Ok so in the first tutorial we covered let, which is the keyword for defining constants. let thisBeAConstant = 3.141 Now we are going to cover variables, which use the var keyword like so: var thisVariable = time Notice 2 things about Swift: 1) We don’t use ; at the end of a line. That’s just weird 🙂 2) We don’t have to specify the type. The type is inferred by whatever value you pass in, so: var someString = “this is a string” var someInteger = 5 So Swift is kinda smart. Now let’s meet some old friends “Hao jiu bu juan” ARRAYS var energies = [“solar”, “wind”, “fossil”, “this is a… Read More
Continue ReadingFirst SWIFT Tutorial ever! :-)
let is used for assigning constants whereas var is used for creating variables. ie: let salute: Character = “Hey there…” let everyone: Character = “Swift World” var saluteEveryone = salute + everyone saluteEveryone = saluteEveryone + “!”
Continue ReadingCreating a simple UICollectionView in iOS
Steps 1) Create Master-Detail Application & Replace the MasterViewController First we want to create a Master-Detail Application just because it sets up a Master-Detail relationship even though thats the first thing we are going to break :). So go ahead and create a new project in XCode4 based on a Master-Detail Application type. Use ARC, Storyboards and CoreData because we will use CoreData to store information. Your storyboard should look like this: Now select the Master scene until its highlighted in blue and delete it with the Delete key. We simply replace it by dragging in a UICollectionViewController onto the storyboard in its place. This places a UICollectionViewController scene with… Read More
Continue ReadingWWDC 2013 Videos of Interest
WWDC 2013 Videos of Interest Introducing Text Kit Advanced Text Layouts & Effects with TextKit Building User Interfaces in iOS7 Custom Transitions Using View Controllers Customizing Your App’s Appearance for iOS 7 Introduction to Sprite Kit Designing Games with Sprite Kit Getting Started with UIKit Dynamics What’s New in iOS User Interface Design Pretty much all the Whats New…
Continue ReadingApple’s iOS7 and the future of development
Sure iOS7 brings a lot of technological advances. But more importantly, it sets a new precedent in the Software Development industry. Here are a reasons: 1). An Elite development team. Many people complain about Apple shutting out developers by not opening up. It’s funny because their code is open, you just have to be willing to pay. Where disgruntled programmers see disappointment, I see a company filtering an elite team of outsourced developers to keep pushing the envelope where only the savviest survive. 2). An evermore demanding market niche. I downloaded ios7 on Monday like most devs. The first thing I noticed was Skype crashing and Testflight failing to install.… Read More
Continue Reading2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 17,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals Click here to see the complete report.
Continue ReadingHow to Read iOS or Mac OS Programming Documentation
The toughest part for me to get started was reading the Apple Documentation on iOS or MacOS. When I got into more APIs it got more complex. You need to understand how to read API or proprietary code documents in order to understand how to create a piece of code, connect to web services or debug changes in code. You will very often see the term DEPRECATED, which means a particular method name is no longer used. This is very important so let’s take a look at Apple Docs first: This tells us that the object of type NSArray has many methods that you can call on it. They may… Read More
Continue ReadingAppleTV & AirPlay: The future
What can you do with your AppleTV? Aside from streaming movies or buying movies online instead of the limited selection at your local store, you can do much more than watch movies. In it you can access built in apps like YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, WSJ, Flickr, etc. you can play iOS “AirPlay-enabled games” and access the web with apps like these: http://theapple.tv/apps/list-of-airplay-enabled-apps/
Continue ReadingApple Foxconn Labor
Much was commented this week about Apple’s China factories where American’s favorite phone and tablet computers are made. Being from a developing country myself, I was surprised to see such a big deal made about this “differing” labor practice in such countries when compared to Developed Countries’ practices. First, because when you compare absolute numbers instead of relative (%), statistics can scare or impress anyone. Take the $1.78 hourly wage and the board figure of $17 a month for example: $1.78/hr x 40hrs a week x 4 weeks comes to about = $284.8/mo income. $17 for room for what pretty much looked like my dorm room at University of Tampa,… Read More
Continue ReadingMy Cover Letter for a Job Application at Apple: You will be missed Steve
I believe the best Cover Letter I can write is based on my love for Apple. I can’t tell you I have ever sat in line for days waiting for a product launch because I don’t have the luxury of living in the US and our “quasi-Apple” stores in Honduras suck to say the least. However, I can say 3 things with great pride: First, that I have been an Apple fan since the Apple IIe, simply because that’s around the time I was born and have recollection. We used to spend summers in San Francisco at my uncle’s house. He worked for United Airlines and had a simple… Read More
Continue ReadingApple: The future of computing
It’s no secret Apple’s MBA is a great form factor; the thinnest computer ever with some nice muscle. Specially now with the i5 processor. The SSD/Optical-less wonder has convinced users that cloud computing is not only the future, but that it’s also actually feasible. For years Mac OSX has been the most stable, user friendly commercial OS which has set the groundwork for the birth of iOS. Along comes iPhone and iPad and they convinced users that iOS is a powerful enough OS to power the future of computers. Add to this mix a great combination of SSD-AlwaysOn, the virtually endless capacity of traditional HDD drives with a splash of… Read More
Continue ReadingAndroid vs iOS
A friend of mine recently send me an email with this link from extremetech.com listing the 5 Android features that leave iOS in the dust. Here are my thoughts in response: 1. Homescreen/widgets. These drain battery life, which is why iOS doesnt have them. I’ve been learning to code in Android and their OS can run as many background services as apps that contain them. This drains battery and consumes bandwidth. iOS’s solution is APNS or push notifications which a server running on the internet can send to the device instead. Its not as fancy as Android, I agree, but ill trade it for battery life anyday. When hardware manufact… Read More
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