I downloaded Xcode 4 beta 2 today and tried it out. Here are some screenshots for anybody who wants to see it but isn’t a paid developer. One feature that stands out to me is the company / product identifier is requested when you create a new project. The little things are sometimes the biggest. Enjoy!
Apple released the second beta release of Xcode 4. The first beta was for WWDC attendees only but this latest release is for all paid developers, including iPhone developers. I am downloading it now on my test machine. Hit up Apple’s Developer Site to download it.
PLEASE NOTE: Xcode 4 is beta software. Continue to use Xcode 3.2.x for production development. This release of Xcode 4 is compatible with Xcode 3.2.x project files.
What’s New
• Xcode 4 has a brand new, single window interface for all major workflows
• Interface Builder is now integrated within the main Xcode IDE
• Assistant shows a paired editor with complementary files (headers, UI controllers, etc.)
• Fix-it highlights code where an error is detected. as you type, and can even fix it for you
• Version editor shows a live comparison through SCM history, using Git or Subversion
• LLVM compiler 2.0 includes full support for C, Objective-C, and now C++
• LLDB debugger is faster, and uses less memory than the GDB debugging engine
- see notes below on how to enable the LLVM compiler or LLDB debugger • Instruments adds System Trace, and new iOS instruments including OpenGL ESCompatibility: Xcode 4 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X version 10.6.4 or later. This developer preview will by default install into /Xcode4 on the boot drive, allowing it to co-exist with Xcode 3.2.x. See the installation notes below for additional information.
Let’s say you have a view overlaying another view that you would like to close in a fancy fashion when the user click a button, thus displaying the view directly below it. Put this code as your button’s IBAction message handler and tell me that doesn’t spice up your app like crazy! I am not going to explain how it looks, just try it. You’ll love it. It’s a nice use of code blocks too. 
-(IBAction)onButtonClick:(id)sender { [UIView transitionWithView:self.view duration:0.2 options:UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionFlipFromLeft animations:^{ self.view.frame = CGRectOffset(self.view.frame, 0, -self.view.frame.size.height); } completion:^(BOOL finished) { [self.view removeFromSuperview]; [self release]; }]; }
The learning curve of Cocoa can be steep depending on your background, but it’s a climb that is sure to leave a smile on your face every few steps of the way. Just enough to offset the hair pulling and cursing that is sure to ensue from jumping into Cocoa programming for the first time. One of the features that sweetened things up for me was Cocoa’s UIView animation capabilities. There is a lot to cover, and I just don’t have the time to even think about how to approach a lesson on all the animation features. I will give you an example of basic animation and a possible implementation and point you in the direction of Apple’s documentation so that you can build upon what you learned here.
For more information make sure to read Apple’s documentation on the UIView class. There is a lot more you can do with but let this be simply a foundation for you to learn the basic concept.
Here is the source code to a simple iPhone project I made that demonstrates the Navigation Controller.
Here is the source code to a simple project I made in an iPhone development class I took. Click the + and – signs to increase / decrease the number of sides on the polygon. It was one of the funner projects in that class, so I wanted to share my solution to it.
With iOS 4 comes 1500 new features for developers to take advantage of. Unfortunately, not all of your users will be able to enjoy this new experience. For example, if your user has a 1st generation device only capable of running OS 3.1. Or an iPad which (at the time of writing this article) only runs 3.2. Utilizing some of these new features will make or break a cross version app, but some can be worked with. This tutorial demonstrates how to solve this problem.
(more…)
If you were previously loading a UIImage with initWithContentsOfFile, you will need to change your code slightly if you want to support the high resolution capabilities of the iPhone 4 retina display. (more…)
So you have updated your app to support iOS 4 and now you are all ready to submit it. But you get a nice bold red error on Apple’s iTunes Connect site after you upload your app that states:
The binary you uploaded was invalid. The application-identifier entitlement is not formatted correctly; it should contain your 10-character App ID Seed, followed by a dot, followed by your bundle identifier.
You can read all of Apple’s iPhone development documentation and still be a bit lost, especially if you are coming from programming on a different platform. When people ask me how I learned computer programming I tell them everything I learned was looking at how other people did it. And what I am referring to of course, is open source. John Dowa at ManiacDev has compiled an extensive list of open source iPhone apps, each one published in Apple’s iPhone App Store. (more…)
