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If you are a photographer, a designer or a visionary PRECINKT is the perfect platform to expose your talents. Your PRECINKT pages will feature your view of the world, your style and most importantly your contact details – a great way to get noticed!
Mike Cohen
links for 2010-05-08
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The cocos2d-iphone game engine is the premier 2D game engine for iPhone game developers. Sometimes, it can be a tough nut to crack. You may also find yourself struggling with Objective-C, Xcode, Cocoa Touch or the iPhone SDK in general, including Code Signing and App submissions. This website is dedicated to cracking the cocos2d nut and getting your game out there!
MarsEdit 3.0
MarsEdit is one of my favorite applications and it just got even better with version 3. I have been using MarsEdit for this blog almost since the beginning. I’ve looked at other blog editors, but I always came back to MarsEdit because it just seemed more comfortable and it just worked exactly the way I wanted.
Until now, MarsEdit only supported HTML editing, but version 3 also adds a new Rich Text editor. MarsEdit 3 also adds support for WordPress pages & custom fields and a new media browser that supports iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom.
The only thing MarsEdit is missing now is an iPad version.
Facebook Like Button
I’ve added a Facebook ‘like’ button both here and at MacMegasite using the like plugin.
I won't has cheezburger
Cheezburger Networks would like to take control of the ICHC app and sell it themselves. They’re setting up their own developer account (in which I’ll be a team member) and will sell it under their own name.
I’m trying to figure out how to transfer that app only to a different developer account while retaining my other apps. I’ve contacted Apple DTS about it. Unfortunately it may not be possible for owners of the current version to get updates when the application is updated. Before I transfer it, I hope to release a final update replacing more custom code with standard Three20 code.
Although I’ll be losing my best selling app, I’ve been working on a new game. I can’t give any details right now, but it’s based on Cocos2d and Chipmunk physics and the artwork will be professionally designed by my other team members who are better artists than I am.
WWDC
It’s official – I’m going to WWDC. I have my ticket and I booked my flights & hotel.
I’ll be staying a few extra days to look at some homes in the bay area and hopefully buy one. I’ve decided on San Leandro for its convenient location and reasonable home prices. Most places in San Leandro have a pretty high walk score, and it’s 30 minutes from San Francisco.
links for 2010-04-29
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Predictably, people’s initial reaction was “Wow, that’s the new iPad!” But that quickly faded as I opened the Photos app and passed the device around. My family was more interested in sharing the photos than talking about the new technology.
I was particularly interested in how my mother, the quintessential technophobe, would react to the device. She picked up on things quickly and was flipping through photos in no time. It astonished me how the interface disappeared for her: at one point she subconsciously licked her finger before “flipping” to the next photo.
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Apple telling Adobe to go f*** themselves –
"Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X."
Things vs. OmniFocus
I always loved how things looks and its simple, elegant user interface. The iPad version is simply beautiful: it works exactly the way a task management app on an iPad should work.
Unfortunately, Things’ syncing has never worked smoothly. Syncing it between two different computers can only be done with something like DropBox, and you can’t run it on both machines at the same time when using the same data file. Things can also sync with iCal, but that always causes duplicate & missing items and doesn’t work at all between two different machines sharing a data file. Things usually syncs nicely between a single Mac, iPhone, and iPad, but today it suddenly stopped recognizing my iPhone, even after I removed it and paired it again.
OmniFocus is a lot more powerful and flexible, but as a result it doesn’t feel as clean & elegant as Things. OmniFocus has a major advantage over Things in syncing. While Things only syncs mobile devices over the local network, OmniFocus supports several different syncing methods, including MobileMe. OmniFocus can only sync manually with iCal, but it doesn’t screw up the way Things does. Most importantly, when syncing via MobileMe, you can run it on two computers at the same time without screwing anything up, and you can sync your iPhone even when you’re away from the computer.
Due to all of the syncing problems I’ve been having with Things, I’ve switched back to OmniFocus. Unfortunately they still don’t have an iPad version, so the iPhone version (like most iPhone apps) is just plain ugly when run on an iPad. I miss Things’s beauty & elegance, but not losing data is more critical.
New 15" i7 MacBook Pro
My new MacBook Pro arrived today, and after using the antiglare hi-res screen for only a short time I can’t imagine how I was able to work on the 13″ screen. It’s bright enough that it’s completely readable outdoors. With the 1680×1050 display, I can use the iPad simulator at 100% scaling. It also feels a lot faster than the MacBook. Photoshop CS4 launches in about 20 seconds vs. 45 seconds on the MacBook and about 12 seconds on the 27″ iMac.
I don’t have the old MacBook’s GeekBench score, but the 15″ MacBook Pro’s score is 5054.
For comparison, the iMac’s score is 8435.
The only negative thing about the new MacBook Pro is the silver screen bezel, which doesn’t look as nice as the black bezel on glossy screen models.
The new MacBook Pro uses an angled MagSafe connector that’s less likely to get pulled out accidentally.
I haven’t run it on battery power for an extended period yet, so I can’t tell how long the battery lasts.