If you’ve never owned an iPhone before and just got your hands on an iPad you must be wondering what you should do in case your iPad starts behaving strangely – which seldom happens actually. For some reasons known only to Apple, your device could be slow, unresponsive or apps might even crash which seemed to be working just fine previously. Well in case you are at your wit’s end on how to resolve these issues, then you could try the following tips.

iPad Hard Reset

This is probably the first thing I would try. Here are the steps to do this:

1. First, find the power button that is located at the top right corner of the iPad when holding it in portrait mode.

2. Once you have located the power button, hold it down for 3 seconds. You will see a rectangular bar on the screen with a red rectangle containing an arrow pointing to the right end of the screen.

3. Slidee the arrow towards the right and the iPad will shutdown (not sleep).

4. Wait for a few seconds. Maybe half a minute will do the trick. Hold down the power button until you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

5. Your iPad has been hard reset and in most cases resolve the issue.

Take a screenshot of your screen on iPad

Lets say you have an issue on the iPad for which you need help. Get a hold of your geeky friend (you know how to contact me ). If he is not willing to work for beers at your place then you might just want to send a screenshot of what the issue is through email. Here are the steps you need to follow to take a screenshot.

1. Hold the iPad in portrait mode.

2. Get to the screen which you want to take a screenshot of.

3. Hold the power button and the Home button (located in the bottom center of the iPad facing you) together

4. You will hear a camera click. Fret not! There’s no camera in the iPad. It just took a screenshot similar to the ctrl+fn+prt scr function on your PC.

5. You can locate the screenshot picture in your camera roll under “Pictures”.

6. Voila! Email the photo to your friend.

I hope you found these tips helpful. Do subscribe to my blog for future tips as well. Let me know if you need any help in the comments section.

Right after I wrote the post on how iOS4 is running on my iPhone 3GS I had people asking me on how I installed the GM seed version on my iPhone 3GS. In fact its a very simple procedure and almost like restoring your phone. But take note that you will need to backup your data because everything will be wiped out when you restore your iPhone. The best part is that the device UDID is not necessary – so if you have a friend who has a developer’s account go ahead and get yourself the iOS GM seed version on your 3GS right away! Here’s a cool video that I followed to get my iPhone 3GS to be upgraded to iOS4.

I’ve seen numerous tweets on twitter asking help from people on how to open an iTunes account in Malaysia. Pity that Apple doesn’t trust us Malaysians to give us a legal avenue to open an iTunes account and download music legally. Probably they are worried about our notorious history (and present) for piracy and also credit card fraud. But we’re not alone. A lot of countries don’t actually have the iTunes store available and hence will not be able to buy music from the the iTunes store. If you really want to open an iTunes account, there is a way to get around this.

itunes store malaysia takes you to the app store

There’s a little trick that you can employ to get this done. Thanks to Globalitunes you can now create an iTunes account from anywhere in the world. All you need is your credit card or paypal details and you can well be on your way. You can also purchase an iTunes gift card which would mean that you wouldn’t need to enter any credit card details. Here are the steps you need to take to create your account:

1. Go to the itunes application and locate the lower right corner of the application. You will see the Malaysian flag which indicates that you are connected to the Malaysia iTunes store (which doesn’t exist by the way). Click on it and change it to Unites States.

2. Click on ‘Redeem’ on the top right corner of iTunes.

3. Enter the redemption code for the iTunes gift card you purchased and click ‘Redeem’

4. Click ‘Create Account’

5. Click ‘Continue’ to indicate you have read the terms and conditions

6. Create your iTunes account here

7. Now you will be required to fill out your name, address etc. This will have to be a US address. Fret not, you can easily get through this step by visiting fakenamegenerator. This website helps to create a random identity for you with a corresponding US address as well.

Enter the details in the box that appears in iTunes but DO NOT enter any credit card details. Just click ‘None’ and continue.

8. That’s about it! Enjoy downloading music and videos from iTunes.

Step by step instructions reproduced from Globalitunes Setup Guide.

A neat way to create an iTunes account for Malaysians. But I certainly hope that Apple will soon bring the iTunes store to Malaysia as well.

This is a question a lot of people have actually asked me. Apple has done a great job of marketing their app store and according to some recent reports, there are more than 80,000 apps in the app store. A lot of people have made it big by selling their apps on the app store and this has actually fuelled a lot of interest among those who don’t even own an iPhone. Not only individual developers but even big game developers have started to embrace the Apple app store. Not exactly surprising considering the fact that some have even suggested that the app store is going to be as huge as the internet. As exaggerated as it may sound, the app is HUGE and it is able to reach to millions of customers each day. The keyword here is – convenience. It’s just too easy for any customer to browse the app store, search for some keywords, look at a few apps and decide to download it for a buck! And when there is enough interest the volume of customers who are downloading apps is enough to make a developer rich.

So if you are one of the aspiring entrepreneurs aspiring to take the plunge into the world of iPhone apps, let me tell you something – there are 2 ways of doing this. One is the traditional way – you get a mac, get an iphone, learn up objective C, learn up iPhone SDK and start writing apps and of course put it up for sale on the app store. Simple enough! The other way, the not so traditional way is to hire an iPhone apps developer. Certainly you will need to have a mac at the least since you will need to compile your apps and attach your “certificate” that Apple will issue to you when you register as an iPhone developer. But if you think that you even want to eliminate that investment there is a way to do this too! I will be revealing the techniques you can follow based on my interaction with my clients.

The traditional way!

Ok, this is how I started off. Luckily I did have the headstart of knowing objective C. But learning up the SDK is not really the most easiest thing that I have encountered. When I started off sometime in early 2008, there weren’t many blogs or books or tutorials except for some boring literature from Apple themselves. This is probably the reason why there were few developers around and the app store wasn’t really “booming” like it is now. But somehow I got through it thanks to some great blogs and books that I read.

Blogs/Websites that I recommend:

icodeblog
iPhone DEV SDK forum

Of course there are quite a number of other blogs written by developers including yours truly ! I’ve always had a passion for books and there are a few books which helped me quite a bit on the way too!

Books that I recommend:

Beginning iPhone Development 3
The iPhone Developers Cookbook

If you need some basics then you can start reading the three part series on how to become an iPhone developer.
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part one
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part two
How to become an iPhone app developer – Part three

These are all great resources to get you started on developing your apps. Of course more than developing apps what is important is getting your market research done. Look at what apps are doing well, why are they doing well etc. Next thing you need to figure out is whether you want to put in your app as a paid app or as a free app. There are pros and cons for both which I will be discussing in the upcoming continuation posts of this series. I hope that you will find the above resources to be helpful for your next app development.

I will be discussing the non traditional way of entering the iPhone App business in my next post. Lookout for it! If you would like to be notified about my future posts, do consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Although its been a while since I figured out how to play an audio file in an iPhone app, it still is a pain in the ass every time I try to make it work on a new app. I still keep doing some trial and errors or refer to the numerous blogs out there helping out fellow iPhone app developers. So I decided to once and for all document the steps that I usually take to play a sound file. Typically the file extensions that are allowed are:

- .caf
- .m4a
- .wav
- .mp3

In my opinion I find the first 3 easier to work with rather than the popular .mp3 format. For some reason there are audio clips in .mp3 format which don’t seem to work. Luckily there are so many .mp3 to .wav converters around which you can use. Or the easiest way will be to use iTunes to convert to AAC format which will assign a .m4a extension for the audio clip. Anyway, here are the steps you need to follow to play an audio file in your iPhone app.

1. Copy the audio file to your project directory
2. Create a file called SoundEffects.h with the following code:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import <AudioToolbox/AudioServices.h>

@interface SoundEffect : NSObject {
SystemSoundID soundID;
}
- (id) initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path;
-(void)play;

@end

3. Create another file called SoundEffects.m and add the following code to it:

#import “SoundEffect.h”

@implementation SoundEffect

- (id) initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path;
{
self = [super init];
if (self != nil) {
NSURL *filePath = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: path isDirectory:NO];

AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID((CFURLRef)filePath, &soundID);
}
return self;
}

-(void)play {

AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(soundID);
}

@end

4. Add the following code in your main.m

-(void) awakeFromNib {

NSBundle *mainBundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
soundEffect = [[SoundEffect alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:[mainBundle pathForResource:@"farSound" ofType:@"caf"]];
}

5. At the place where you want to play the sound file, add the following code:
[soundEffect play];

You will need to manually add the Audio Toolkit framework to your application bundle as well. This is a step that a lot of developers forget to do. If you do not do this, then your project will not compile. Wish Apple could make this much more straightforward rather than going through so many steps and invoking the Audio Toolkit framework. Anyway, hope this will be helpful for your development and as usual do let me know if you face any problems.

Its been a while since I wrote an actual programming tutorial for iPhone app developers. I’ve been busy developing a few applications for my clients and since I have completed one major project, I am writing this post to share one of my findings. The app is actually a birthday cake application – sort of like a virtual birthday cake. The user basically downloads the app to his iphone, enters his name (or the person to be wished), lights up the virtual candles and blows the candles out. Simple right? Simple yet fun concept. The tricky part was to design the algorithm for the blow detection into the mic. Once the algorithm was developed, the next part was testing it out. The testing on simulator and device is totally different for one obvious reason – you CANNOT blow into the simulator. So I needed to keep changing variable values while switching from simulator to device until I found out how silly the method actually was. There is an easier way to do this. Here’s how I did it.

This code’s inspiration was from Jeff Lemarche’s blog post.

NSString *model= [[UIDevice currentDevice] model];
NSString *iPhoneSimulator = @”iPhone Simulator”;

float k=0.7; //This can be any value
uint detected;

if ([model compare:iPhoneSimulator] == NSOrderedSame)
{
// iPhone simulator
detected = MODEL_IPHONE_SIMULATOR;
k=0.0; //This can be any value}

Don’t forget to declare MODEL_IPHONE_SIMULATOR as an enum!

Simple right? In the above code example the variable k takes the value 0.0 if it detects that the program is running on a simulator. The variable k takes the value 0.7 if it detects the program running on a device. Once you have this done, you can use a simple if-then-else statement to continue the rest of your program to respond accordingly. I have tried this out and works perfectly. Don’t take my word for it – you can try it out yourself too!

FINALLY its here – push service for Gmail. It’s really baffling how come Gmail didn’t incorporate this feature for their millions of loyal users. Although Yahoo! was offering push email for quite some time, it seemed that you needed to purchases third party software to enable this feature in Gmail. Although it was widely speculated that it was just a matter of time before Google was going to enable push services on Gmail it wasn’t very clear when exactly! So what exactly is Push Email?

According to WiseGeek

Push email utilizes a mail delivery system with real-time capability to “push” email through to the client as soon as it arrives, rather than requiring the client to poll and collect or pull mail manually. With a push email smartphone, for example, the client’s mailbox is constantly updated with arriving email without user intervention. Smartphones announce new mail arrival with an alert.

In simpler words, what it means is that your mailbox is updated as soon as a mail arrives in the server. You do not have to login to your account to get the email by yourself.

Now that push email is available for Gmail, I couldn’t wait to try it out on my iPhone 3GS. Here are the steps to follow:

(Reproduced from Google Support Page)

Requirements and Upload
1. Google Sync is only supported on iPhone OS versions 3.0 and above. You can check your current version by going to Settings > General > About > Version. To upgrade, follow the instructions at http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/. Please upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 before setting up Google Sync.

2. Perform a sync with iTunes to ensure that Contacts and Calendars from your iPhone are backed up to your computer.

Getting Started
1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account….
4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

Enter Account Info
5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.
6. Leave the Domain field blank.
7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
9a. Choose Accept if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.
10. A new Server field will appear. Enter m.google.com.
11. Press Next at the top of your screen again.
12. Select the Google services you want to sync.
13. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the “All Contacts” group instead.

You’ve set up Google Sync for your iPhone. Synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your phone. You can also open the Mail, Calendar or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync.

Remember to upgrade your iPhone to version 3.0 before enabling this service. Have fun!

This is a continuation of A roundup of iTunes 9.0 and iPhone OS 3.1 – part 1. In the previous post we saw some of the neat (and not so neat) stuff that comes with iTunes 9.0. So what’s new with iPhone OS 3.1 then? Well before you install iPhone OS 3.1 you will need to download iTunes 9.0. Once you’ve done that then you got to of course download iPhone OS 3.1 (which is a pretty huge file) and this would probably take you quite some time if you’re on Streamyx – how surprising (trying to keep a straight face here).

Ok, so what’s new with OS 3.1 actually? Here’s a quick snapshot:

I’ve pretty much covered most of the features here in the previous post and I wont go through them again. But here are some of the features that are worth mentioning:

- You can now trim a video (if you have an iPhone 3GS) and save it as a new file
- You can save a video file from MMS or email
- Organize your apps via iTunes 9.0 on your homescreen(s)
- Remotely lock iPhone via Mobileme (useful if your phone gets stolen and you have personal information)
- Use voice control with the iPhone 3GS using a bluetooth headset

These are some of the features that really caught my attention. For a more comprehensive list of features and updates you can go to the official iPhone OS 3.1 website.

So what are the issues that I found with the firmware update? The most obvious one is the quieter “tick” sound while typing the keys. I miss the louder ticks as I got used to it already. Well I guess at least people around me are not going to get annoyed anymore. Here’s a forum I found which lists some issues on iPhone OS 3.1 as well. I’m still playing around with the new firmware and I will update this post if I find any other issues with the new firmware update. Meanwhile if you find anything unusual feel free to share it in the comments section as usual !

Overall you aren’t really losing anything if you didn’t update to the latest and greatest firmware for the iPhone. Of course you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of all the features in iTunes 9.0 without this update but like I mentioned in my previous post it doesn’t mean much to Malaysian users since the iTunes store is not available to us anyway. What use is Genius when we cannot even download music from the iTunes store?

One word of caution: For those who are happy and contended with your jailbroken iPhones please DO NOT upgrade to OS 3.1 yet! You will NEVER be able to jailbreak your phone again. Please wait for the dev team to release the new jailbreak/unlock for OS 3.1. Be patient – after all it’s not that big a deal. If you’re using OS 3.0 then you’re good to go.

I had recently completed yet another app for the app store and happily submitted it on itunesconnect waiting for approval within a week. Well it took about 10 days for the iPhone Developer team to reply and they responded that the app was actually rejected due to incorrect rating. This was definitely quite unexpected for me since this was a fairly simple app and of all the reasons I didn’t expect it to be rejected due to an incorrect rating. So what is the rating of an app? When you submit an application on itunesconnect, Apple expects you to rate the application like below:

My application had no nudity, no obscenity, no pornography and certainly no offensive materials. So I chose the lowest rating (which is of course the best rating in this case) and sent it to Apple. But I received an email from them about 10 days later which literally made me fall off my chair. Here is what the email said:

My iPhone application actually has a couple of tabs which connects to the internet. But these webpages are hardcoded in the app and cannot be changed by the user. There is no way of entering any other webpage as I did not provide a full fledged browser to enter the URL as well. It was a custom made browser with a couple of harmless webpages. I wonder how smart the people at the iPhone Developer team are to come to the conclusion that this application allows unrestricted access to the internet and hence should be rated 17+? Weird!

But then again, I’m just a small drop in the ocean for the immensely popular app store and I decided to not swim against the current. I updated my app on the “Mature/Suggestive Themes” column and chose the option “frequent/intense“. The next thing I know, my app is a 17+ app instead of a 4+ app. Well I guess I can’t do much other than to send the app for approval and sit tight! Alright Mr. Smarty Pants at the iPhone Developer Program, you got your way. Now let my app get into the app store!

How many times have you come across promotions on the App Store when a paid app actually becomes free? Its kind of cool for the developer because he uses it as a marketing tool to get more downloads later on. But how do you actually know when the app becomes free on the app store? There is this cool website called Freeappalert which actually notifies you when a paid app becomes free. Its pretty cool and you can take a look at all the apps which just became free on the homepage of the website itself. You could also subscribe to its RSS feed so that you will be notified about any new apps that just became free as well.

It definitely seems to be a growing tactic among iPhone developers (I have tried it myself) to make your app free for a limited time. It ensures that there is enough exposure considering the number of apps that are currently on the app store. It also helps to get reviews on the app as more eyes translate to more reviews as well. If you are lucky enough, it could also make it up to the top downloads list which could mean that it would definitely be a candidate for more sales in the future! Go ahead and try it yourself!