Primitive

iPhone GUI Photoshop Template and iPhone Screenshots

Monday, August 25th, 2008 | Apple, Tips & Tricks | No Comments

This iPhone GUI PSD Template was recently published by teehanlax.com, and is an excellent resource if you’re an iPhone Developer or thinking about starting iPhone Application Development and would like to design mockups for your applications.

If you need to write documentation for an existing application, you can use the iPhone / iPod Touch built-in screenshot functionality. Depending on the firmware version you’re running, follow the relevant instructions below:

If your device uses firmware up to version 1.1.4, you’ll need to Jailbreak the device (I don’t recommend Zibri’s Ziphone method), add the “http://repository.ripdev.com” repository, and install the “Apple Screenshot Enabler”. To take a screenshot, hold down the Home button while flipping the Mute Switch on and off.

If your device runs firmware 1.2.0 and up (also known as the 2.0 firmware), the screenshot utility should be enabled by default. To take a screenshot, press the Home and Sleep buttons simultaneously.

Both of the above methods will save the screenshots to your Photo Library, after which you can download them with iPhoto or email them to yourself.

Tags: application development, email, iphone, iphone dev, iphone developer, iphoto, ipod touch, jailbreak, photoshop, psd, screenshot

Cyan is working on Myst for the iPhone

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | Apple, Gaming | No Comments

Cyan, the developer behind the popular puzzle-based adventure series Myst, has announced that they have a team working on bringing iMyst to the iPhone.

More information is available on the Myst Online forums.

Tags: cyan, game, imyst, iphone, myst

Apple grants another free MobileMe service extension

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | Apple, News | 1 Comment

Apple has granted MobileMe customers a free 60-day extension to their service in addition to the 30 days they had already received previously. From the MobileMe Update email:

We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

Steve Jobs recently admitted to his employees that they overextended themselves with the simultaneous release of the iPhone 3G, iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0 software, iPhone / iPod Touch App Store, and MobileMe launch.

The road has been bumpy so far, but based on their track record with past 1.0 software / service / product releases (for example, the first versions of the iWork suite, the iTunes Music Store, and the iPod), Apple should be able to bring MobileMe up to standards soon.

Tags: Apple, cloud computing, iphone, ipod, itunes, mobileme, steve jobs

Linux that looks like the Mac

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | Apple, Linux, News, UNIX | 1 Comment

Lifehacker recently had an article about Ubuntu Linux computers skinned to look like Mac OS X. Given that Mark Shuttleworth recently called for Linux developers to exceed the looks and usability of OS X, these skins and plugins are a step in the right direction. If designers keep building on these ideas borrowed from Apple to create their own, distinguishable user interface, we should see some exciting stuff soon!

Tags: Apple, design, leopard, Linux, mac, macintosh, mark shuttlework, os x, ubuntu

Resize Images Using AppleScript

Monday, August 11th, 2008 | Apple, Coding, Tips & Tricks | No Comments

The Mac Tricks and Tips website had a great tip on how to quickly resize multiple images on your Mac using an AppleScript:

Open the Script Editor application (a quick way to do this is by searching for it with Spotlight), then copy the following code into the editor:

-- save in Script Editor as an Application, then
-- drag image files onto the Application's icon
 
on open some_items
  repeat with this_item in some_items
    try
      rescale_and_save(this_item)
    end try
  end repeat
end open
 
to rescale_and_save(this_item)
  tell application "Image Events"
    launch
  set the target_width to 120
 
  -- open the image file
  set this_image to open this_item
 
  set typ to file type of this_image
 
  copy dimensions of this_image to {current_width, current_height}
  if current_width is greater than current_height then
    scale this_image to size target_width
  else
    -- figure out new height
    -- y2 = (y1 * x2) / x1
    set the new_height to (current_height * target_width) / current_width
    scale this_image to size new_height
  end if
 
  tell application "Finder" to set new_item to (container of this_item
      as string) & "scaled." & (name of this_item)
    save this_image in new_item as typ
  end tell
end rescale_and_save

If you want to change the size the output image will have, you need to change this line:

set the target_width to 120

Click the “Compile” button on the toolbar and wait until the purple text color is replaced by blue and green (this indicates that the code compiled without any errors).

AppleScript Editor - Resize Image

Click the File menu and choose Save, then save the script as a script file so you have a copy of the source code. Click the File menu again, choose Save As, and save the script as an Application (you could create a differently named Application from this script for each change you make to the target_width variable in the source code).

To run your new application simply drop an image file on it to have a resized copy of the image created in the folder the application is stored in.

Tags: Apple, applescript, Coding, leopard, macintosh, os x