussing why this war is being waged in the blogs instead of the retro mainstream way. Simon’s correct, the mainstream umm authors are not techs and do not understand anything about tech. So they quote “the famous guy” and offer up a cheap “how benevolent” the famous guy is. blah blah. Right now Apple is the elephant in the china shop and I feel like one of the cheaper ceramic teacups. Go pay Simon a visit and email him your thoughts.

Update 4/17/10 8:50p

This guy doesn’t get it either. He’s drinking the Kool-aid (no I don’t own Kool-aid stock but A LOT of Apple fanboys MUST). He said “But in order for these speed improvements to be realized, apps would need to be written in objective C—which is exactly what Apple is now telling developers to do.” Umm ‘scuse me for saying this but RTFM. Mr. Steven “The genius” Jobs has stated that IF you use a code generator that outputs Native Objective-C code and then one uses XCode to compile it into the native app, then YOU SUCK! One is in VIOLATION of the development agreement. Please RTFM or go back to reporting on main-stream news that has only “some” surface tension. These issues run deep because, as developers, we are constantly trying to become LAZY. Programmers are the laziest people on the planet. We try to be the most efficient with our time so we can get back to playing Bioshock, or the upcoming Starcraft II games. We don’t have any life beyond Programming and Games. The main-stream press needs to play in another sandbox, you don’t even begin to understand tek.

Steve,
This isn’t a pile on session, I’ve seen the ignorant bashing you incessantly.   I’m too tired). I’m not here to do the same.  Well of course I am. Its fun, its the NEW new thing to bash Apple for not providing everyone their own personal spaceship to Mars (see previous blog post).
iPad: This name, sucks. Steve, next time spend some money on drugs like you used to do (I’m from your past) and come up with something sexy like “The Apple Tablet”. At least it isn’t blah and sound like some hygiene product. That one’s free, pay me and I’ll let Joroto make a memorable descriptive name. We do that for a living. We’re idea men (yes we’re gay mwhahaaa).

The iPad will succeed, and not because Apple’s behind it. Steve did a good job at a first cut features list. One glaring missing one is the video iChat. He would’ve cornered the market on that one. The iChat on the Macbook is seamless, impressive, rock solid, awesome. Now I’ll REALLY tell you what I think.

The price on the iPad is correct.

Those with a hundred gadgets won’t buy it because, well they’re gadget freaks and ran up their credit card bills. They can’t afford it and are envious. Those of us who held off buying a netbook waiting for a tablet type device will buy one. I will be in line for one. I believe it will serve the niche when I ride the tram or wait in queue at the unsympathetic doctor’s office. I need another, um script.
The larger size is good. The display is gorgeous. Processor is fast.
Oh NOOOO no multiple apps ALL running at the same time. Save me Superman ahhhhhh I’m falling. Pinheads listen closely. No a little closer. If you want that BUY A LAPTOP. You’ll have the screen real estate to have a movie AND browser open. OH JOY. You can be completely distracted and not remember either the movie nor what you scanned on the Internet. Duh.
On the netbooks people RAILED at Microsoft for limiting, yet another windows OS, from being able to run only 3 apps because it would bog down the Atom. Well some of our Quad core 4G systems are bogged down by Windows Vista 7. Ummm well my work here is done.

The 3G plan price is excellent.

The ebook reader app (or whatever) is fine and I’ll buy into that one. Where this will kill (small k) the Kindle is in the rich output of the books. I don’t care a rat’s a** about the authors. They will or won’t get paid. If one doesn’t pay the workers, then the workers stop working. Very simple. From what I’ve read, the authors barely get paid anything now. I couldn’t imagine trying to eek out a living as a no-name author. It HAS to be just a Napoleon complex for them. Its like the rush we get from open source (umm I mean others, not us good corporate drones who work for a paycheck).

iPad needs a webcam though Steve. Did you miss this, or as I presume, was this left out because AT&T’s overwhelmed network couldn’t handle the crush as millions buy this device.

Another goodie is the pads wirelessly connecting to each other to play games like the Nintendo DS/DSi playthings do. Can anyone say Apple competes with Nintendo? Nintendo takes the iPlatform VERY seriously (Management: I need a researcher to insert links here). Apple, it seems, is trying to elbow into Nintendo’s bread basket. My son has a DS and MANY games (spoiled brat) and I just bought a DSi for my wife. Yep she asked for one specifically. She uses some brain game, and my son just got Scribblenauts and says it is absolutely awesome. I’ll just take his word for it. We also have a Wii. The little punk beat me at Wii Resort’s Swordplay. One works up a sweat trying to kill his son.

The iPad will sell millions. Up to the 6-8 million in 2010 as predicted by fanboy analysts? Ummm probably not. However by Christmas 2010 I believe they will be closing fast. If they put this A4 processor into the iPhone as rumored then that will send iPhone sales up. However, can the iPhone sales go up higher than they are now? Nokia had better do something or they stand to become the next Microsoft: i.e. marginalized because they have no visionary and are paralyzed with fear about LOSING customers. Nokia needs to slap their senior management, who have been highed to MAINTAIN the business. Idiots. Don’t maintain JACK, grow the sucker. Innovate, or YES the T word THINK.

Apple will win. Others will lose. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t ask questions about what they don’t know. If any of you are reading this, then contact Joroto, and we can help you come up with real ideas about either extending your existing products, or creating new products that no one has thought of yet. Until then, we work on our black projects.
-T-

Go into your iTunes (mine is on the Mac).
Choose Store from the Menu.
View My Account.
Put the credit card security code into the app.
Close that pane.
Click on your iPod device.
Choose update.
Click on Buy now.
WHOA! It works now. AMAZING. Stupid. Imbecile. Mediocre programmers need to be shot. Where is Adolf Eichmann when we need him.
You’re done baby. Wait the 20 minutes to download this puppy.
Remember to BACKUP your iPlatform before upgrading dude and dudettes.

2-Name it Default.png.

3-Add it to the Resources tab of your Xcode project.

This will add this splash screen automatically to your program when it runs, and will place this graphic on the screen as your app loads into memory and runs.

Select the graphics files with a click, and then scroll down and do a Shift Click (if the files are in a contiguous list). A click is a single tap on the touchpad. The alternate way is to hold down the command key and click once for each additional file. This creates a list of files that you’ll delete.
Now do a two finger tap on the touchpad.
Choose delete.
Choose “Also move to trash”.
Boom they’re gone.
Now go to finder in your project directory. You’ll see the links are still there. So you need to “move them to trash” also. Its the same sequence as above.
Go back to Xcode.
Double finger tap the resources tab.
Choose “Existing files”.
At the top choose the project’s default directory. I choose the drop down control, select my directory where the original graphic is and then select my graphics.
Now click “Add” or press .
Make sure “Copy items into destination group’s folder (if needed)” is selected. I do this so I can zip up the entire development directory and have zero external references.
That’s it. Just another tidbit to hopefully help you develop for the iPlatform.

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