iPhone Simulator: I thought it was good!

No doubt iPhone simulator is one of its kind and as far as User Interface is concerned, I think iPhone Simulator does justice to all the Library elements that one could play with while developing the application. But I did come across somethings which really did bother me for sometime before I got used to them.

First point was related to the PERFORMANCE. Currently the simulator uses the Mac processor for simulation. If there could have been a way that could make the iPhone simulator behave as if it was running on a 600MHz processor with only 256 MB of RAM, I think it would have been a real boon for developers. This is because though you know almost always that the performance on real iPhone is gonna be low as compared to the simulator, sometimes the difference is astonishing .

Second was with MEMORY. You could go ahead and allocate lot more memory on the simulator with your application still not worried about the load but as soon as you do that on iPhone, you would realize that your code actually needs a lot of rework.

Then other points were related to graphics. There were cases where simulator worked fine but iPhone did not and then there were others which left simulator frowning.

Not to forget the positioning of info icon, toolbars etc (which would be positioned differently on simulator and on actual iPhone).

One should always keep in mind that there is no alternative to On Device testing. Simulator does help but to a certain extent (and is always required) but an iPhone is a must.

So go get the iPhone and let your development rock.

Leopard is out…

Leopard is out…

This one is not from the jungle but from Apple. The latest OS / OSX release has been
labelled LEOPARD. Leopard was always in the news as it was scheduled to be released
with 300 new features and now that it has been released, all these new enhancements / features
are available for you. Check it out on www.apple.com

The new release is obviously feature packed. The major features fall under these categories:

1. Universal Access
2. Mail
3. Preview
4. System
5. iChat
6. DVD Player
7. BootCamp
8. Finder
9. Time Machine
10.SpotLight

Other categories include Graphics and Media, Parental Control, Terminal, Dashcode, iCal and many more.

Universal Access – They have added anew voice. They call it Alex. Support for drag and drop using keyboard, added Braille panel, faster web and Page navigation and many other features.

Mail – Stationery added, forward email as attachment (already there in other OSes), photo browser, improved search, rich formatting.

Preview – Personalized annotations, improved color adjustment, PDF manipulation, Batch Image Operations, auto levels for Image manipulation.

System – Live Partition Resizing, Help Menu search (new search field in Help menu), Grammar check, Empty trash button, Eject all partitions (USB / FireWire).

iChat – PhotoBooth (apply effects to fotoz), backdrop effects, screen sharing, custom buddy list order, tabbed chat, SMS forwarding, File transfer manager, recording.

DVD Player – Auto zoom, floats above other apps, chapter thumbnails, parental control, time slider

BootCamp – Run XP & Vista @ native speed, assistant, copy files between XP and Mac, easy restore, convenient boot camp shortcut

Finder – Cover Flow – lets you flip thu ur files and shows the first page, connect Mac from anywhere, Instant screen sharing, bar for path, folder sharing.

Time Machine – Automatic Backup, Shows the various versions in a time wise manner, allows for manual backup too, preserves privileges, lets you browse other disks vreated with time machine.

SpotLight – Dictionary n calculations in spotLight, lets you search web history, searches by filename and searches system files too.

These are some features that have been released with the new Mac OSX – LEOPARD.

And the price is:
Single user – $129
Family Pack – $199

Datz all 4 d time being….