The default string for the carrier when using the iPhone Simulator is “Carrier”. That’s just too boring, especially if you want to use the simulator to grab some screenshots and you want more authenticity. Luckily, there’s a way to change it!
The following command line will do it:
defaults write “~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard” SBFakeCarrier “AT&T”
(Of course, it goes all on one line)
That will change the carrier string to display AT&T, the carrier for the US.
If you have the excellent PlistEdit Pro, the simulator’s springboard plist file is located at ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard. Just add the SBFakeCarrier entry if it doesn’t already exist and set the value as a string to whatever you want displayed.
Manton Reece has a post outlining two solutions to fix some of the hassel developers have been having with the App Store and it’s fairly painful review process:
1. Accept all applications. Joe Hewitt, the developer of the Facebook application who this week also quit the App Store, has written well on this solution.
2. Allow applications to be installed on the phone without being listed in the App Store. Both Android and the Palm Pre support this model.
Option 1 is a good idea, but opens Apple up to liability issues.
Option 2 would fall more in line with how Mac development works these days. It wouldn’t be too hard to teach users how to install apps to their devices either: just drop this file onto iTunes. I think Indie Mac developers wanting to get onto the iPhone would find this setup much more palatable.
On June 6th, I set out to attend my first WWDC. I flew to San Francisco a couple of days early to help acclimate to the 2 hour time difference and to make registering on Sunday a fairly easy proposition.
One quick thing I did was visit the “Mothership”. That’s right, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA. Apple opens the Company Store on Sunday just for WWDC. The campus Company Store is the only place you can buy licensed Apple apparel. I really wanted a shirt or two, and I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s the requisite picture in front of the sign:
Monday morning was the keynote, and while I got in line late (8:30ish I think), I was able to secure a seat at the back of the main hall. Seeing an Apple keynote live instead of refreshing a bunch of browser tabs was a great experience. Of course, everything after that is under an NDA. I’ll just say, the sessions are definitely worth the money. I can’t wait for the videos to come out so I can watch the sessions I couldn’t make it to because something I was interested in overlapped.
One thing that most WWDC guides I’d read getting ready mentioned to stay for the Q&A portion of the sessions because they are not included in the videos and usually provided some extra info. I’d say this year, that wasn’t the case. There wasn’t any Q&A that I considered “couldn’t miss”. Maybe it had something to do with their being 60% first timers at the conference.
One of the cool things they had at the conference was a wall of Cinema Displays showing thousands of App Store icons. The icons “bounced” when that particular app was purchased on the store. It was on about a 5 minute delay.
The other thing I knew I wanted to do while at WWDC was to meet a lot of developers that I’d only interacted with either via Twitter, blogs, or AIM. I think I did pretty well on that score, meeting a lot of my Twitterstream in person as well as meeting a lot of other folks I immediately added to that stream.
A microcosm of what I’m talking about: At the Beer Bash on Thursday night, I found myself talking to Jamie Phelps (Agile Web Solutions, makers of 1Password), Mike Taylor (developer of Houdini), Jim Clark (co-worker who attended with me), Keith Duncan (Realmac Software, makers of RapidWeaver and LittleSnapper), Steve “Scotty” Scott (Mac Developer Network), Brent Simmons (developer of NetNewsWire) and Mike Lee (formerly Delicious Monster, now at Apple). We were having a great conversation about old systems we had to work on and some of the painful lessons we learned along the way.
It was an incredible week of learning and discussions with folks. I can’t wait for next year. Here’s a link to my full WWDC09 Flickr Set.
I apologize for the lack of posts around here. The day job has been running me ragged, but that’s about to come to an end for a week. Instead, Apple will be running me ragged with WWDC.
I’ll be attending WWDC for the first time this year. As the event approaches, I’ve been working through all the blog posts and podcasts I can get my hands on that give tips for attending. Here are the ones that caught my eye and had lots of good tips:
2. Mac Developer Roundtable Podcast for 2008
3. The MDN Show Episode 1′s first segment is the 2009 WWDC guide
5. cocoaFusion Episode 7′s first half is about attending WWDC
I’m really looking forward to the conference next week. From all the sessions to all the developers I’m hoping to finally meet in person. See you guys there!
(If you know of other good WWDC tips, please post them in the comments)
Late Night Cocoa Touch is a new podcast from The Mac Developer Network run by Steve “Scotty” Scott. It’s apart of the premium podcasts produced over at MDN, but the first 3 episodes are going to be free.
I’ve listened to the first episode, which features Scotty and Bill Dudney having a nice discussion about the features of the upcoming 3.0 OS release. They can unfortunately only talk about the parts that were mentioned in the Apple presentation, but nonetheless, they provide excellent commentary on the coming goodies.
If you haven’t signed up for the Mac Developer Network yet, you really should. Scotty is producing some great content and I think deserves the support. He’s introduced shorter term memberships (3 and 6 month) as well as making every third episode free. Keep this great content coming by supporting his efforts.
Red Sweater Software has released MarsEdit 2.3 to the world. The biggest new feature is Tumblr blog support.
MarsEdit provides a great local editing experience for crafting your blog posts on your Mac with all the features you’d expect from a Mac application. Save drafts, access your media, preview mode, etc.
MarsEdit is my tool of choice for creating blog entries and it should be yours too.
Martin Pilkington over at M Cubed Software has put out the following challenge to his fellow Mac Developers:
“By the end of 2009, all the apps I produce will be fully accessible”
The accessibility he’s talking about is for users with disabilities, such as blindness or deafness. Certainly something to think about when writing your own app.
Kevin Hoctor and Danny Greg over at cocoaFusion: have released episode 5 of their great podcast.
This episode covers Kevin and Danny discussing the finder points of several things developers don’t always agree on. Particularly the new dot syntax for Objective-C 2.0 as well as variable naming to get it started.
Be sure to subscribe with the iTunes link.
The Pragmatic Programmers are quickly becoming the place for Mac and iPhone Development information. They are publishing a bunch of books and now screencasts to help developers get up to speed quickly with Cocoa and its supporting technologies.
This past week, I bought the “Becoming Production in Xcode” screencast with Mike Clark and found it to be a great resource for all sorts of productivity tips.
Coming from my Java background, I had gotten very use to using IDEA from JetBrains. The switch to Xcode has been a bit painful trying to get my file/code navigation skills back. These first screencast showed me all the bits I need to get back to the productivity I was used to for navigating code. The second one provided me all the information I needed for all the text macro things I was missing. As well as showing how quickly and easily it is to get the new clang code analysis tool integrated into the build process.
The screencasts are worth the $5 each (for a total of $10 for both episodes). I highly recommend you pick them up. I’m sure even a veteran of Xcode would find something new in there they weren’t aware of.
