Not Reading Passively: iPhone Links

In the spirit of not reading passively, I've been trying hard to write summaries of all the iPhone related links I've been reading. Here are a recent mix from the last week of high-level iPhone propaganda and low level technical details:

• iPhone SDK 3.0: A New Beginning: The new 3.0 iPhone OS as the new desktop. iPhone apps are more like simple desktop apps than conventional mobile apps. Android is a long way behind re developer base/app maturity. Constraints on the iPhone are liberating. iPhone is secure, no viruses like windows mobile and blackberry. Lots of fanboy spam in this post as well.
  
• Should An iPhone App Developer Charge Or Run Ads? (Galaxy Impact Case Study): TechCrunch post on paid apps versus free app with advertising. Example app tanked after releasing for free then charging a dollar then free again. Lesson is to pick the right model at the start and stick with it.
• Pinch Media Data Shows The Average Shelf Life Of An iPhone App Is Less Than 30 Days: Only 20% of users return to app after initial download. After 30 days, 5% of users still use app. Return is about 70c per user, equiv with free app is an $8 CPM (most are 0.50 to 2.00).
• Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On: Wired article on the iShoot case study (lucky bastard). >600K in a month, 37K a day as number one in app store.
• Good iPhone Practices: Discussion of managing buttons in UITableViewCells. Only use a XIB file only for a complicated interface. Discussion of instantiating UIViewController subclasses.
• Intro to the Objective-C Runtime: How objective c works at the run time level. A class is a struct. An object is a pointer to a struct, the first variable of which is a pointer to its class. Struct contains compatibility info for older operating systems, built on top of C, can go rooting around to see how it works/hangs together.
• Using Multiple OpenGL Views And UIKit: Discussion on how to mix openGL views with UIKit controls/views. Apple suggest to avoid doing transformations with opengl views, avoid putting transparent buttons on them. Stop doing frame updates when opengl view is not visible. Discussion of opengl view, mixed with uiview, mixed with multiple opengl views.
• Cocos2D: Open Source 2D Game Engine for iPhone Developers: Engine for easy development of 2d games for the iphone. Open source, built in physics engine (chipmunk).
• iPhone - Interface Builder Tutorial: Excellent interface builder tutorial that was recommended by someone/where. Step-by-step, very clear.
• Tutorial: JSON Over HTTP On The iPhone: Tutorial that demonstrates how to consume, parse, and display a JSON feed from the web in an iPhone app.
• Apple iPhone Makes Up Half Of U.S. Smart Phone Web Traffic: Study that suggests that 50% of smart phone traffic on the web is coming from iPhones. Up from 10% in August 2008. Android is at 5% in the same market.
• Engineers show off "no jailbreak" iPhone keyboard hack: What I liked about this article was the clever workaround for interfacing with the phone, specifically by using the headphone port (WTF?). It "allows two-way transmission of data using frequency shift keying, the same method used in early modems". Awesome.
• Apple Putting The Squeeze On iPhone Developers: A rumour site. Describes an amendment to the iPhone developer contract that forces developers to submit to a 90 day refund policy for apps in the app store. Developers would have to cover apples 30% cut as well, leaving them out of pocket (how could that be?). Although the clause may have always been in the contract.
• PhoneGap: A very interesting project focused on automatically generating native (!) iPhone (and other) apps from javascript. Way Cool! You can access device features. Oh yeah, it's open source. Check the video.