Officially, iPhone OS 4 is out of NDA and I can’t write a post on this. If you have been reading my blogs, you might already know how to send a in-app email Sending a in-app SMS is very similar to this, but with subtle differences. Prior to iPhone OS 4, developers have to depend on [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL: @"sms:12345678"]; The problem with this is not just that it closes your app, but...

iPadIf you are not Steve Ballmer, you must have realized by now that iPad development is going to be the next big thing for the computing ecosystem. There are several reasons for this. 3 years ago, when iPhone was launched, Apple targeted the so called “busy” users (no not me). Most of these users, use apps for “consuming” content rather than actively creating it. Usage statistics from pinchmedia and flurry, report...

By now, most of you know how to send emails using the Message UI framework without quitting the app. In this tutorial, we will briefly discuss the techniques for sending a HTML formatted email with user generated content. Though sending a HTML formatted email is as easy as setting the option to HTML [picker setMessageBody:emailBody isHTML:YES]; There are some cases that this method that this method doesn’t take care of. In...

Like most of you, I too downloaded the 3.2 beta and was playing around with some iPad stuff. Today when iPhone OS 3.1.3 is released, without second thought, I immediately updated my iPhone. My iPhone being a development device, I understood that I can no longer use the current XCode installation to run apps on device. When I launched XCode, the Organizer reported, “The version of iPhone OS on “ABC’s iPhone” does not match any of...

Most users think, Mac UI is all about slick graphics and “cool” icons. Well, that might be true partially, but user interface design isn’t about photoshopping or designing cool looking icons. According to Jakob Nielsen, aesthetics is just one aspect of usability. There is much more to user friendly software than just the “cool factor” or great icons. Recently, I was using Microsoft’s Excel to edit a dozen...

What is Follow Cost? Follow Cost is a interesting and powerful statistic that helps you check the “cost” you would incur by “following” a person on twitter. This is a very useful statistic that I think every twitter client should adopt.  Tweetie for iPhone was the first to implement follow cost and I use this feature of tweetie to check whether a follower is “worth the pain” (as follow cost puts it). In...

In-App purchases is a great way for developers to upsell by giving away their app for free and then allow them to charge for features when users start using it. This freemium model has indeed worked very well for upselling your app in the AppStore. But unfortunately, there isn’t an Apple allowed way to allow reviewers to “download” your in-app purchases for free (like giving away promotional codes for your in-app...