conormulligan.com • blog

I couldn't find any decent high-resolution arrow icons on the web suitable for use in a UINavigationBar or UIToolbar, so I created my own and decided to share them here. There are eight icons in total: four directions in both standard and high-definition sizes. They're basically a recreation of the up and down arrows found in Mail.app and the forward and back icons found in Mobile Safari. The images are shared under a Creative Commons license, so you're more or less free to use them however you see fit.

You can grab all eight icons here. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

John Gruber thinks something big is going down tomorrow. It's difficult to tell, but I will say this: a press conference to simply push back against industry criticism is not something I would have expected from Apple, who normally only take the stage to announce a product.

A beta version of iOS 4.1 was seeded to developers today (you'll need an active iPhone Developer account to follow the link), which includes, among other things, the software side of Apple's response to the iPhone 4's reception woes. Apple are also holding a press conference this Friday, presumably to try and put a lid on the whole thing once and for all. I still think it's unlikely they'll go any further than this weak software fix, although there's probably still a slim chance they'll start shipping free bumpers.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I'll say it again: Apple's biggest weakness is in cloud-based services. They do offer MobileMe, but for €80 a year and with a limited set of features¹, most of which are available for free elsewhere. Obviously Google were always going to excel in the cloud so Android outclassing iOS in this area is to be expected, but now Microsoft will offer a free package of tools, predictably dubbed Windows Phone Live, with a panoply of functionality for devices running Windows Phone 7:

A feature we’re discussing for the first time today is the new Windows Phone Live companion site that gives people a central place to see pictures they’ve published, view their Windows Live calendar and contacts, exchange OneNote files and access other information shared between the phone and the Web. The site will offer 25GB of SkyDrive and host the Find My Phone service, which allows people to find and manage a missing phone with map, ring, lock and erase capabilities right from your PC – and all for free.

It looks pretty competitive, certainly better than what either Apple or Google are offering at the moment. It goes without saying that you shouldn't judge a product based on a spec-sheet taken off of a Microsoft website, and it could end up being a UI disaster or plastered with ads like Hotmail, but at the moment it's good stuff.

As John Gruber said a few months ago, Apple doesn't do loss-leaders so I don't really expect them to open up the full MobileMe suite to everyone for nothing. But they certainly could offer some functionality like remote-wipe for all users. Surely they could factor the cost of providing this service into each iPhone, knowing it will only be usable by iPhone owners. In fact, MobileMe may already be heading in this direction; the new account status that began popping up before WWDC would certainly suggest Apple are at least toying with the idea of a tiered pricing structure.

1. Highly polished features, it must be said.

Apple will eventually have to address the reception issue again; once they ship the somewhat silly software update, and all that happens is iPhone users see less reception than before, I can't really believe the dissatisfaction will simply evaporate. They've done themselves no favours by pointing the finger at an algorithm; it only makes it more difficult for them to actually address the hardware issue.

There are no good solutions, at all, from Apple's point of view. A recall is simply out of the question, Apple would never go for it; I think they'd gladly weather the PR storm and hope users start holding the iPhone the right way. I also think they're unlikely to rev the hardware; the backlash would be immense and they'd probably have to accommodate customers wanting to trade in their current iPhone for a revised model. One simple and relatively cost-effective solution would be to ship the currently outrageously over-priced bumpers with new iPhones, for free. This too seems unlikely for a couple of reasons: 1) Apple said they wouldn't, and if they figured it would make the complaints go away they probably wouldn't have come out so forcefully against it, 2) It would be admitting that there really is a hardware issue, something Apple clearly does not want to do, without actually addressing it which creates problems for them down the road, and 3) Gizmodo have been pimping the idea for weeks now, and if Gizmodo wants it chances are Apple won't do it.

Anyway, one thing is clear: fairly or unfairly, the perception of the iPhone being a crappy phone but an otherwise great device is pervasive and Apple needs to come up with a real, non-diversionary solution and end the "there is no problem" theatrics if they want to combat this trend.

It can be difficult to acknowledge that a product you otherwise love has a couple of significant flaws. That said, the white-washing of the iPhone 4's reception issues by the company and, much more regrettably, some writers is still disappointing. So, it's extremely refreshing to hear Marco Arment say this:

Apple’s arrogance and indifference in issuing this response is offensive, insulting, and disappointing. It’s as if they’re expecting this issue to go away if they just wait long enough and ship enough iPhones. But it won’t. It’s only going to get worse as more people try to exchange their iPhones at the Genius Bar for these two issues, thinking it’s just a problem with their iPhones, and encounter the same problems with every replacement.

Read the whole thing.

It's an interesting idea, although the only way it can possibly succeed in driving development on Android is if it functions effectively as a gateway drug to more powerful tools. The next logical step is to facilitate apps written in dynamic languages; a fairly undaunting task given Android's architecture. Learning basic Ruby or Python would be an obvious progression for Inventor veterans, even if only to inject more complex logic into Inventor-based apps.

The UIKit team have made adding high-resolution artwork to an iOS 4 project extraordinarily easy; all you need to do is add the new files to your project in a particular format (imagename@2x.png alongside an existing imagename.png), and UIImage will automatically load the appropriate file depending on the screen scale factor.

However, if you're loading images remotely, you'll need to do some of the work yourself. Here's an example of how to load a high-resolution gravatar portrait:

float size = 40.f;
if ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] floatValue] >= 4.0) {
    size = size * [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale];
}

NSString *url = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/%@?s=%i", emailHash, size];

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:url]];
NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];

// implement the NSURLConnectionDelegate methods,
// and use the resulting data in [UIImage initWithData:data];

As you can see, it's relatively straightforward: just grab the screen scale from [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale] and use it to determine the resolution of the image you want to download.

So, Apple have published a press release addressing the infamous iPhone 4 reception issue:

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

Weird. I imagine that signal-strength calculation is a difficult algorithm to crack, and subject to a large degree of uncertainty -- just as power calculation and runtime calculation are difficult algorithms to crack -- but it's a little odd that Apple would get this wrong and fail to fix it before now. The press release claims the error has been around since the original iPhone launched, which makes me thing the software issue is a relatively minor one. Obviously signal degradation is a real problem on the iPhone 4, though not nearly as widespread and devastating as some make it out to be. As Apple mention in their press release, this is an issue that affects all mobile devices; and although I'd wager that signal strength on the iPhone 4 is measurably more affected by the placement of one's hand relative to the antenna given it's unique design (which seems to more than make up for any degredation, but probably makes the signal strength prone to prominent fluctuations) it certainly doesn't look like a faulty product. Anyway, it looks like the imminent software update is one part bug fix, one part fig leaf and probably all unnecessary but at least it should cool the hysteria a little.

Boy Genius Report has it that Apple are finally ready to make a serious push into the cloud. I had expected them to show something off at WWDC given how poor they look in this area, but at least we're hearing about their plans now now.

Anyway, it's nothing unexpected, mostly just a fleshing out of what Lala offered and some eagerly anticipated features like wireless syncing. Expect it to be impossibly slick, and marketed as the second coming. It'll be interesting to see if Apple also decide to shake up Mobile Me, which is pretty weak tea once you figure out Google's Gmail, Calendar and Contacts Exchange support and sign up for a service like Dropbox.

A prediction: it'll launch as iTunes Live at a music event this Autumn, alongside some new iPods.