How I use my iPhone

I was inspired to write this by a recent post on TiPB, detailing how a student uses his iPhone on a day to day basis. This post is about how I use mine!

It starts first thing in the morning (about 11:30 for a student), with the alarm rousing me from my morning slumber. Then begins the seemingly never ending cycle of hitting the sleep button, and being woken up, and hitting the sleep button, etc etc

Once I finally decide to wake up, I check my emails for the day which is useful to find out about room changes or cancellations (in which case, back to bed!) I also check Facebook and Twitter in case... well I don't know why I check these actually, I just do! Then if I'm really bored, I'll check out the BBC site to see if anything amazing has happened overnight (it never has.)

So, then I get up and do the usual boring (but necessary) tasks, like eat, wash, etc. I then open the single most important app on my iPhone for university: iStudiez Pro. This app is brilliant, it contains a digital copy of my timetable, for all lectures, seminars, and labs I have to attend. It contains any assignments I've been set, and deadlines I have to meet. It has results of my previous assignments or exams and lets me calculate averages at the tap of a button. In short, this app is central to my organisation as a student.

iStudiez Pro also has excellent integration with the iPhones contacts, so I can send an email off to my lecturers right from the app. Which brings me onto the second most important use of the iPhone. Email. I have a constant stream of email to me wherever I am. I can be the first person to know the results of assignments, or when lectures have been canceled.

Obviously, the iPhone is a phone, and of course I use it every day to text and call my girlfriend at university elsewhere. It also keeps me up to date with the weather forecast, and train times using the National Rail app (expensive but worth it!)

Another app worth mentioning, which isn't part of my daily routine but has proven to be very useful indeed, is the Tesco clubcard app. Essentially a digital copy of your bar code which can be scanned at the checkout to collect points!

Other apps used on a daily basis, but that are not worthy of more detail because their use is obvious are: Dropbox, Skype, MSN, Camera+, Allowance, and Maps.

Anyway, that's just a bit of information about how I use my iPhone as a student at university. Thanks for reading, as always all comments and suggestions are welcomed!

Multiview App

Hello Dear Readers,

As you may know, I have opted to take the iPhone programming route with my dissertation project. Today I have been working on my iPhone Programming, and just have a small app to share with you all. This is a simple application that switches between two views and has buttons with pop-up messages. I have added a flip animation between the two views to make it look better. You can see the basic app in the video below.

This app was made following instructions and guidance from the brilliant 'Beginning iPhone 3 Development' textbook by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche. Now obviously this app was made purely to teach myself and bears no practical purpose.

I did cover various new things when developing this app today though, including multiple views, animation, UI Alerts, toolbars, etc... So my next step is to combine this with my previous 'Hello World' app to get textbox functionality within different views!

Many Thanks for reading!

As always, all comments and/or help is very much appreciated!!

Sam

iPhone Programming

So, I've started working on my dissertation. Yes, I know i don't even start my final year of university for another 2 months (or something), but i've decided to give it a go anyway. Now, when I started university as an eager fresher on my first day I was excited to be learning all about Music Technology. This excitement continued right up until the moment the words "C++ Programming" appeared on the projector.

Ask any first year student at Bournemouth University studying Music & Audio Technology and they will tell you that programming is the bane of their life. And I felt the same, we all did! Anyway, the end of term rolled around and our first assignment was set. That was when something strange started to happen, We all tentatively started work (Well, I say all... I mean those who didn't leave it till the night before!! You know who you are!! :-) ) and we coded, and googled, and coded, and googled, and daniwebbed, and coded some more, and suddenly I realised that I was actually enjoying myself quite a lot! Turned out that I got a 1st in that programming assignment.

Roll on to the present day, and my head is now full of classes, objects, inheritance, buffers, loops, heap/stack/and pile errors, memory management, garbage collector and all kinds of other programming jargon. And guess what? I've decided to do a programming based dissertation...

Except, it's not just your standard C++ VST Program (which are hard enough), No. I've decided I want to teach myself an entirely new language, on an entirely different platform. As the title of this post would suggest, it's Apples iPhone! And that is why i'm sitting here attempting to start my dissertation.

So far, progress has been made. I have followed instructions and explored enough to create a typical 'Hello World' app. And then used my limitless creativity, to expand the functionality to a 'Goodbye World' app. I know, Brilliant isn't it?

My Very Brilliant Hello World App

Well that's the stage i'm at right now. I have 2 areas to cover for this dissertation; iPhone programming, and core audio. Neither of which I have any knowledge about and both of which i believe use different programming languages, C++ for the core audio, and Objective-C for the iPhone.

Well, I have quite a task ahead of me, so expect to see posts of this nature on the blog for the next year or so. It seems that i'm destined to be an audio programmer, and if I can program for Apple devices then so much the better. I think there is a lot of potential in the iPhone / iPad devices in terms of audio that has yet to be realised.

Anyway, It would appear that i'm rambling now. So to all those non-computery folk I apologise for a very geeky blog post, and to those that are interested: Thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave any comments you may have.

Minimalism / The Mac Plan

Firstly, i'd like to apologize for the lack of content recently. I've had a very busy year at University, and have just finished the final exams for the year. Over the summer I hope to spend more time updating the blog with lots more articles relating to Apple, Music Technology, and More. But now, for the topic of the day...

Minimalism. The pursuit of a simple life, with few distractions or possessions.

I have found myself reading certain blogs like Zen Habits, Mnmlist, Minimal Mac, and Unclutterer increasingly in the last few months or so. In doing so, I have realised how much completely unnecessary clutter and rubbish I have accumulated over the last few years. Since I had my first saturday job, I saw most of my income as dispensable, and proceeded to buy various gadgets and gizmos as soon as I could afford them. A fact i'm sure most of my friends including my girlfriend would provide testimony to!

Enough is enough, I have decided to rid myself of most of this gadgetry, and focus on quality rather than quantity. Many of you know of my passion for Apple products, few know of my previous hatred for Apple products. Suffice to say somewhere along the line, i was converted.

My current mission, is to sell / give away / recycle all of my old 'PC' or 'Windows' based technology. By this I mean, pretty much everything; Keyboard, Mouse, Various additional screens, Old speakers, etc etc. I call this 'The Mac Plan'. The aim of this is to fund myself a brand new Mac Mini (2010). Now while this may sound nothing like minimalism to you, the fact is, that I can now fit everything my old desktop PC machine is capable of, into a package less than 20x20x4 cm. In addition to this space saving, the Mac Mini is confirmed to use between 7-8W of power when idling. Compare this to the relatively gargantuan 500W power supply in my desktop machine, thats a huge difference!

At £649 for the base model, it's not cheap for the specifications. But as with everything Apple, you are paying for a fantastic design, and a fantastic operating system. In addition to this, saving space is very important to me right now so I think it's a premium worth paying. I couldn't think of a better solution for me right now, than my current laptop for university, paired with the Mac Mini at home.

If you're still reading this, then you may be thinking that i've just said I need to rid myself of gadgets followed up by talking about how I intend to purchase another one. And you'd be right, thus rendering this entire post pretty pointless. But as you've got this far, i'd like to thank you for reading and keep a look out for some 'real' minimalist posts here very soon!

Apples latest creation...

Well it's official! Apple have a press event on the 27th of January where they are rumoured to be introducing a tablet computer, a new version of iLife and a new iPhone OS. Which is all nice and all... but I can't help thinking that Apple has been playing it safe recently.

A tablet PC is boring. I used to like Apple for their 'Think Different' slogan, and they actually used to apply it to products. The apple tablet could be so great, but i'm betting it wont be! I bet it will be an average specification for a huge price and that it will do everything it's been rumoured to do; eBook reader, web, video chat, etc. This stuff is all fine, but its also stuff I can do on my £200 netbook!

Why not do something exciting with it Apple, Why not have a space on the tablet to dock your iPhone, or allow bluetooth tethering for 3G wireless. Why not make the tablet, the new 10" netbook or even a small iMac? It would be simple, Add a stand and devise some form of docking the tablet. Allow us to use it as a small secondary screen for our Macs perhaps. Let it run the full OS X operating system and incorporate multitouch to the entire OS. Build a DVD drive into it, show netbook makers that it can be done! Build in a TV receiver, let us record and watch back live TV. Put wireless 'N' inside it, let us use it for online gaming.

Now i don't doubt that the tablet will be capable of doing some of these functions. But i bet they will be locked into iTunes and iLife, and the App store, and be boring! Come on Apple, you make some great products! Please let the tablet be exciting!