marcus ramberg

Dark Nebula Episode 2

Gravity Hook

Van Helsing

I need to look into this for the iusethis iPhone application. The launch time is one thing that annoys me with that app now, and this could be a good way to sort that out.

Glass Construction by Marcus Ramberg.

Went for a quick bike ride near Aker Brygge this morning and tested the iPhone 3GS camera. I’d like a tripod mount so I can film from the bike with it. Will test out with the gorillapod and my flip mino hd.

Update: The first set I published was post-processed using adobe lightroom to give them a mood I like. For reference, I’ve uploaded the non-postprocessed versions as well

Interesting writeup from Justin Williams about the use of Tab Bars in iPhone development. One of his big gripes is related to the space the tabbar uses:

When I made the decision, my thinking was that the application had four separate features, so it only made sense to separate them using the tab bar. What I found as I got further into the development of the application was that the bottom tab bar was incredibly limiting for where to place extra controls.

The main problem here is that by default a Tab Bar is visible in all views of the application. I much prefer Tweetie‘s implementation, where the tab bar is only visible on list views, and pushed away on the detail views. Of course, this layout is actively discouraged by Apple, who recommend you put your navigation controller *inside* each tab bar. They do it the opposite way themselves in itunes tho.

Also, the interaction allowed by the Tab bar is really limited. You cannot easily disable and enable a tab, for instance. Still, I believe this way of presenting data has merit, specially in giving non-technical users a clear overview of the main parts of your application.

*update* As Ross Boucher points out you can also hide the Tab Bar by setting the “hidesBottomBarWhenPushed” property on your controllers. An important gotcha with this is to make sure you only set it on the first level controllers.

Gruber has written a brilliant guess at what must be going on inside the heads of the Apple App Store reviewers’ mind. I specially enjoyed this nugget:

I could read that over and over. It’s like the voice of a robot. The voice of authority. The voice of authoritative robots.

Want to implement anti-piracy mechanisms in your new iPhone app? I agree with most these recommendations for ways of dealing with this issue. However, I think that blocking all jailbroken phones would be a big mistake.