Tech, Games, Fun

The original Tomb Raider from 1996 game has been launched by Square Enix for iPhone and iPad on iTunes App Store for $0.99. The game offers touch controls with support for recently game controllers for iOS devices.

iTunes Description:
Adventurer Lara Croft has been hired to recover the pieces of an ancient artifact known as the Scion. With her fearless acrobatic style she runs, jumps, swims and climbs her way towards the truth of its origin and powers - leaving only a trail of empty tombs and gun-cartridges in her wake. On this trail are breath-taking 3D worlds where exploration, puzzle and platform elements blend in a seamless real-time environment. A perfect chance for newcomers and diehards alike to jump back into the series' seminal single-player action.

Apple outs Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 update on December 16th to all OS X Mavericks users. It does have any major changes. Fixes for Mail and iWork and iLife and few bug fixes and performance improvements. It has some system specific enhancement forRetina Macs. It is worth 364 MBs and can be updated from Mac App Store.

This update is recommended for all 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display (Late 2013) systems. It includes all updates from OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 plus system specific enhancements to improve the stability and compatibility of your Mac.
Improved support for Gmail in OS X Mail, and fixes for users with custom Gmail settings
Improves the reliability of Smart Mailboxes and search in Mail
Fixes an issue that prevented contact groups from working properly in Mail
Resolves an issue that prevented VoiceOver from speaking sentences that contain emoji
Updates Shared Links periodically when open in the Safari Sidebar

For detailed information about this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6065

More info at : http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1707

Today we will write a simple Mac app with Xcode 5. The Xcode 5 has new design and different coding style that its predecessors. I will be using the version 5.0.2, but you can code with version 5 or higher. The code will be slight different in Xcode 4+. So, let's get started. I expect you to know a little bit about Objective-C.

If you are coming from any object oriented language like Java, C# or C++, then please keep in mind that Objective-C is different that those languages. This application accepts your input in a  text box and shows in a label when you click a button.






First open Xcode and make a new project called "HelloWorld". But we are not doing a simple hello world app here. We will do something different. Save it any a location suitable to you. Leave the App Store category to None and leave the Core Data unchecked.



You will be greeted with a screen with project details. On the left side, you can see the Navigator area where all the files of this project are listed in various folders. If you are new to Xcode, then first check the interface of Xcode. I have marked them to understand the layout easily.

Click the 'MainMenu.xib' to get into Editor area. You can see a vertical dock with seven icons. And you also can see the menu bar of your application. To start developing your app, click the 5th icon in the dock. It's a Window Object. You will see a typical Mac app window.

The next step is to add some elements into our app. The panel in the right hand side bottom is called library where you can select various elements or objects to add. Click the 3rd icon which is highlighted in blue the the above image. In the search bar below, search for Text Field and when you get that drag it to the window. Then search for Push Button and Label objects and drag them to the window too. Then rearrange them as shown in the above image.

Double click the push button and replace the text with Click Me or Show Name or anything you like. Similarly, you can double click the label and remove the text and make it blank so that it will show the text which we will enter in the text box. After completing the above task, now we will link the text field, the button and label so that when we will enter any text in the text box, it will be shown in the label.


To code and connect more easily we we will switch to split mode which is achieved by clicking the 5th icon from right in the toolbar. It's called Assistant Editor. It looks like a butler with tuxedo and bow neck tie. Now you can see the window object in the left hand pane and the file AppDelegate.h in the right hand side pane. If it is not selected, then you can select it from the navigation bar on top of it.

Now click the text field and hold the control button and drag it to the right hand side file under the property declaration. A line will be connected from the text field to the right hand side file. And you will be presented with a pop up as shown in the above image. You are defining a property. Give it a name as txtField.  Make sure it is an outlet. When you click Connect, a property line will be entered in the code file. If you are coming from Java or other OO languages, you can think of this property as declaring variables. Similarly connect the label also. Name it as showLabel. Now time to connect the button. As we know a button causes something happen. So drag it and you can see in the popup that it is set to Connection type Outlet. Change it to Action. Name it as showBtn. A button is a NSButton type object.




Now after connecting you will see the AppDelegate.h file as below.


Now we are done with split view. We can to normal single file view by pressing Command (⌘)+ Return(⏎) key. Select AppDelegate.m, which is the implementation of the .h file. We declared the properties in the .h file and now we will implement them in the .m file. Java users may think this about the declaration of variables in the .h file and creating getters and setters in the .m file. Thankfully, Xcode does the creation of getters and setters internally which is called Synthesize.   If you are using older version of Xcode, you may see the Synthesize code as below.

@implementation AppDelegate;
@synthesize txtField;





It's time to write the code to connect the pieces together. Refer to the image above. We will write the code for the button above the @end. We will change the content of showBtn method. We will save the content of the text field in an String object named message. We will initiate the object with alloc and initWithFormat. What the alloc will do is that, it will create an object and initWithFormat will use a suffix (which we will provide) with our text field content. We use @"" for string. We are getting the value of the text field by [_textField stringValue].

We will show the message in the label by assigning it to the label.



Go ahead and run it. You can use Command+R. Enter any text in the text field and click to see the result below.

The Xcode does handle all the memory allocation and deallocation by ARC (Automatic Reference Counting). In older version of Xcode, you had to write code to release the memory.

You can find the code and the application in the link below. Feel free to ask any question. Follow me on Twitter to more updates on Xcode.

Download on Dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i02mbpkchg73xrq/GJ2w9Tf4mK

Apple has updated its iPhoto application to version 9.5.1. The following are the issues solved.

- Fixed an issue that could cause print previews to render incorrectly
- Includes stability and performance improvements

You can get this update via Mac App Store.

Whoever own an Apple device must have known who has designed it. He is none other than Sir Hony Ive. He is with Apple from a long time, since 1992. From when Steve Jobs regain control of Apple in 1997, he and Jony have presented us with amazing devices such as iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and other things.

This book gives a look into his life and Apple. Get it at below links. It will cost you $11.99.

If you are running version 7 of Apple iPhoto, and wanted to or already have upgraded to the latest version of iPhoto, then you must be in worry that, the older version of iPhoto library is incompatible with the latest iPhoto. But now you can upgrade your older library to the newer one with a download from Apple. It's just 11.28 MB and runs on Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.

Get it here : http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1523

Apple has announced the newest iPad Mini with Retina Display at Apple Special Event. It was rumoured for some time and finally came true. The screen size is same 7.9 inch but the screen resolution has been bumped to 2048 x 1536 with 326 PPI.

It has the same A7 processor found in the iPhone 5s with 64-bit architecture. It has up to four times faster CPU and up to eight times faster graphics performance than the previous generation — without sacrificing battery life. It has up to 8x faster graphics and up to 10 hr battery.

To help you be even more creative and productive, iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are now available for free. It will be available from November 2013 with a base price of $399. The old iPad mini is also available at $299. The new mini will be available in 16/32 and 64 GB storage capacities.

Apple has announced the availability of iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in India. It will be launched on November 1 in India, just before Diwali. It's not disclosed that which carriers will offer the phone. But Airtel, Aircel and Vodafone will offer it as they have been offering the iPhone for a while. The iPhone 5s will support Airtel's LTE network too.

This update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users and includes features and fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including:

Safari 6.0.3 is included in the OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.3 Update and contains fixes that improve performance, stability, and security, including: