Tag Archives: Software

Working with blocks

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In Mac OS X 10.6 and iOS 4, Apple added blocks to Objective-C. When I first started looking at them because various APIs used them, the syntax confused me, and I pretty much ignored them as I was still doing work that ran on iOS 4 and Mac OS X 10.5.

This spring, all my projects moved to iOS 4 and Mac OS X 10.6 as the minimum requirements, so I took another pass at learning blocks. This time, however, I could actually use them and read all I could about them. The more I started looking at them, the more I became enamored with them. I started using blocks in my own APIs and just finished rewriting a significant chunk of code using blocks. Using blocks has made my code more readable and has greatly simplified certain aspects of our app.

One of my co-workers cautioned me to not use blocks just because they were the shiny new tool which I admit was what I was looking at doing. However, after using them, we found that using blocks was pretty much vital to making our code more readable.

For developers that aren’t familiar with blocks, I’d suggest learning them. With most iOS apps having a minimum OS of 4.0, there is no reason to avoid them.

The end of MovieConverter

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It was just over 2 months ago when I released MovieConverter to the world to fill a gap where iMovie for iPad wouldn’t import videos from certain video cameras including my Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX9. I had originally came up with the idea for MovieConverter back when I got my iPad 2 and started playing with iMovie. I worked on MovieConverter over the summer and finally released it.

When I installed iOS 5 on my iPad 2, I found that iMovie imported more videos than before, but still not ones from my WX9. I made a few minor updates to MovieConverter to get it working better on iOS 5 and pushed it out the door. I got back from vacation the day after iOS 5 got released to the public and quickly updated everything including iMovie. The iMovie 1.2.2 notes said it added support for importing video from additional cameras.

Much to my delight and dismay, the videos from my WX9 imported into iMovie without MovieConverter. I immediately updated the MovieConverter description to say it may longer be needed and dropped the price to free so that no users would be pissed at me for writing a “useless” program.

From an iMovie user point of view, this is great news. I didn’t write MovieConverter for fame or fortune, but it was nice to get a little money from it.

Oh well, now I have to come up with another idea that will have a little more than 2 months on the app store.

iOS App Store’s ups and downs

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At the beginning of August, I released MovieConverter to the App Store. I created the app to fill a personal need and decided to see if it met the needs of others. My goal, financially, was to recoup the cost of having an icon created for it; icons are not cheap and since I can’t design one myself, I had to commission one. I used Jordan Langille of One Toad Design and was pleased with his work, so he got my business again.

Within a few weeks, I managed to reach my financial goal and things have still been going; it’s not going to make me a million dollars, but it’s enough to buy a few dinners.

That’s the good part of the App Store; no advertising and I get money. The bad part is the user reviews. Despite my full description and warnings that it may not work on all videos and the videos must play in the Photos app, I’m getting some bad reviews. Most are because people don’t read what the app does and expect it to do something it wasn’t designed to do. Is there anything a developer can do? Nope. Oh well, the app still sells and serves a need.

I wish that Apple would provide a way for developers to respond directly to reviews like MacUpdate does where it clearly indicates that the developer has responded; with the App Store, some developers (against Apple guidelines), post 5 star reviews and respond. If apps I publish on the App Store where my sole means of income, then I’d be really annoyed. However, this is just a side project, so it’s not a huge deal to me.

Protected PDFs are a waste of time

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Today I had to electronically sign some documents and then the document was available to download as a PDF. Preview on the Mac wouldn’t properly render it and required Adobe Reader. As I refuse to put that awful program on my machine, I tried to use VMWare Fusion with some PDF writers on it, tried printing to a Printopia printer, but everything failed. I finally put Adobe Reader on another machine, installed CUPS-PDF, played with a few options in Reader (told it to output as an image), and ended up with a 700 MB PDF that Preview could read! I then opened it in Preview and printed it to a PDF. I ended up with an 11 MB file that was had all the Adobe protection stripped out of it. I can’t select text in the PDF as it is an image based PDF, but I didn’t want it. I simply wanted a copy of the document in a format I could use with Paperless.

I love the PDF format, but I hate extensions like this that just make me go through hoops to get what I’m entitled to have. (I could have printed the 37 pages and scanned them back in, but that would be a waste of paper, not time because I spent more time with all my hoops.)

MovieConverter available on the App Store

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I’m pleased to announce that my MovieConverter app is now available on the iOS App Store. The app is designed for iPad users that want to import and edit video that was taken with a compact digital camera in iMovie.

The premise is pretty simple, but I think it is a huge help to those that don’t want to travel with a laptop and want to edit video.

While I don’t expect to become a millionaire on this, I do hope to sell enough copies to go out to dinner a few times!

Thanks Apple for the fast turnaround on approving this! Total time less than 9 calendar days from initial submission.