iHwy Development Blog

I recently upgraded my phone to 3.0.1 and it broke my development environment.

"The version of iPhone OS on Mark Dev iPhone does not match any of the versions of iPhone OS supported for development with this copy of Xcode. Please restore the device to a version of the OS listed below. If necessary, the latest version of Xcode is available here."

OS Installed on Mark Dev iPhone is
3.0.1 (7A400)

Damn.

Fortunately, another developer on our team download the latest Beta SDK and it corrected the problem so I knew there was a solution. But I didn't want to download another 2GB of SDK and poked around a little to see if there was another solution.

The device builds on my machine are located here: /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/

I noticed there were other entries that were only links. For example, I have a 2.1.1 pointing to 2.1 so I thought I would do the same.

ln -s 3.0\ \(7A341\) 3.0.1

It works!

[No text]

I'm always excited to hear the positive feedback when our team delivers another fine solution to a client. It's especially gratifying when you are able to track the direct impact to the bottom line.

We built an application to manage and track opt-in email campaigns. It's one small piece of an entire application suite. The results of a campaign sent early this morning are amazing.

• ~ 3000 emails sent in ~30 seconds
• ~ 1000 opened (based on web bug) so far by recipients (the emails were well targeted)
• ~ $60k worth of merchandise bought within the first 10 hours as a direct result of the campaign

Whoa!

Introduction: The business problem

One of our core strengths is our ability to build tools that collect, analyze and search large volumes of information in a user friendly manner. We use great technologies to solve complex problems (see sidebar). Our experience in these types of applications is broad. We built the entire Intelitouch system, which we can easily claim was one of the first real estate management systems available on the Internet. That first generation CRM application led to many of the features that are common in all of today’s similar applications. We wrote the second and third generations of the entire Sponsorwise platform, which allows clients to collect specific pieces of information and generate detailed analysis. This application is in use today by companies like Jet Blue, US Bank, Panera and Pet Smart. The user interface is simple, yet intelligent and sophisticated. Underneath the simple user interface is a robust set of tools designed to collect and analyze information. These applications solve complex data collection problems.

One of our recent projects, Mainstay, is the newest generation of enterprise software in this class of applications. The term “generation” is appropriate because this product is a step above all the others. iHwy's collective experience, know-how and pain have been applied it to every aspect of this technology.

Mainstay is a platform-independent web technology tool that collects data.

Our customer, Harkcon, came to us with a need to create a solution that would run disconnected from the web and work on Mac, Windows and Linux as a desktop application. The program also needed to be able to run disconnected, regardless of whether or not there was an Internet connection. It was not a requirement to use web technologies, but it was a more effective, modern and nimble.

Stay tuned for more detailed information about this project.

Just a couple of thoughts we've  come to realize over the past year working with the iPhone platform.

1. Every person on your team should use an iPhone or iTouch everyday.

I've talked with quite a few "offshore" teams and they only use the simulator to develop their projects. I've asked them how they can possibly put together a user experience without using the device every day. If you develop on the iPhone platform then we suggest you put a device in every members hands. It can be expensive but our experience has shown that we make better design decisions throughout the organization. For example, we're working on a project now that contains a bunch of touch buttons. We can't possibly determine the size of a button or spacing without trying a whole bunch of different size thumbs and index fingers on them

2. If you haven't, Read the Apple User Interface Specifications

Ug, I was evaluating a competitors product last night and it felt like I was using a web application that was squeezed into a mobile device. It just didn't feel right. There was even a help item which explained that I should "click" the Go button. Apple has spent lots of big money on user experience and when they claim that a button with round corners has a higher touch rate then my money will go with this type of element if it makes sense in the overall design.

We've been working on several Apple iPhone projects over the past several months and we've relied heavily on some of the iPhone design templates availalbe on the wire. Here are two:

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/wireframes/

and

 http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=447

Start the new year off right! Host any new-to-iHwy site with iHwy and we'll give you the first three months web hosting free. No payment required. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You can use those first three months "rent free" to grow your business.

So, while we may not see our share of that $700,000,000,000 that the US Government gave to banks, you can have three months of web hosting on us to develop your web site, grow your business and generate income at a little less cost.

We not only use the latest technologies we'll be able to support you with our development staff who uses this stuff everyday.

Surf forth and prosper.