Sarp Erdag's Blog

Want to create Pinterest like layouts in your next iOS app?

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:23:00 +0300

I have been quite busy last week on building some new iOS components I had in mind. One of them is a GridView control that lets you create dynamic cells with varying heights just like Pinterest has.

Watch the video about MasonryView for iOS.

MasonryView for iOS from Sarp Erdag on Vimeo.

You can check it on BinPress and send me an email to send you a demo if you want to try it before purchasing it.

Fork SEHumanizedTimeDiff on GitHub

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:52:05 +0200

I recently open sourced a small NSDate Category that I use quite a lot while building social apps especially.

It just creates humanly meaningful time intervals since / until today’s date. Great for use in timeline like events.

SEHumanizedTimeDiff is licensed under MIT and you can grab it here: https://github.com/sarperdag/SEHumanizedTimeDiff

What is your true purpose in life?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:41:00 +0200

I have been thinking quite deep nowadays… Here are some of my recent thoughts and the things I keep saying to myself for the last couple of days.

Believe that you are on this earth, and you are who you are because of a specific reason. You have a reason to live and if you discover your life’s true purpose, all of your decisions will be much easier and your path will be clearer.

Many of you have heard this saying: “There is no wind that blows right for the sailor who doesn’t know where the harbor is.”

And the hardest part of life is not reaching your harbor, but discovering which harbor is yours to reach.

Contrary to popular wisdom, you need to first feel happy inside and then you can reach success in life. When you are driven by your true purpose of life, you will have passion, courage, self trust and you will be happy in the way you are going on and it will be much easier for you to succeed whatever endeavor you have.

What is your true purpose of life?

While loading a custom UIView from a xib

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:36:28 +0200

Instead of this:

NSArray *bundle = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@”CategoryView” owner:self options:nil];

CategoryView *categoryView = (CategoryView *)[bundle objectAtIndex:0];

for (id object in bundle) {
if ([object isKindOfClass:[CategoryView class]])
categoryView = (CategoryView *)object;

}

Isn’t this nicer and shorter?

CategoryView *categoryView = (CategoryView *)[[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@”CategoryView” owner:self options:nil] objectAtIndex:0];

SESpringBoard is now paginated!

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:05:07 +0200

I just added some paging support to my new iOS control. Now if you have more than 12 items in your stack, it is gonna get paged beautifully and will have a page control in the bottom of the screen.

You can grab SESpringBoard from GitHub and use it in your projects freely. Be sure to fork it if you have some ideas for any additional functionality :)

Decided to learn Objective-C and iOS?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:12:17 +0200

So you are learning Objective-C and all about the iOS framework to create iPhone apps. Keep in mind that you are investing in a closed platform and it might not be as valuable as today in 2-3 years time.

Investing in HTML5 and being able to create multi-device apps faster than writing ObjC, will be much more important in the future.

In the end, everything is about user experience and about the ability to use APIs to reach private functions of the devices.

Learn iOS and ObjC, but know that the moment HTML5 has the ability to provide the UX native apps have, it will be over.

How much does it cost to develop an iPhone app?

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:28:00 +0200

Many times we are asked how much we would charge for developing apps like X, Y or Z in the App Store. This is quite an immature question.

If you want to get a house built you don’t ask the builder how much it will cost in total. You might build a pre-fabric hut with no windows or doors or you might want to get a huge medieval castle. In the end, both are “houses” that you can live in.

Apps are similar. Think about the thousands of recipe apps. There is Jamie’s Recipes and there are a ton of little weekend projects listing static recipes content. Like any other software, development costs for mobile apps depend on how much time the developers spend on it, and how high quality it will be.

If you are gonna get an app developed by an agency or a freelancer, it is better to think about how much you can afford and check the hourly rates around. It all depends on your budget.

SESpringBoard: A customizable launcher for your iOS apps

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:26:16 +0200

I have decided to release as open source, a part of the latest app we are developing for a client at Apperto.

It is a custom springboard for you to use in your iphone apps. Although it is quite against Apple’s user interface conventions, it might come handy especially when you need have lots of menu items and don’t find the classic Tab bar big enough.

Anyway, grab SESpringBoard from GitHub now and feel free to fork it and stuff.

The URL is dying

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:55:00 +0300

I am almost certain we will not be seeing an address field in web browsers in like 3 years time.

How many of you are actually typing a site’s url to the address field? What you do is to just Google it even if you know the address perfectly well. Or you use your bookmarks.

We are living in the era of smartphones and apps. The web is not dying but it is changing form. Instead of individual pages, brands and apps are gaining importance. In the end, a URL is the ugliest thing to remember and interact with for the non tech-savvy.

Think about just a brand name. Same everywhere on your desktop, mobile or tablet… That’s how it’s gonna be, no URLs, no dot coms, no domain names.

That’s why, I am also giving a thumbs up for Raven, a new browser that just turns your favorite sites into apps.

Homebrew and PIL on Snow Leopard

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:33:42 +0300

Installing the python imaging library has always been a PIA for me after something screws up in my Mac OS X setup and I do a total reinstallation. I am still sticking to Snow Leopard because I do not trust Lion’s stability especially for developer tools for the upcoming 6 months or so.

So this weekend’s small task was to install Snow Leopard and everything all over. This included setting up Google App Engine’s environment too for doing further development on GrupGuru.com.

Anyway, the fastest and easiest way to install PIL is over Homebrew, which is an excellent package manager, especially if you think MacPorts is driving you crazy. And here in 3 steps, you get PIL installed nice and easily.

brew install pip
$ export ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64"
$ pip install pil

Writing easy to change code

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:33:30 +0300

Although I couldn’t attend WWDC this summer, I have been spending quite some time watching some of the sessions over iTunes nowadays.

So far my favorite has been Ken Kocienda’s talk about “Writing easy to change code”. It gives some great tips even if you are not an iOS developer. Here are my notes:

Clear code is easier to change. Write clear code.
98% of time, you debug using print statements. Do not feel sorry for that.
Use bug trackers and write stories about your bug fixes.
Do not rewrite code, refactor!
Get rid of code and comments that do not apply and clean as you go.
You need good people skills to code well. Talk to your teammates before making a change. Plan before building something big.
Never convince yourself that your program can be slower because you are adding a new feature. Never make your code run slower.
Write tests, test your code.

If you want to watch the whole session, here is the link.

3 app releases in 1 weekend

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 12:52:00 +0300

This weekend has been quite exciting for me and my colleagues at Apperto. 3 apps we have been developing for the last couple of months have hit the virtual shelves of Apple’s App Stores.

The first one is a Mac app I was doing for the European Tech Blog: The Next Web. I worked together with the chief editor of the blog, Zee M. Kane and a designer friend Ryan Downie from the UK. The result was a slick widget that works attached to your desktop status bar. It lets you to easily get notified by the news from the Next Web’s website according to different categories you specify. People are asking for a few more features related to user experience and we will be working on them soon. You can get the app for free from the Mac App Store.

The second one, FaceLight as we named, is a very simple app that lets you search for status updates, videos and links on the Facebook open graph. You can watch videos or visit shared links thru the app and re-share them using your Facebook account. It is rather a quick, helpful app to find stuff that you once discovered on Facebook but forgot where it was some time later.

FaceLight is very open to further development since it has the basis to become a potential Facebook client in the future. We will see how it does on the App store and then add some more features to it through time.

Even if you are not a Facebook addict, be sure to grab it and leave some comments :)

Finally, our last app was an iPad frame app, that scrolls motivational quotes from world famous leaders, authors, business-men and such. We created a chalkboard theme for it to make it look like the quotations were written over a real chalkboard and named the app Chalk Quotes.

So, would love to hear your comments on our work. Nice weekend everyone!

Stripping ppc support from your Mac apps

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:36:00 +0300

For the last 2 days, I have been going crazy with getting a recent Mac app I developed accepted by Apple.

For those who have tried submitting apps to the new Mac App Store, you know Apple has a bunch of rules for you to obey. One of them is that the list of valid architectures supported by your app should not include “ppc”.

The important thing to note here is that although you only specify x86_64 and i386 and not ppc in your build settings, your app might just be automatically rejected in iTunes Connect. The reason is that you also need to strip and external frameworks of ppc support you are using in your app.

For me, the extra stuff I used was Growl notifications. As of their SDK 1.2.2, Growl has support for ppc and ppc7400 and since I directly used Growl.Framework in my app, my app was also getting ppc stuff inside.

After sifting through a couple of questions on StackOverflow, Apple developer forums, and Google Groups for Growl, I found the solution in stripping any dependencies from the binaries, using two simple command line tools called lipo and ditto.

Here is how to use them:

ditto -rsrc —arch i386 —arch x86_64 Growl-WithInstaller Growl-WithInstaller_noppc

lipo -info Growl-WithInstaller_noppc

And, your binaries are stripped off ppc support! Now your app will not be rejected by Apple because of invalid architecture support reasons.

The bigger, the slower.

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 22:36:31 +0300

I really become sad when I see that the more a company grows, the slower and less productive it gets. There is lots of talk and there is so little action because of bureaucracy, over planning and over staffing. And they lose incredible amounts of time and money because they are spending time on things that never really matter.

Poor, cumbersome companies drowning in their own corporate policies :(

iMessage vs WhatsApp - Who will be the winner?

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:57:26 +0300

Apple’s new mobile operating system iOS will be bringing many exciting new features with its 5th version. iMessage is one of them.

There are two reasons why I think iMessage will have trouble gaining market share among other messaging apps when iOS5 is released.

1) iMessage is built inside the existing messaging app. I know Apple did color coding and stuff but people just may not understand the distinction between iMessages being sent via the 3G/wifi network and the regular SMS/MMS ones via the cellular network. Everyone just tends to use a seperate app for every single task these days. The chat app is a chat app and sms app is an sms app in the user’s eye.

2) iMessage will be “Apple only”. So many people will have trouble chatting with friends who have Androids, BBs or other smartphone brands.

It looks like I am gonna stick with WhatsApp just like I still use Skype instead of FaceTime.

What are your thoughts? Do you think iMessage will beat other messaging apps?

Ciao Apperto!

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:13:00 +0300

The formations for my new software development business is almost complete. I have chosen a hybrid way of working further on GrupGuru.com and related services while creating iOS apps in the short term.

The work “aperto” comes from Italian and means “open”. Spelling it with two “p”s, I think Apperto has been quite a good name for an app development service business :) Especially, geeky Italians love it.

Be sure to check the site out, I’d love to hear some feedback. In addition, if you are looking for a small team to outsource your app development work or if you think you have a solid idea in mind that might have chance in the App Store, just contact us at info@apperto.com and we shall talk more, in detail.

Dealing with leaks and growing real memory issues in Cocoa apps

Sun, 22 May 2011 16:48:00 +0300

One of the most scary parts of iOS and Mac OS development has been the issue of managing memory, allocs, retain counts, releases and all that stuff.

Being a developer who has started building apps for the Mac after learning Objective-C and its fundamentals with the iOS SDK, cocoa’s automatic memory management and garbage collection always made me feel weird and insecure about the stability of the apps I build.

To feel more confident with my code while building Mac OS apps, I personally prefer to remove support for garbage collection in my app and handle all memory allocations and releases manually.

To do this, in Xcode, just open up the inspector on your project’s target (CMD + I), go to the build tab, and set the value of “Objective-C Garbage Collection” setting to “Unsupported”

GCC_ENABLE_OBJC_GC = unsupported

Other than that, not to have headaches about leaks and app crashes related to bad memory usages, I recommend you to read and learn about the fundamentals of memory management in Objective-C. Here are a few good blog posts that may help.

InterfaceLab - Memory Management for Lazy People

Matt Patanaude - Memory Management in Cocoa

Apple Developer Docs - Memory Management

Apple Developer Docs - Introduction to Garbage Collection

Finally,

May not the leaks be with you :)

Hello World

Wed, 18 May 2011 23:07:20 +0300

I had tried opening up a few blogs before. The hardest thing is to keep up writing and sharing frequently. I hope this time it will last longer than my previous attempts :)