As a follow up to my other post about compiling Boost for iOS, here is how to do it for 1.44.

First, edit your user-config.jam (i.e. edit ~/user-config.jam) to include the following:

using darwin : 4.2.1~iphone
   : /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -arch armv7 -mthumb -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden
   : <striper>
   : <architecture>arm <target-os>iphone
   ;

using darwin : 4.2.1~iphonesim
   : /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -arch i386 -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden
   : <striper>
   : <architecture>x86 <target-os>iphone
   ;

Then, follow these steps to install:

# <grab source from boost.org>
tar xzf boost_1_44_0.tar.gz
cd boost_1_44_0
./bootstrap.sh

# Set this to whatever you want to build against
SDK_VERSION="4.1"

# Install for device:
./bjam --prefix=${HOME}/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS${SDK_VERSION}.sdk/usr toolset=darwin architecture=arm target-os=iphone macosx-version=iphone-${SDK_VERSION} define=_LITTLE_ENDIAN link=static install

# Install for simulator
./bjam --prefix=${HOME}/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator${SDK_VERSION}.sdk/usr toolset=darwin architecture=x86 target-os=iphone macosx-version=iphonesim-${SDK_VERSION} link=static install

[This will install boost into a prefix directory of ${HOME}/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator${SDK_VERSION}.sdk/usr]

I got into Mac OS X / Cocoa / iPhone programming after reading the wonderful book by Aaron Hillegass called Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and always thought that Big Nerd Ranch should do an iPhone book and, they have. I’ve had a flick through it and it looks like an excellent read. It’s called iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. On the outset it looks to be a similar style to Cocoa Progamming for Mac OS X in that it talks about Objective-C and things you need to know there such as memory management and then goes on to describe the various parts of the iPhone SDK.

Anyway, I’d recommend buying it if you’re thinking about getting into iPhone programming.

So I released an update to BeerMap a couple of weeks ago. This was version 2.0 which was going to be a huge release which I really wanted to happen before Christmas and that’s why I spent 2 months perfecting it and released it with 3 weeks to go until Christmas which I assumed would be fine. Sadly, I was wrong.

Apple first started reviewing the app a week ago, after just 5 days of being “waiting for review” (I can tell this from server logs because the app is designed around a web services – http://www.ibeermap.co.uk/). It then took over a week for Apple to come back and tell me that the app had been rejected because they thought the app needed a 17+ rating. It currently is in the app store at a 12+ rating for “mild alcohol references” but they thought it needed “strong alcohol references”.

So, my questions are thus:

1. Why did they feel the need for the sudden change in rating?
2. Why did I have to RESUBMIT the app even though the problem was with the rating and not the actual app

I started getting this strange message when compiling for my iPhone:

ldr 12-bit displacement out of range

Eventually I found that quitting XCode, deleting the build folder in the project then reopening XCode and re-building made everything work again.

Just putting here in case anyone else has similar issues!

UPDATE: Anyone else with this problem, please file a bug report with Apple (http://bugreport.apple.com/) because if lots of people file a bug then hopefully they’ll do something about it.

Yesterday, there was the monthly LiDG (London iPhone Developer Group) meet-up in the Apple Store, Regent Street. This month Ian Thain decided to allow developers to present for 1 minute (strictly!) about their apps. I chose to give a quick talk about BeerMap, giving the people there a quick run down on why they should download BeerMap and review some beers with it!

It seemed to get good feedback and along side other apps such as CurryFinder it was probably one of the most fun apps being showcased. I really enjoyed telling people about it and I hope that people will have downloaded and started using the app from seeing my presentation!

Below is a little photo of me presenting!

I estimate I am between 2 and 4 days from reaching my next monetary target which I set myself for my apps. To mark this occasion I have decided to do something which Malcolm Barclay talked about at the last iPhone and Smartphone Publishers and Developers meet up. It’s nothing too exciting, just I want to give it a try!

In other news I currently have 5, yes FIVE, apps in review with Apple. I’ve been quite busy over the past couple of weeks as I’ve been between jobs. I’ve released updates to 4 apps (another update to Subnet Calc Pro off the back of comments from users) and 1 completely new app which will be interesting for anyone out there who uses a Zen Internet broadband connection!

I’m continually impressed by Apple’s ability to keep the iPhone platform going so strong. It would be interesting to try doing it full time, but I don’t want to take that risk at the moment as I can’t guarantee I’d have enough money coming in and I actually am very much looking forward to starting my new job on Monday!

UPDATE:
Well I reached it! And I have now almost reached my next target! I also have released the app for Zen broadband customers, it’s called ZeBbUs (Zen Broadband Usage) and it lets you know how much of your Zen broadband plan you have used this month.

I am having a strange issue with UIImagePickerController which is really bugging me. I’ve also found someone else with the same problem so I know it’s not just me!

When using UIImagePickerController, and the imagePickerController:didFinishPickingImage:editingInfo: delegate method gets called, I find that sometimes the returned image is nil, which depending on what you do with the image will cause a crash or at least not do what you expected. It seems to be a memory issue because when you reboot the iPhone and try again, it works and returns the image correctly. Also, I’ve not have the problem on iPhone 3G S which has more RAM, indicating again to a memory issue.

I’m wondering it the new imagePickerController:didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: delegate method will work – as the other has been deprecated in 3.0 anyway.

But has anyone else had, and fixed, this problem?

Ok, there’ll be plenty of these kind of post floating around, but I wanted to get my thoughts written down anyway.

Before the iPhone event today, my thoughts on iPhone OS 3.0 were that it would be a worthwhile upgrade and I was excited to see what new features Apple had in store (you can ask anyone at my work and they’ll say how excited I was!). But it turned out that Apple went far above and beyond what I had expected…

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past couple of days I’ve been updating the look of this site because I realised that the old design wasn’t all that great. The new site should be generally easier to navigate around slowly I will move over my iPhone SDK tutorials into this site so that all things iPhone are in one place.

Please let me know any feedback which you might have.