Our iPad 2 orders arriving soon

We are currently working on some really cool iPhone & iPad apps for our clients at the moment. In the coming weeks we will be able to share more about what we are working on, but for now you will just have to wait a little longer. Our iPad 2 orders should be arriving in the coming days, so we are really excited and can’t wait to get our hands on one of these devices. All our apps are going to take advantage of the new capabilities, including the new processing power available from the iPad 2.

We will be posting screens shots and videos of new the apps in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

UIKit for Mac development using Chameleon

If you’re an iOS developer, you’re already familiar with UIKit, the framework used to create apps for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Chameleon is a drop in replacement for UIKit that runs on Mac OS X. In many cases, your iOS code doesn’t need to change at all in order to run on a Mac.

This new framework is a clean room implementation of the work done by Apple for iOS. The only thing Chameleon has in common with UIKit are the public class and method names. The code is based on Apple’s documentation and does not use any private APIs or other techniques disallowed by the Mac App Store.

Since Chameleon relies heavily on Core Animation, a proprietary technology owned by Apple, it can not be used on other platforms such as Android or Windows. It only allows iOS apps to be ported to the Mac.

Chameleon is a work in progress. The framework currently implements about 60% of UIKit after nine months of work.

To see what is possible with this framework, we suggest that you download Twitterrific from the Mac App Store. This product was created with Chameleon.

ThoughtFaqtory is looking for new talent

We are currently looking for new talent to join our team. Head over to the Careers page to find out more.

The current positions available including the skills required to perform this job effectively:

Flex developers

• Adobe Flex
• Rich Internet application development
• Strong working knowledge of usability focused interfaces
• Object-oriented programming, analysis and design with ActionScript3
• Custom Flex component development built on Adobe’s Flex framework.
• Flex-Database integration using Web Services, Flash Remoting, and/or Data Services.
• Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES/ BlazeDS, Flash Communication Server / Media Server
• Eclipse and Ant
• Java
• AJAX development experience a plus.

UI developers

• Adobe Flex
• ASP.Net
• C#
• MVC Architecture
• Silverlight
• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML/HTML5
• XML
• AJAX

Java developers

• Oracle, MySQL
• JVM (J2EE, JDK, JRE), API, XML
• Apache Tomcat
• Spring
• Redhat, Linux, Solaris
• Hibernate / JPA / ORM
• JCR
• Any web application framework
• Java2D, PDF, Postscript programming
• GWT, AJAX development
• Test-driven development
• Adobe Flex/AIR Development a plus

iPhone/iPad developers

• Experience in iPad Development
• Expertise in Mac OS X, Objective-C 2.0, Xcode, Interface Builder, and Instruments
• Expertise in device partitioning and code signing
• Expertise in consuming web services from iOS applications
• Expertise in SQLite and database work
• Experience with SCM toolsAbility to design consistent, easy-to-use UI’s
• Mastery of iOS API’s
• Self starter, able to work independently
• Good communication skills
• Ability to explain development concepts to other developers
• Experience with Subversion
• Experience with both SOAP and REST

Checking for function availability in iPhone OS

Since the introduction of the iPad (OS3.2) and iPhone 4 (iOS4), developers have to consider building applications for different versions of the SDK.

We are currently working on an iPhone app that supports version 3.1 to 4.0.1. With the introduction of iOS4 and the iPhone 4 Retina display, we can take advantage of the function UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions to create higher resolution snap shots.

To check if the function is available at runtime, you can compare it to NULL instead of having to lookup what version of the OS the user is running.

if (UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions != NULL)
{
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size, NO, 0.0);
else
{
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(size);
}

For more information check out this article http://iphonedevelopertips.com/xcode/base-sdk-and-iphone-os-deployment-target-developing-apps-with-the-4-x-sdk-deploying-to-3-x-devices.html and Apple’s iOS Application Programming Guide has more information on Supporting High-Resolution Screens.