

Ask News.YC: iPhone development - allenbrunson

I have the utmost respect for you folks who hang out here at this site.  I've been online for 20-plus years, since I bought my first modem in 1985; news.yc has the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any online hangout I've ever encountered.  However, I'm not really interested in web-based software development, so that's relegated me to being a distant observer here.<p>What I AM interested in is MacOSX and the iPhone.  <i>especially</i> the iPhone.  I bought one shortly after they debuted, and it's the best consumer electronics device I've ever owned, bar none.  I've never once been tempted by any other miniature computer-type devices, PDAs, etc, until this one came along, and now I can't imagine life without it.<p>As you are all no doubt aware, Apple is set to release their iPhone SDK next month.  I want to develop software for the iPhone.  Does anybody here want to collaborate?<p>I've developed one big MacOSX project in Cocoa, detailed here:<p>http://www.platinumball.net/pineapple/news/macosx/<p>and a bunch of smaller projects for my current employer, which I can't show you, because they're proprietary.  I am fairly decent at Objective-C and the MacOSX frameworks, but I suck at user interfaces.  Mac users are very picky about how their software looks and works, and I'll be the first to admit I can't live up to those expectations.  I can write everything else pretty well, though.  My particular strengths are multi-threading and TCP/IP networking.<p>Here's an idea I had.  I really loved the networked multi-player Hearts game that was bundled with Windows 95.  It allowed up to four human players, each one sitting at his own computer.  If you didn't have four people who wanted to play, it had really excellent robot players built-in, that could fill up to three of the seats.  It would be cool to recreate that game, where the four players could each be using a Mac OR an iPhone.  If it's popular, it could be expanded to other card games, and Windows and Linux clients.<p>It's just an idea, though.  I'd be just as happy to help implement somebody else's idea, if it's a good one.<p>Who else here is contemplating iPhone development?
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wallflower
I was going to write this: <http://www.amazon.com/none-
CAR190-Labyrinth/dp/B00000ISLL>

but I realized I don't have the required skills in: Cocoa, performance,
accelerometers, game code, tuning, usability, Objective-C, iPhone SDK, coding,
testing

Will someone write this? I guarantee I will buy it.

~~~
pc
It exists, and it's (surprise) called Labyrinth: <http://labyrinth.codify.se/>

~~~
aston
And to allay fears further down this thread, yes, the accelerometer is _way_
sensitive enough for the game.

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jgrahamc
It's on my list of things to play around with.

My pal Jonathan Zdziarski has written a book about iPhone development that
O'Reilly will publish soon. Should be a good read.

~~~
allenbrunson
already? did apple give him a sneak peek at the sdk?

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jgrahamc
No, he's doing it based on the open source (i.e. hacked) iPhone. He was
involved in the 'jail break' stuff.

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danw
I'm also very interested in iPhone app development and think casual games such
as Hearts have great potential in a mobile environment.

Why not write it as a web app? That way you won't have to port to Win/Linux
and you can develop for iPhone already. Using WURFL you could also make the
app available to other mobile devices.

~~~
jws
As the iPhone stands, with a web app your user interface options are limited
to onclick(). No drag, no drop, no respond to the touch to give feedback,
nothing until until the finger is removed and you get the click.

Compare this to just the first few seconds of iPhone experience...

    
    
      1) Press button to turn on. (no buttons for you)
      2) Slide to unlock. (no sliding for you)
      3) Enter unlock code, notice how the buttons highlight as you touch them. (no highlighting for you, no click feedback)
      4) Touch an icon to run it, notice the feedback highlight (no highlighting for you)
      5) Kept my finger down too long, icons are now jiggling (not for you, no notion of how long the finger was down)
    

I took that limit as a challenge and wrote a sudoku player that is designed
for click-only. I enjoy the interface more than the traditional web sudokus to
the point where I won't play them anymore, but it is limited. I don't support
marking (I don't mark) and cheating is trivial (I don't cheat), but within
those constraints it is a peaceful user experience.

<http://sudoku.lunarware.com> if you want to peek

~~~
Tichy
Finally a sudoku that is fun! When I played it, it just filled in the correct
numbers wherever I clicked. Solved the puzzle in no time - I feel so smart now
;-)

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jey
I've been putzing with my iPhone for a couple of weeks now. I'm messing around
with OpenGLES, UIKit, and the accelerometer.

Does anyone out there know how to get multitouch input in an objc app? I don't
want to sit around experimenting with the crap in UIKit/ to figure it out.

You should implement your idea!

~~~
pc
Check out UIView-Gestures.h,
<http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20448>, and
<http://code.google.com/p/iphonedoom/wiki/GestureEvents>.

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wmeredith
I love GUI design.

The mobile-safari web-app I built: <http://poptakeout.com>

Contact me through wademeredith.com if you need a graphic designer. (I can
provide more design examples, as well.)

I've been wanting to do some native-mac stuff for a long time.

~~~
joshwa
Would love to see more samples.. See my userinfo for what I'm working on...

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mig
We are doing IPhone development. Its a web app. To the best of my knowledge,
there is no official SDK available (yet) to build native IPhone apps. Is there
any specific reason why you want to build a native app?

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jdizzle
Perhaps building a framework to make networking games easier would be fun for
you?

~~~
allenbrunson
i've already got all the networking code ready to go. would anybody here use
such a framework?

