iPhone

I've spent some time recently with DTrace, a performance analysis and debugging framework that ships on every Mac running Leopard. It's an extremely powerful framework that many Cocoa programmers disregard due to its apparent complexity.

I found that DTrace is actually reasonably easy to use, and have collected my experiences with it in a two-part article. The good people at MacResearch have published the two parts here and here. I invite you to check them out and hopefully learn a new way to tune your Mac or iPhone applications.

Hot on the heels of the Pi Cubed Lite release is the 1.11 version of the full Pi Cubed. This version fixes some bugs in the 1.1 version that were pointed out by users and in iTunes reviews. Additionally, this is the first version of Pi Cubed to require iPhone OS 3.0, because I've started to integrate some 3.0-specific features. As usual, the updated version can be found on the App Store.

Read on for more details on this update.

Since its April release, Pi Cubed has been well-received. However, it is difficult to sell users on the value of a $9.99 visual math tool in the App Store without any means for them to try it out. Well, I'm happy to announce that the free Pi Cubed Lite is now available on the App Store.

Read on for the differences between this and the full version of Pi Cubed.

The good people at 148Apps.com have just posted a positive review of Pi Cubed. Honestly, using Emoji for a custom variable is not something that is part of my standard testing procedure.

Unfortunately, they did run into a couple of crashing bugs which I had not seen before, so I'll try to parse the crash logs and fix those issues. I'm also taking some of their user interface suggestions under advisement, and I'll see if I can incorporate improvements into the upcoming iPhone-OS-3.0-focused update.

Pi Cubed version 1.1 made it on the App Store today. This is a significant update, adding one of the major features that I had planned for the application: the ability to create your own custom equations and save those equations within your own equation library. It also adds support for plotting equations by handing them off to Grafly, if you have that application installed on your device.

Read on for more about the new features in this version.

We're coming up on Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) once again, and I'll be there like I was last year. I'm looking forward to meeting all the people I've been introduced to online since I launched my little software company last year.

One other exciting element to this year's WWDC is the fact that Apple is hosting a code-a-thon onsite for a new open source framework called Core Plot. I'll be one of the coordinators of this framework, so if you're there at the conference you can probably find me in the Core Plot room. I'll be the one with the red hair wearing a black Sunset Lake Software T-shirt.

Read on for more about Core Plot.

Pi Cubed version 1.01 just arrived on the App Store yesterday. This is mainly a bugfix update, although a new editing capability has been added as well.

Read on for the specific updates in this version.

Today, I'm proud to announce the release of my latest application: Pi Cubed for iPhone / iPod Touch. Pi Cubed is a visual math application built around the touchscreen of these portable devices. Rather than follow the standard design of calculators, with fixed buttons and a small LCD display, I wanted to try something new. Pi Cubed uses the full touchscreen to typeset and evaluate calculations, and it relies heavily on Core Animation to animate all of its operations.

Pi Cubed is available for $9.99 (or the local equivalent) on the iTunes App Store.

Read on for more about this new application.

We had a good turnout at the inaugural CocoaHeads meeting in Madison, WI last night (Maurice Cheeks snapped a photo of the event). The general theme was about getting started with Cocoa development on the iPhone. I mentioned some resources for this during the talk, and by request I'd like to list those here.

Read on for the list of Cocoa development resources.

Based on local interest, my coworker, Pete Johnson, has started a chapter of CocoaHeads to be based in Madison, WI. I'll be helping out as a speaker and organizer for the group.

Our first meeting will be on February 12th at 6:30 PM on the UW-Madison campus. We'll be in the Computer Sciences Building, room CS 1240. More details can be found here.

Read on for more about this first meeting.