Flash Apps for iPhone announced!

Published on October 5, 2009 in actionscript, apps, flash and iphone. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Amongst other exciting announcements at the Adobe Max conference they’ve just announced Flash Apps for iPhone!

This is absolutely awesome news – ActionScript programmers can create apps for the iPhone. There’s more information here.

A few questions spring to mind:

  • What will performance be like?
  • Can we take advantage of all the hardware, such as accelerometers, GPS, etc?
  • When can I get my hands on it!?

For a while I’d been saying this was the most logical thing for Adobe to do, but I never thought they’d actually do it..

Yey!

[UPDATE]

Funnily enough, all my questions are answered in the Developer FAQ!

Performance:

The iPhone and iPod touch have processors significantly slower than those found on most desktop PCs and Macs. Thus, content may run slower than it does when running on a desktop personal computer. However, the exact differences will depend on the specific content.

In addition, the hardware specifications vary greatly between different versions of the iPhone and iPod touch. Because of this, it is important that you test your content early and often across all devices which you plan to target.

The hardware that’s supported:

  • MultiTouch
  • Screen Orientation
  • Saving images to Photo Library
  • Accelerometer
  • Geo-location
  • Cut / Copy / Paste

Additionally, we can take advantage of OpenGL ES. This could be extremely important for games!

In order to make development of high-performance applications easier, applications built for the iPhone also can take advantage of an augmented rendering pipeline that uses OpenGL ES. This augmented rendering pipeline enhances the Flash rendering model to allow developers to take advantage of the GPU on iPhones. By enabling this rendering path, you have the ability to modify your display objects to put them on a hardware surface

Flash suddenly got a lot more exciting.

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Bad experience with Cancom Brighton

Published on September 18, 2009 in apple, bad, brighton, cancom, experience, mac, mbp, mike and sale of goods act. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Update: I’m pleased to say this situation has been resolved amicably. I’m currently tied up with the Flash on the Beach 2009 conference, and will post more information on this situation when it’s over. The end result is I’m happy with the resolution, and would not hesitate to both recommend and use Cancom in the future.

A quick heads up for any Mac users in Brighton.

I bought my MBP on the 13th August 2009 from Cancom Brighton, on Queens Road.
I’ve had never-ending problems with it, as people following me on Twitter will be well aware of ;)

Today I had a Genius bar appointment at the Apple store. The guy there was incredibly helpful, and agreed that there was either a problem with bad sectors on the HDD, or possibly the logic board. The manager was consulted, and I was offered a refund. Hooray! When I produced the receipt, and pointed out it was Cancom, they were unable to help.

So off to Cancom I go. The staff there are really nice, and very helpful. They offer to book my machine in for repair, however, I’d really like a MBP that works, and I’d rather not waste any more time waiting around, especially with the Flash on the Beach conference next week. So I ask for a refund or replacement, as I’m entitled to. The person I’m dealing with calls the manager – Mike – out.

I explain to Mike that under the Sale of Goods Act I’m entitled to a refund or replacement, which I’m requesting. He says that’s against company policy, and I’ll need to bring it up with a director of Cancom, Brandon Weightman. He says that Brandon is aware of the Sale of Goods Act. I point out that Apple had offered me refund, but it’s still against company policy.

Again I explain to Mike that I’m entitled to a refund or replacement under the Sale of Goods Act, but he replies that it’s against company policy. Is company policy more important than the Sale of Goods Act? He says that I’ll need to take it up with the Director.

At this point I decide that I’ll book it in for repair anyway, as I might end up punching Mike if I talk to him any longer. I then leave to go and read through the Sale of Goods Act.

So – anyone here know what I should be doing next? The last thing I want to do is end up taking it back for repairs again and again, which may be the case if it’s a logic board fault.

I’d even be happy to have a refund and spend a bit more on a better spec MBP..

Right, whinge over!

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Macs don’t just work

Published on September 17, 2009 in computers, mac, macbook pro, mbp, problems, review and snow leopard. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Just over a month ago I bought my first Mac – a 13″ MacBook Pro. As a long-time user of Microsoft products, and vocal opponent of Mac evangelists, I thought it would be a good idea to approach this with an open mind, and for me to blog my experiences and thoughts.

Over the last few years, a number of minds I respect have moved to OSX, and claim it’s superior to Windows in many ways. Thinking they can’t all be wrong, and wanting to try some iPhone development, I thought it was time to bite the bullet and get a Mac.

At first, everything worked beautifully, and I was rather hooked. However, since installing Snow Leopard, I’ve been plagued with problems; at first the current application would freeze, and clicking on other ones would cause those to freeze too, and I’d be left watching the spinning beachball of busyness. After a minute or so the system would suddenly start working again. Then two days ago, the machine wouldn’t wake up, and I was left staring at either a grey screen, a grey screen with an apple, a grey screen with an apple and frozen spinning thing, or at a blue screen with a cursor. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll be more than aware of these problems.

After trying various suggestions I managed to get it working again by formatting the disk, then installing Snow Leopard. Everything was fine for a day of use, but then this morning it’s decided that Time Machine can’t backup any more, and while it’s failing to do that, all of my open applications stop responding.

It looks like it’s probably a hardware problem, so I’ll take it back to the store tomorrow, and ask for a refund. If I was a less patient man I wouldn’t bother trying again, but I realise that I’ve had a ‘bad apple’ so to speak.

I hope that I’ll be in possession of a working Mac soon, and be able to write down some thoughts without them being sullied by what has been, quite frankly, a complete waste of my time.

I leave you now with a video and a few photos…

Now I have an error.

Install osx failed :(

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MinimalDesigner – Layout tool for Bit101’s MinimalComps

Published on August 12, 2009 in actionscript, as3, flash, flex, minimalcomps and minimaldesigner. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Keith has released a layout tool for the excellent MinimalComps.

MinimalDesigner

I prefer to write pure AS3 inFlashDevelop, using the Flex SDK to compile. I’ve used MinimalComps on occasion, and I’ve been happy with the results. However when it comes to laying out anything particularly complex, I’ve had to fall back to Flex or CS3.

The release of MinimalDesigner should make using MinimalComps even easier now. Thanks Keith!

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Threshers skimming cards?

Published on July 29, 2009 in anti-pattern, card, chip and pin, cloning, skimming and threshers. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Many months ago I noticed that after paying by Chip and Pin in a Threshers store, the staff swiped the card under the counter, away from where I could see what they were doing, and without telling me what they were doing. In retrospect I should have reported my card as possibly cloned, or at least asked what the hell they were doing.

I’ve noticed this behaviour at another Threshers store too, this time the staff tell me that their ’systems require it’. It’s good of them to tell me this, but I have no idea whether this is actually true! This is exactly the kind of behaviour you’d see where an unscrupulous member of staff is skimming card details to be cloned, so we’re right to be concerned.

A friend of mine saw this happening last night, which prompted me to email Threshers to find out exactly what’s going on. They should clearly tell customers what they’re doing, and at the very least have the swiping done in plain sight.

When Threshers reply to my email, I’ll post it here to get this cleared up.

Meanwhile, a number of people have replied to me on Twitter saying: “It’s so they can reconcile the till with the card machine as the two systems are not linked“. Sounds like you need to upgrade your systems, First Quench Retailing.

[update] I thought it’s worth mentioning that the main reason I’m concerend about Threshers implementing this practise is that it effectively legitimises the action of using chip and pin, and then swiping the card away from sight, which is exactly what card skimmers rely on. A great example of an anti-pattern in action.

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Toki Tori – iPhone game

Published on July 28, 2009 in 2d, game, iphone and toki tori. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Toki Tori is a cutesy puzzle game where you touch the screen to move the the fluffy yellow protagonist around a graphically pleasing environment, avoiding Bad Things, and collecting a number of Good Things. When you have collected all of the Good Things, some kind of wierd yellow portal appears (for reasons I have not yet fathomed), and sucks away your character, ending the level.

Toki Tori

It’s not a bad puzzle game actually. There’s several environments, each with several levels. You are given a number of special moves per level, such as teleportation, building bridges, moving blocks, freezing bad guys, and no doubt more I’ve yet to discover. In some ways it reminds me of Lemmings. Oh how I loved Lemmings..

Toki Tori

It’s currently only £1.19, which seems a bargain for a game that’s polished this well. It’s a small sum considering  this game has given me a good few hours of gameplay so far, and I’m only about half way through.

IGN gave this 8.5, and an editors’ choice award. I’d have to roughly agree with that; it’s definitely one of the better games I’ve played on the iPhone, but it’s just a little bit too cutesy for me.

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F.A.S.T – iPhone game

Published on July 27, 2009 in 3d, f.a.s.t, game, iphone and sgn. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

F.A.S.T (Fleet Air Superiority Training) is a dogfighting game for the iPhone that I downloaded a few weeks back. It’s got some pretty good visuals for an iPhone game, and the controls seem to work reasonably well, using the accelerometer for movement.

F.A.S.T Titles

However, I’m really really bad at it, and regardless of how many times I play it, I just can’t seem to stop getting blown to smithereens by enemies missiles. God alone knows how you’re ever meant to get close enough to fire the cannon.

F.A.S.T Plane

Ah well, it does seem like a good game, if only I could get past the 3rd level. I’d say this is mainly due to my incompetence, rather than bad game design or controls :)

It’s currently on the appstore for only £1.19 – definitely worth it if you like this genre.

IMG_0368

TechCrunch reports it’s earned $1,000,000 in the first 6 weeks. Impressive going, SGN!

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Build Your Own Paper Robots

Published on July 27, 2009 in books, papercraft and robots. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

As soon I saw this I knew I had to get it :)

The book comes with a CD-ROM containing PSDs and PDFs of 12 different robots, and 2 scenes. You can edit the PSDs to create your own colour schemes, and obviously print to larger paper should you want to create some larger robots.

Behold my army of robots!

I can see potential for making some of these and adding some amusing electronics to them. Will I ever have time to actually do this? Who knows. I’d certainly like to, but what with setting up my own company, I haven’t got much spare time at the moment.

I bought mine from Amazon.

If you don’t want to spend money, then wander over to Paperkraft. There’s a ton of great papercraft models to be built, including a number of robots.

(Via BoingBoing).

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Develop – The aftermath

Published on July 17, 2009 in brighton, conference, develop and gaming. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Simon Parkin has a great write-up of the Develop conference on his blog.

This really intrigues me:

Charles Cecil, creator of Broken Sword, told me that the atmosphere surrounding Flash and iPhone developers right now reminds him of the mid-1980s, where the new avenues and platforms open to developers were yet to settle and there was a sense that anything might be possible

I didn’t know this either:

I learned a few things I didn’t know before, such as the revelation that Half-Life 2’s artists wrote three supporting pieces of fiction for every location on the game, one describing what happened there two days ago, one two weeks ago and another two years in the past. “This historical record (which ran longer than the entire story for the game) gave every location in the game a sense of place, history and verisimilitude,” said Viktor Antonov, the game’s art director, “something far more nuanced and rich than simply slapping some graffiti on a wall.”

Next year I have to go to Develop. It’s right on the doorstep!

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Gaikai – Flash based streaming console gaming

Published on July 17, 2009 in console, flash, gaikai and gaming. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

This is a little old now, but definitely worth checking out if you’ve got an interest in Flash or gaming. It uses Flash to stream console games to your PC.

The game itself is instantiated on a remote server, and the video is streamed to your PC. You need to have nothing installed other than a browser and Flash Player. If they can find a way around lag then this is absolutely stunning..

Related links:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gaikai-cloud-computing-gameplay-that-works-blog-entry

http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/

http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/07/01/gaikai-video-demo/

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