In the course of doing recipes for the Erica/Alexis project, I have learned that there are several things I need to be sure to do before modifying any of the base templates Apple provides.

1. Remember to add the app delegate string to main

When starting a new project, I am often faced with a black screen.  Despite the fact that this has happened to me three times now, it still takes me a bit of hair tearing before I remember it’s because I need to add the app delegate to the fourth parameter in the main method.

The solution to this, of course, would be to update my user templates so I don’t have to remember to do this every time.

2. Set the file’s owner to be the view controller

By default, the File Owner’s type is set to NSObject. When I have ViewControllers I want to use as a basis for my project, I need to change this so the File Owner’s type is set to my custom Root ViewController.

3. Remove the main xib line from info.plist

After changing (1) and (2), I was still getting this error: “2010-05-07 15:12:55.632 TwoItems[21829:207] Failed to load NSMainNibFile MainWindow.”

The problem was Read more »

The Erica/Alexis project is going quite well, despite my lack of new posts about it. I have a number of drafts in the queue, but for now, I give you visual evidence of the progress I’ve been making. Yes, I really love mini post-it notes:

Through the course of my progress through the iPhone Developer’s Cookbook, one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: I did not understand fundamentals of Objective-C.

I really thought that my foundations in java, C#, and even C (thank you, Operating Systems with Jason Nieh) was enough.  I breezed through lists of the differences, read some code, and I was done, thankyouverymuch.  I even skimmed the “Objective-C bootcamp” section and deemed it irrelevant for me.

But with this challenge, I’ve promised myself to read every page of this book.  And you know what?  I really needed to RTFM.  Why?

• I didn’t realize Objective-C is dynamically typed (even though I should have realized this with all the id variables floating around!)
• I didn’t know selectors were basically just another way of saying “method name”
• I didn’t know that if you do a child-to-parent assignment, like assigning an NSMutableArray to an NSArray, you’ll get the somewhat vague “assignment from distinct Objective-C” warning
• I didn’t know you should always check for if (!self) in your init methods because in case of memory warnings, [super init] can return nil
• I didn’t know that Apple has a standard on Class methods: any object returned by a class method is returned to you already autoreleased

It’s little things like these that can really trip me up.  So far, the Erica/Alexis project is incredibly rewarding.

I wrote this entire blog on my iPad. It took twice the time to get it on the web as it took me to write it, and edit all images, in Pages on the iPad.

No headphones? Really?
The lack of headphones seems unnecessarily cheap, and very un-Apple. I mean, they gave us free water and free Starbucks in the line to get this thing, but no headphones with your iPad? LAME.

Ipad keyboard

It feels a little awkward not to have the tactile response. The keyboard also feels a little bit cramped. I am definitely not spreading my fingers out as much as I normally do on a real keyboard. I am, however, doing my best to type as i do on a normal keyboard (not looking at the keys, left fingers placed on ASDF).
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I recently picked up the Second Edition of Erica Sadun’s “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook,” that focuses on the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

Now, admittedly, a third edition is now required given that the iPad comes along with SDK 3.2. However, I still feel that completing all 163 recipes outlined in Sadun’s book will bring me from iPhone development amateur to iPhone development expert–and give me a leg up in understanding the next version of the SDK.

So, my goal is to get through all 163 recipes over the remaining 347 days left this year.

Thanks to Julie & Julia for the inspiration on this one.

I’ve written a guest blog over at Technostraddle on the recent iPad announcement, and why you should be very, very excited: The iPad App Revolution: A Look at the Card Up Apple’s Sleeve