Chameleon – Getting iOS Apps To Mac Faster

ChameleonProjectI was catching-up on my reading on furbo.org and saw two great posts that touch on issues facing iOS app creators.

The first could be a real help to those in the iOS community who wish to port their iOS apps to the Mac. While there is a great deal of commonality between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, there are some differences. So what is an entrepid iOS to do to get a great iOS app quickly over to the Mac? One way might be Chameleon. Simply put, Chameleon is an API that allows your UIKit calls to work as AppKit calls. Or as Iconfactory puts it,

    If you’re an iOS developer, you’re already familiar with UIKit, the framework used to create apps for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Chameleon is a drop in replacement for UIKit that runs on Mac OS X. In many cases, your iOS code doesn’t need to change at all in order to run on a Mac.”

That is pretty cool. In addition to the Chameleon library, you can pick up a really pretty t-shirt at Chameleon.

When Users Try To Upgrade An App Without a Connection

Store Kit is a great API because it lets developers create one app that can be enhanced through upgrades, buying tools, or whatever feature we want to offer the user to make the application more useful. In my case, all I want users to be able to do is upgrade their copy of Flush ’em! from the free edition for 99¢. The Flush ’em! upgrade allows the user to select from three bathroom choices.

But, there will come a time when a user will try to upgrade an app when she/he doesn’t have a network connection. And it’s fairly certain that such a user will flame the app page if the app doesn’t give the user the ability to go to Settings, turn on the network capability and then continue back to where the user left-off in the app to upgrade.

 

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When NSString Doesn’t Create A String With A String

If one goes to the NSString documentation, one quickly realizes that there is a very nice convenience method,

+ (id)stringWithString:(NSString *)aString

Parameters
aString

    The string from which to copy characters. This value must not be nil.

Important:
Raises an NSInvalidArgumentException if aString is nil.

Return Value
A string created by copying the characters from aString.

One would be forgiven for not noticing that little note that is supposed to catch your attention by having the title, Important. And it is important. Because, let’s say that you are trying to tell your iOS user how much an app feature upgrade cost,


NSString *titleString1 = [NSString stringWithString:@"Upgrade Flush'em for "];
NSString *titleString2 = [NSString stringWithString:[PFIAPManager sharedManager].upgradePrice];
NSString *titleString3 = [titleString1 stringByAppendingString:titleString2];
NSString *titleMessage = [titleString3 stringByAppendingString:@"?"];

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