Colloquy and a Mac

I'm going to point you all in the direction of Colloquy, which is a great IRC client if you've got a Mac.

A Mac?

Yes, a Mac. I've had a few ideas for apps and have been wanting to tinker with producing iPhone apps for some while now, and the current base model Mac Mini is well up to the job.

Objective C is quite a bit different from C Sharp, but what self-respecting programmer doesn't leap at the chance to expand his breadth of knowledge? It's like going back to C, but in a slightly different and more comforting way.

Objectives, in order of priority:

- I complete an app, make it available on the store, and people download it.

- ...they download it and don't think it's rubbish.

 - Enough people download it so I make back the cost of the Mac.

And finally, why can't all PCs be as quiet as a Mac? I can see myself being a convert.

Edge for iPhone

No, I'm not talking about the 2.5G mobile technology. Nor will I mention that we're getting copy and paste at last! Oh dear, sorry about that.

No, I want to talk about another shiny gem of an iPhone game called Edge, that I discovered over the weekend. Sadly, no screenshot I can take does it justice, so I strongly recommend you check it out on YouTube.

Retro graphics, a simple concept and a varied 8-bit inspired soundtrack combine to provide something really quite engaging.

Guide your cube around numerous cubic landscapes, each one more fiendish than the last. When your cube reaches the goal tile, based on how many times you dropped off the world, the number of smaller cubes you managed to collect and the time taken, you'll get a rating, which as far as I can tell is between A and D.

Very simple. Insidiously addictive.

Time Out: Ancient Frog

I happened to stumble upon a rather excellent iPhone app called Ancient Frog at the weekend. I thought it was so excellent, I'm sharing it with you.


The premise? Help a variety of flexible frogs get the fly by guiding their limbs, for which there are limited spots to place them, across various surfaces. Not only is it an original and entertaining product, it's developed by a one man band.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Independent Game developers. Previously, I worked on both Thievery and the first incarnation of Alien Swarm, and I'm currently working on an as yet unannounced XBox 360 community game. It can be a hard slog, especially if you're trying to fit in a life and a day job.

Want to support Indie Game devs? This is definitely one to buy if you've got an iPhone or an iTouch.

Don't Unplug Your iPhone When Synching

I know, I know. I didn't do it on purpose.

I've previously unplugged my iPhone whilst it was synchronising and gotten away with it, but this time I was not so lucky. The 7.51GB of music and media I had on it have been turned into Other.


It then complained that it couldn't synchronise my media because there wasn't space. No there isn't. That's because it's already there.

Restore didn't help either, I was still left with Other. As you can't delete other in any way, I now have to do a full reset on my iPhone and then resynchronise it, which will take it at least 2 hours.

Can I afford to have my iPhone off for 2 hours? Probably. Do I want to? No. Do I still love it? Yes. Maybe I'm becoming addicted. It's easily done.

iPhone Gaming Comes of Age

Yep, I'm one of those horrible people with an iPhone. You'll have to take my word for it that I didn't buy it to be cool - it was bought with good reason. Without doubt, it's a device I use more for browsing the web using 3G than talking to people on - and the beautiful multi-touch screen makes this a breeze.

Until recently, I didn't think very much of the quality of games available for it, which seemed to predominantly consist of third-rate racing games keen to capitalise on the novelty of the built in tilt sensing ability to steer. But now, finally, we have some quality products coming through, even if they are 'just' ports of older games available on other platforms. SimCity 3000 was the first to catch my eye, and a beautiful thing it is too. The developers have thought about the interface, and how it translates to a touch screen. It's full of clever touches like being able to move zoning after you've placed it with your finger, that make playing a joy rather than a frustration.

Secondly, Super Monkey Ball. Another port, but oh so much fun, and making full use of the iPhone's tilt in a good way - not a steering wheel in sight.

I've left the best mention to last. Pinball Dreams.

Now, I'm of the opinion that pinball is one of man's finest creations and second only to the wheel. Only recently was this released, and you cannot imagine my glee at seeing it. A port of a very old Amiga/PC game, faithfully reproduced on Apple's finest. The original music and graphics are back, and as a pick-up-and-play kind of title, perfect for the iPhone.

If I'm being harsh, sometimes there's very slight jerkiness noticable on the ball, but it's never enough to be annoying. Sometimes the flipper will get stuck in the 'up' position, and require you to tap it to bring it back down - maybe this is by design but again, it's slightly annoying.

Thirdly - it's not Pinball Fantasies, which was, without doubt in my mind, the better sequel. Rumour has it that it may be on the cards. And now you know who to go bug about it.

If you're going to buy one app from the app store, buy this. Or maybe you should wait until Pinball Fantasies is released?

It's your call.

More iPhone Love

Much as I love my 3G iPhone, I have two main beefs with it:

• No Copy and Paste
• No Flash in Safari

But now there's news that at least one of these is being addressed, as it's confirmed that Adobe and Apple are working together on Flash for iPhone.

Hurrah!

DateTime Hell and What's Up With Facebook for iPhone?

If there's one area in particular that can make developing software seem like a chore, then it's DateTime problems. Spend long enough working as a developer and chances are you will encounter some bug or problem that deals with DateTimes that has you pulling your hair out.

Sometimes, it's jut a case of attention to detail. Does the person you're developing software for really need to see their shipping times down to the nearest millisecond? Probably not. If not, don't show that level of detail on your UI. It may well come out of SQL Server like that, but chances are no-one wants to see it.

Famously, even most members of the non-technical public will have heard of the Y2K problem. But on a day to day basis - it's the mundane things like leap years, leap seconds, varying numbers of days in a month, time zones and logic that uses the exact time when you only wanted it to be specific to a day that cause the serious headaches.

But here's the thing. Horrible though they may be, DateTime issues are, to my mind, some of the most critical and they need high priority on any fix list. Got your dates and times wrong? Then you're displaying wrong and in many cases, useless information to your customers.

What's up with Facebook's iPhone app then? Despite the recent release of an update, the DateTime issue persists, where I see my friend's status updates several hours askew, and often appearing in a completely different order to that which they occurred.

Given the size of the user base, not fixing what looks suspiciously like a time zone and ordering bug is taking a bemusing amount of time to solve. It's probably a dreary and uninteresting problem to fix, I can sympathise with that - but if it takes much longer to resolve I can't forgive.