So now you know a little about the toolset and the language Objective-C. Trouble is, that is just the beginning. It is as if you have a hammer, a saw, the book “House Building for Dummies,” and maybe even an idea of what you want the final house to look like, while facing an empty lot. And as Robert Redford’s character said at the end of the film, The Candidate upon winning a hotly contested election: “Now what?” Designing a major piece of...

I get this question a lot. And yes, it is legitimate to ask. The reason why I don’t upgrade Distant Suns 2 users to version 3 is simple: There is no way to do that on the Appstore between two different apps. “Ok, hotshot, why have two versions of the same thing? Couldn’t you have just made Distant Suns 2 the universal app and not have another version for sale?” Yes, and no. Yes, as that is what I would like to have done…No…is that Distant Suns...

So I was on my way to South America last week for the July 11 eclipse, and a funny (as in really stupid funny) thing happened to me. I left $600 of camera gear in the men’s restroom. Fifteen minutes later when I discovered this little jewel in the crown of stupidity, my new Canon ELPH, and relatively new Canon SX10IS had vanished to the hands of some lucky, bas….er, “fortunate traveler.” As a longtime amateur photographer, I always yearn (yes,...

Wow! Okay, okay, more detail. We all know now about what the iPhone 4 holds, as a gazillion and a half reviews have already appeared. But I thought I could add a few extra details. The Screen: OMG! Yes, it’s that good. Screen resolution has been the last real limitations in mobile platforms now since cpu, memory and battery issues are quickly fading away.  When I first saw the Droid in action, I knew that the next iPhone would have to...

Another in a very occasional series of columns covering the craft of programming and what it takes to create one of those app things. Even though this article is about computer languages it is not meant at all to teach one how to “speak” in any of these languages, for that is light-years beyond the scope of this article. A computer program is likened to a recipe. A recipe with potentially millions of steps that could come crashing down in a...

Sorry for the long delay since the previous column. Something called an ‘iPad’ I think, came out last week and I was in a rush to have something in the store on day 1. This column is to either help software neophytes get going on their own great app ideas, or to at least illustrate the process for the curious. We left off the previous story with our hero puzzled over something called “Objective-C” and “Xcode” with very little knowledge of what...