I've been using the iPhone SDK since its original release way back in March. Many frustrating moment in the beginning but the recent beta 7 and beta 8 release proved to be ready for prime time. Apple has added many helper classes or helper methods to classes to make it far easier to work with the UI components, which is by far the most frustrating things I encountered. I am still having problem wrapping my head around the idea of Interface Builder but since the apps that I am building do not involve very complex UI, I just hand coded all the UI instead.

To illustrate, the original iPhone app idea I had that I started developing using the original SDK is a mobile application for Mingle. The application would consist of a series of table views showing projects, cards, and card details, along with some network code to talk to the Mingle server through REST API. At that time, progress was slow because of many factors. First, learning Cocoa/Cocoa Touch API and Xcode at the same time was tough. Second, the Cocoa Touch API was a bit 'primitive' in the beginning. What I mean is that while the API provides all the necessary hooks for developers to create an iPhone app it does not provide many pre-build components, making it difficult and required lots more work from developers to re-create the look and feel of the built-in iPhone apps.

I was so put off by the initial experience that I skipped beta 4-6 and did not open up Xcode until last weekend. And what a refreshing change with beta 7! Now it is straightforward to make an app that looks and feels just like an Apple's one. I was so fired up that last Sunday evening I decided that I would try to create an app for an idea that one of my fellow ThoughtWorker suggested to me. Instead of days of tearing my hair out and got no where, I was able to create a almost features completed app within hours, using beta 8.

So what is this app? It checks the build status on the CruiseControl server. Just like CCTray (Windows) or CCMenu (OS X), it allows users to monitor their software build status. Following the convention, I am calling it CCPhone. The app isn't more complex than the Mingle app but the fact that I was able to almost match the productivity I normally get on my Windows development environment means that I was excited about working on the app rather than dreading it.

Now here are couple of screen shots:

To-do:

• Fix the build time being 1 hours off (probably day time saving bug)
• Better status icons
• Create application icon (currently it uses icon from CCMenu)
• Finish coding the 'Force Build' functionality
• Add startup screen bitmap (so it won't be just a black screen)
• Add auto detect of CruiseControl server (Java, .Net, or Ruby)

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Dev Chair : iPhone SDK experience - Download Squad

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/03/...

The iPhone SDK has been out for couple of weeks now and I've been using it to develop an application for my work as a technology demonstrator. My experience thus far has been largely positive. I wasn't surprised by how well-made the SDK is, even at this beta stage. The amount of work involved in releasing any SDK, let alone one that is so tightly scrutinized, cannot be underestimated.Consider that I am learning three new things simultaneously: programming in Objective-C, learning how to use Xcode, and what is available in the iPhone SDK, I am going to describe the whole experience instead of just confined to the SDK...

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Windows, Mac, Linux - What's your preference and why?
Submitted by ramblingsbymark.

I prefer Mac as a day-to-day OS/Computer. Not that Windows are bad, I use it everyday for 8+ hours for work, and Microsoft has made developing software on Windows really easy and enjoyable. Apple's Xcode is ok but it is nothing like Visual Studio or even Eclipse. But the fact remains that Windows are not secure, must require running of anti-virus/anti-spyware software in the background, requires constant vigilant to make sure it is not infected, etc. makes using a Mac so much more less stressful and enjoyable.

The last time I tried Linux was nearly 10 years ago and even with these intervening years I still think Linux has not evolved into the point where any consumers can install and use it without knowledge of *nix.

OS X is really Linux done right.

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One of the great thing about my new E61 is that the built-in music player supports AAC files. So I can play all of my tracks encoded in iTunes. But the one thing the music player can't do is to read the tags information in the m4a files. It only reads ID3 tags. After some googling, I've found this Windows app called mp3tags that copies the tags info in the m4a files into the ID3 tag fields, thus allowing the music player to read and displays them on the screen. But I can't find any equivalent on the Mac. That sucks! May be it is time for me to dive into XCode and write a tag converter myself!

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