GQAdonis

The following are some new open source and documentation resources I have identified that greatly assist in the development of iOS applications:

• Google API Client Library for Objective-C–These libraries will assist in any communication using Google’s authentication, JSON, or data API’s.
• Best Resources in iOS Development–This is the September 2011 installment of the ManicDev web site list.
• SVGKit–Open source framework for rendering SVG on iPhone. This library does not support gradients, however, so this would need to be added.
• Google API’s Client Library for .NET–These libraries assist in the development of services using .NET and WCF that act as a “proxy” to iPhone applications.
• Useful iOS Client Libraries and Classes–A list of highly useful open source libraries and frameworks for iOS development.
• make-fmwk–Script to create a static library based framework that eases references to open source libraries in Xcode projects.

Overview

This is a quick note as a pointer to a method for capturing video frames from the iPhone camera using AV Foundation as described here. This is part of an effort to identify code for implementing a new idea from Friday’s meetings. The idea has to do with zooming the camera and using the camera flash as a light in an application that would magnify your view of things in the dark. It turns out that the iPhone camera does not support zooming automatically, but I can capture the images and scale them myself before presenting to the user, and because the density of the images are high, there will be no reduction in quality–hence I fake the ability to zoom a live capture feed. If I want to overlay things on top, I can use this method as well as hook in the Qualcomm AR library. To use the default preview layer, follow these instructions.

The “Torch”

This posting talks about how to activate the camera light, which is also demonstrated by the iStrobe open source application.

This article is the best one I have seen that discusses the actual real-world differences between developing actual applications for both iOS and Android.

This article describes how to fix a common error I run into when trying to port open source libraries from Xcode 3.x projects to Xcode 4.

Colin Wheeler posted a most excellent article on proper memory management in Objective-C that is among the best I have ever seen that actually includes some practical best practices in sticky situations (like when to take momentary ownership of an object that may be accessed concurrently to ensure it lives during the context of an operation to be performed on it).

This article solved an issue I had related to producing an ad hoc build of an iPhone application I wrote, which requires the addition of an “Entitlements” file. In Xcode versions 3.X, adding this file to your project automatically inserted everything necessary to properly build an ad hoc or production distribution. In the GM version of Xcode 4, the necessary settings for your application bundle must be manually added. In addition, remember to enable and disable debugging in accordance to the kind of build you are doing.

article describes in great detail how to distribute ad hoc iOS applications over the Internet from the mobile browser.