iphone.mitchallen.com » iPad

Publishing to the iBookstore

Mitch Allen — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:11:17 +0000

As a published author, I’ve been interested in self-publishing books for Apple’s iBookstore. If you think that you would like to self-publish too, then you need two things:

A complete book in an acceptable EPUB format or a simple document file that can be converted
An Apple-approved iBookstore aggregator

To find the latest list of aggregators, visit this link and choose “Book”, press Continue and click on the aggregator link:

https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply

Some services will convert things like Word docs for you. Others expect you to supply a valid EPUB file. Some services will charge a flat fee, possibly an annual fee. Others will extract a royalty.

For info on trying to come up with a valid EPUB formatted book, see this link:

http://henrymelton.blogspot.com/2010/04/getting-into-apple-bookstore-with-epub.html

What Works, What Doesn’t

You may notice that some aggregators stress only submitting text, nothing too fancy or image-laden. I’m interested in publishing three type of books: novel (simply text), programming books (source code listings, maybe some screen shots) and graphic novels. The last one probably won’t work well in an EPUB format. So for that I will stick to my original idea of publishing comics as an iPhone app.

For a programming book I will probably be better off doing my own conversion. I’ll need to use a service that lets me submit my own finished EPUB file.

Getting Cocos2D to work with the iPad

Mitch Allen — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:53:37 +0000

If you look at the source code for Cocos2D, you will find this little note in Director.m:

	// XXX it's using hardcoded values.
	// What if the the screen size changes in the future?

This isn’t a problem if you want to run your iPhone app in what I call “boxed” mode – in it’s native resolution on the center of the iPad screen. But if you want to start working on your code in the native iPad resolution of 1024 x 768 you will need to get the latest build (SVN r1753).

See this thread: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/4108

Screenshot

Note that the controls are now properly scaled. Obviously one pending issue is substituting a background graphic with the proper resolution.

iPad app using hacked Cocos2D engine

The new iPad Simulator

Mitch Allen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:00:29 +0000

Below are some screenshots of the new iPad simulator. To use it you will need to install the latest Beta SDK that was announced yesterday, along with the announcement of the new iPad.

To get your app to work in the iPad simulator you will need to do a couple of things:

Switch your build to: Simulator 3.2 | Debug
When your app is running in the simulator, select: Hardware / Device / iPad

Universal Applications

The above was just to get you started and see your app running on the iPad in what I call a “boxed” version. Ideally you would want to work towards what Apple refers to as a “universal application” – that is optimized for whichever device it happens to be running on. Though Apple notes that universal binaries won’t be available in the initial seed release of 3.2. See the Beta doc for more info.

Creating a true iPad target

To turn an existing app into a native iPad app, right-click on your target and select: Transition. Then change your target executable to the new iPad version. Note that right-clicking on the iPad target and selecting Build “…-iPad” Start doesn’t work if the wrong target is selected in the IDE dropdown. Your app will still appear as a boxed iPhone app. Once you have it running as a true iPad app, if you hard-coded a few things based on the original iPhones resolution, you’ll have some cleaning up to do.

Just one more thing …

When working on a 17″ MacBook Pro, I found that the simulator crowds the dock on the bottom of the desktop. So you may want to consider moving your dock to the side.