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Posts Tagged ‘Devs’

Apple seeds another build of 10.6.3 to devs

Filed under: OS, Software Update

Apple seeded another build of OS X 10.6.3 today. This latest build number is 10D558. This is just nine days after Apple seeded build 10D552. iPhoneinCanada is reporting that the current build focuses on Apple Filing Protocol, AirPort, Graphics Drivers, and QuickTime, as well as the following:

• Performance improvements for 64-bit Logic
• Addresses compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
• Includes changes to QuickTime X that increase reliability and enhance security
• Improves printing reliability and compatibility with 3rd party printers
• Addresses issues that cause background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail
• Issues that caused machines using BTMM and Bonjour Sleep Proxy to wake unexpectedly
• Issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to Exchange servers

This is the fifth build of 10.6.3 Apple has released since January. While no time frame for release is ever given, generally the closer in time the builds come to one another, the better likelihood that a release is imminent.

TUAWApple seeds another build of 10.6.3 to devs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PHP Creator Asks, Is Facebook’s HipHop Just a "Nifty Trick"?

Earlier this week, we pinged PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf about the implications of HipHop, the new PHP runtime that Facebook just open-sourced.

Using ReadWriteWeb as an example, he goes into great detail about how speeding up PHP isn’t simply a matter of finding a single magic bullet. Lerdorf contends that true optimization comes down to attacking the mundane inefficiencies that sneak into sites of all sizes – even suggesting free tools for PHP devs to use – before a solution such as HipHop is considered.

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Additional reporting by RWW journalist Mike Melanson.

But first, for an overview of what HipHop is (Facebook’s rewrite of the PHP runtime) and what it does (translates PHP to C++ and compiles it with g++), check out our growing archive of HipHop posts or watch this video from Facebook:

Lerdorf begins his assessment of the project on a positive note. “I think it is a cool project and it will certainly be a good option for some sites,” he wrote to us in an email.

“The effectiveness is going to depend a lot on the type of code it is used on. Like similar projects such as Psyco, Cython, Pypy and ShedSkin in the Python world, results vary greatly.”

However, he continued to say that raw execution speed was “not a significant factor” for many applications. “Even if you double the execution speed of something that is 10% of your overall request cost, that is only a 5% overall improvement. If on every request you are hitting memcache/postgresql/mysql 10 times and spending a lot of time in system calls, don’t expect miracles from HipHop.”

Calling the code translator “a nifty trick,” Lerdorf worries that some developers will see HipHop as “some kind of magic bullet” for site performance. Noting the amount of hype he’s seen lately about the new runtime, Lerdorf wrote, “I’d love to see those same people get excited about basic profiling and identifying the most costly areas of an application. Speeding up one of the faster parts of your system isn’t going to give you anywhere near as much of a benefit as speeding up, or eliminating, one of the slower parts of your overall system.

“People generally don’t bother doing even the most basic site optimizations. PHP execution speed is usually quite far down the list if you sit down and profile the end-to-end series of HTTP requests that lead to the final page in a broswer…” At that point, Lerdorf was kind enough to give us a run-down of site issues with ReadWriteWeb.com that we dutifully passed on to our new and often beleaguered webmaster.

“These are relatively minor and very common things, but they all contribute to your users’ perceived performance of your site. And that’s just the frontend. If I sat down with a profiler and looked at your backend I predict I would find similar inefficiencies.”

In a word, Lerdorf is telling us all to not get too excited about the “nifty trick” that is HipHop until the runtime is the biggest thing that’s stopping a site from being as fast as possible. Given Facebook’s engineering focus, we can imagine that the site’s been pretty well optimized and HipHop gives enough efficiency to give users a faster front end while also using fewer server resources.

Lerdorf ended by suggesting Yahoo’s YSlow and Google’s Page Speed for analyzing front-end issues, and he recommended Valgrind’s Callgrind for low-level back-end profiling and XDebug for userspace PHP profiling.

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Apple’s New Year’s resolution? Get apps through approval faster

Filed under: Apple, App Store

One of the biggest gripes we heard from iPhone developers during 2009 was that it took forever for their apps to make it through the iTunes App Store approval process. Often apps would be disapproved for seemingly illogical reasons after a long wait in the approval queue, and TUAW heard from more than one developer that had just given up.

iTunes Connect, the portal through which iPhone developers submit apps and check sales, was down between December 23 – 28, 2009. Since that time, TUAW has received a number of positive emails from iPhone devs that indicate that Apple has resolved to quit holding up apps in 2010.

How fast are some apps making it through the process? Take developer Aaron Douglas’s free Migraine Diary [iTunes Link]; he submitted it on December 28th at 9 PM CT and received notice of the approval a 4 PM CT on the 31st of December — that’s less than three days.

But that’s downright slow compared to what Yuri, a developer at Atomic Cactus, experienced:

I’m a developer behind Atomic Cactus, we have 3 games currently in the app store, and they all took approximately 2-3 weeks to get approved. Today at 4:00 am I submitted for approval our latest app, which isn’t exactly a “fart app” (it’s a pretty polished puzzle game with OpenFeint). As of 1:30 pm today, the app is in the app store.

That’s nine and a half hours, folks! This is a small sampling of the many emails we’ve received from developers since just after Christmas.

Whether this is due to a New Year’s resolution, competition from the Android platform, or a new back-end system for processing apps, it’s a welcome change for iPhone developers and users alike.

TUAWApple’s New Year’s resolution? Get apps through approval faster originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenFeint announces version 2.4, now in Fieldrunners

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

The guys over at OpenFeint have released version 2.4 of their social gaming platform, and they’ve also corralled one of the biggest games on the App Store into using it: you can find the brand new version in the popular Fieldrunners app. New features of the software include a simplified UI, a completely revamped “Discovery” section (popular among developers for recommending games to users, but good for users as well in terms of finding new things to play), and a new “Forum and Fan Club” system which allows for discussion about games and between devs and customers right inside the app.

Other improvements include a new geolocation leaderboard (so you can see where people are nabbing the high scores), and tweaks on other social features like the “presence” system, which features Xbox Live-style announcements when friends come on and offline while playing.

It’s interesting how this sort of sub-culture is burgeoning simply inside individual games, completely unofficially, on the App Store. You have to wonder if Apple is watching any of this — certainly there’s a call from both devs and players for social connections like this, and it would be interesting to see a system that worked App Store-wide, perhaps even with current iTunes accounts. OpenFeint and the other folks working on their own social networks are doing a lot of interesting things already, but I have to wonder what it would be like if Apple got involved.

TUAWOpenFeint announces version 2.4, now in Fieldrunners originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple buying mobile ad network Quattro Wireless for $275M?
Now that everyone and their mother’s got a smartphone, you’ve got a pile of sweaty capitalists pounding on the door trying to find every last conceivable way to turn the trend into cold, hard cash. One of the most obvious — quality apps from a central clearinghouse — is proving fruitful through countless official platform app stores, but targeted mobile advertising has to be a close second. Google saw the writing on the wall and snapped up AdMob not long ago; one of AdMob’s competitors, Quattro Wireless, is now rumored to be locked up for a purchase by Apple for a cool $275 million as early as tomorrow. While mobile ads (or ads of any sort, really) aren’t event remotely in Cupertino’s repertoire, it’s easy to see how this could give the company an opportunity to capitalize on the iPhone’s vibrant free app ecosystem, centralize revenue for devs (while stealing a nice little cut for itself), and take back a cottage industry that’s flourished since the App Store’s debut. At this point, it’s unclear what this means for iPhone users — or would-be tablet users, for that matter — but seeing how this jibes with recent Apple IP, this tie-up might actually make a frightening amount of sense.

Apple buying mobile ad network Quattro Wireless for $275M? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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XBMC "Camelot" update brings lots of new features

Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Freeware, Open Source, Mac mini, Apple TV

Just in case the gifts you got from your family last week didn’t float your boat (no kidding, I got a Yakov Smirnoff DVD — I love my parents, but they’re not the best gift givers in the world), here’s another fun present to unwrap. The folks at XBMC released a brand new version on Christmas Eve, and it’s available as a free download right now over on their website.

XBMC is the open source app that started off as “Xbox Media Center” (designed to be run on the original Xbox hardware), but has now blossomed into a full-featured media center that is usable on your Apple TV or Mac. Thanks to an app, you can use your iPhone as a remote as well.

The new version 9.11, a.k.a. “Camelot,” has far too many new changes for us to list in their entirety here, but there’s a revamped (and good-looking) user interface with increased skinning capability, updated support for different subtitles and video formats, new movie database scrapers for picking up information, and specifically in Mac OS X, support for the very popular Logitech Harmony Universal Remote. The devs say they’re excited to get this one out the door, if only because it means they can move on to bigger and better very soon. Kudos on the release (during the holiday season!), and if you’re an XBMC fan, have at it!

[via Engadget]

TUAWXBMC “Camelot” update brings lots of new features originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook app developer is through with the iPhone, blames App Store approval process

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Developer, iPhone, App Store

It would have been nice for the App Store’s public relations team if the biggest news in the past few days was the introduction of a more transparent progress report for applications under review, giving developers some of the feedback they need to see where their apps are in the pathway towards approval and release. Unfortunately, that minor but tangible step toward a more open approval process is overshadowed by a story of frustration and disaffection from one of the platform’s rising stars: Joe Hewitt, the man behind Facebook’s popular iPhone app, is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Hewitt’s frustration with the app review process isn’t new, but in the same August blog post where he called for the elimination of review, he promised “I will not stop developing for Apple’s platforms or using Apple’s products as long as they continue to produce the best stuff on the market.” A few months later, he’s announced that he’s handing off the Facebook app to another developer, and he’s reached the point where his frustration has overcome his willingness to continue working on the iPhone. [Commenter 'Gak' points out that Hewitt's open-sourced Three20 library for iPhone devs has been flagged for use of private frameworks, which may have been one of the final straws.]

Hewitt spoke to TechCrunch earlier today, and his attitude is clear:

“My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.”

Losing the talent behind the top social networking app in the store is bad for users and bad for the platform, but I don’t imagine that Apple is going to give up the lockdown of review anytime soon. Is there a way around this logjam that will let developers innovate at Internet speed while still giving Apple some semblance of control? Here’s one idea…

Continue reading Facebook app developer is through with the iPhone, blames App Store approval process

TUAWFacebook app developer is through with the iPhone, blames App Store approval process originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android 2.0 support officially added to SDK

Google’s gone ahead and uncorked the bubbly to celebrate the launch of Android 2.0 “Eclair” today ahead of Verizon’s big reveal tomorrow, bundling its announcements into two very important sections: SDK support, meaning devs can go ahead and start targeting the new bits, and a comprehensive list of changes in the latest version. Here are the major changes us lay folk are going to care about:

• Support for multiple Google and Exchange accounts
• Third-party “sync adapters” allow apps to tie in to the phone’s sync services
• Quick contact menus for fast access to specific key pieces of contact information
• Unified email inbox (yes!)
• SMS and MMS search
• Text message auto-delete after a user-defined thread size is reached
• Significantly improved camera controls with white balance, macro, effects, and more
• Improved keyboard layout, dictionary, and algorithm based on multi-touch support
• Double-tap zoom in browser, support for HTML5
• Bluetooth 2.1 support with addition of OPP and PBAP profiles
• “Better” graphics hardware acceleration

Needless to say, we’re extremely excited about the changes Google’s made here — and on top of the Droid, we can only hope this action is coming to legacy devices on the double. We’ll find out soon enough (hopefully).

[Via MobileTechWorld]

Read – SDK support announcement
Read – Android 2.0 changes

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Android 2.0 support officially added to SDK originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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