The digest of news from the world of mobile development for the last week №5 (March 4 - 10, 2013)
The past week was rich in life stories - comrade vofka told how the application did products , guskov wrote how, by reducing the size of applications, the downloads tripled, Facebook shared an interesting story about how the company patches Dalvik, Halfbrick Studios and Kiloo Games described the development of their games . And besides, an interesting service for prototyping, updating applications without developers, Amazon’s own advertising network, Android support from and many other interesting things in our weekly digest.
')
Animation UIView: moving along an arbitrary trajectory on the example of a circle
Rus
To move the heirs of the UIView along a more complex path, you have to go down and go to the Core Graphics framework level. In this case, the number of examples in the network decreases and it is difficult to find the necessary. And if it is, then the quality of implementation often leaves much to be desired. I encountered this situation when it became necessary to animate an interactive book for children.
My sales experience on the App Store. $ 29K for 15 months
Rus
I want to share my experience in developing and selling my iOS application from the Productivity category. I will not tell about the application, so as not to be considered for advertising. Just graphics and conclusions that I drew.
Programming low latency sound in iOS
Rus
The article will discuss the features of the low-level API for working with sound in iOS, which had to be encountered during the development of Viber. It will be about choosing the size of the hardware buffer and the behavior of AudioUnit when the sample rate changes.
Qt for iOS: preview
Rus
At the recently held Embedded World 2013, a demonstration of portability of applications was presented at the Qt booth: Qt5 Cinematic Experience was launched on a number of devices running iOS, Android and QNX. It was reported that this is the same application, but attentive users may have noticed the absence of a particle system in the example on the iPad. Today, the official Qt blog has an announcement revealing the nuances of portability.
ABI: Android will overtake iOS by downloads, but Apple will remain the leader
Eng / Rus
There are several ways to measure the success of a mobile platform, but if you are interested in the number of downloads, then analysts from ABI Research predict that in 2013 Android will become the leader. According to the latest prediction of the company, 58% of the downloaded applications for smartphones this year will be Android applications, while the share of iOS will be only 33%. But if you include in the report data on the downloads of applications for tablets, these figures will look slightly different.
The program of a dozen lines collapses Springboard
Rus
It is highly likely that applications causing SpringBoard to reboot (including crashing all other applications) can pass App Review and get into the AppStore without any problems.
We increase profits from iOS applications three times. No progress, just the technology ...
Rus
In this post I would like to tell the story of the development of the free version of my application, which was released a little over a year ago. Tell me how I managed to increase the number of downloads (and, in this case, profit) three times using technical means only.
Cyto: our trial and error method
Rus
A year ago, we, the Ukrainian studio Room 8, began to make our first game called Cyto. No one in the team had practically any experience in game development and application development for iOS, but everyone had ambitions to do something really awesome. We had to learn everything literally on the go, and sometimes we felt like elephants in a china shop.
Under the hood: a patch for Dalvik from Facebook for Android
Rus
Facebook is one of the most functional apps available on Android. With features such as push notifications, news feeds and a built-in version of Facebook Messenger (in fact, a full-fledged application) that work simultaneously in real time, the complexity and amount of code generates a number of technical difficulties encountered by other Android developers. - especially on older versions of the platform. (Our latest applications support the old version of Android 2.2 - Froyo, which is almost 3 years old).
Cloud Support for Android Applications
Rus
In the cloud platform of Windows Azure Mobile Services, instrumental support for Android has been added to the existing support for Windows 8, Windows Phone and iOS. The released Android SDK is open source and is available on GitHub along with all other SDKs.
Acceleration of crypto operations or porting experience for Android
Rus
The Android platform includes the Bouncycastle framework, which is designed to perform crypto operations, such as encryption or digital signature verification. A distinctive feature of this framework is that it is entirely written in Java, without the use of native code. This increases its portability, but significantly reduces the speed. In the first approximation, the implementation of crypto functions using native code can give a significant performance boost. This can significantly increase the speed of an application using cryptography. Let's see if this assumption is confirmed.
Google Play Celebrates Birthday
Sell-out!
Exactly a year ago, the Android Market was transformed into Google Play. And on this occasion, announced week discounts.
Launched The Humble Bundle with Android 5
Official site
All the proposed games, except Android, can also be run on Windows (offered in both standalone version and keys for Steam), Mac, and also in Linux (it is possible to get a bundle through the Ubuntu Software Center). As usual, the soundtracks are also included with the games.
Customization of Intel Android emulator
Rus
As a result, you will get an emulator with an open file system and access to Google Play.
Mobiroo offers "rental" paid apps for Android
Rus
One common opinion is that Android users are not very willing to buy applications. Mobiroo offers a solution to subscribe to a “download-all-what-you want” service, which gives you access to many paid applications at once for a fixed fee. In many ways, this is a kind of Netflix equivalent for applications.
Android 4.x has finally overtaken Android 2.3.x
Eng / Rus
Google has published new data on the distribution of different versions of Android. For the first time, more people use newer versions of the operating system than 2.3 Gingerbread.
Ouya opened a portal for developers and started accepting applications
Angl
Prefixes will begin to arrive to users (those who participated in the Kickstarter campaign) already on March 28.
Unity has opened reception applications for Windows Store
Angl
Users can port their applications to Windows 8 and Windows RT. While support for Windows in beta mode.
BlackBerry community ported applications to platform
Eng / Rus
When asked whether BlackBerry was counting on users to take on porting applications, Saunders said: “We definitely didn’t count on it. And we did not try to make it easier for users to port applications for our platform, but we were afraid that this might happen. ”
Amazon opens its own advertising network for mobile developers.
Eng / Rus
Amazon based on Android creates its own ecosystem: its application store, its gaming ecosystem, its currency and, of course, its “iron” environment from Kindle Fire. Today, Amazon has taken the next obvious step and offered developers a mobile advertising API that will allow them to use Amazon ads in their applications in place or in addition to ad networks from other companies such as Google, for example.
How Halfbrick Studios develops games like Fruit Ninja, Age Of Zombies and Jetpack Joyride
Eng / Rus
Interestingly, literally all Halfbrick games use basically one engine (almost completely written in C ++). The core team for working on the engine consists of six “hardcore programmers” who provide a stable architecture for the rest of the teams working on individual games. One of the biggest teams at Halfbrick right now is the cloud service team, which provides technology that integrates games across platforms. For this purpose, Halfbrick uses Amazon's EC2 platform and recently switched to the NoSQL database in order to improve scalability.
Scringo SDK: for retention and engagement
Eng / Rus
The sad reality of mobile development today is that less than half of the users who have downloaded the application use it more than once. And this is exactly the problem that Scringo wants to solve - an innovative set of tools for developers. Scringo allows you to add various functions to the application that are designed to keep users in it — messages between users, a “radar” to detect nearby program mates, an activity feed that can be public, interactive feedback from the developer, etc. And all this can be added to the application in minutes.
AppGlu launches a mobile platform that allows you to update applications without developer intervention.
Eng / Rus
Without timely updates, applications can quickly get bored. But the problem is that, in most cases, the only one who can update the application is the one who created it. The new corporate platform AppGlu is designed to enable entrepreneurs to update applications without the intervention of developers.
AppGyver: a prototype application in a few minutes
Eng / Rus
“It’s more for designers and product managers,” explains the director. “If you have layouts, storyboards, or Photoshop files, you can use AppGyver to turn them into interactive prototypes. It literally takes a few minutes. ” - he writes. The service also gives access to animation and native navigation, which is another advantage over competitors.
Europeans and European languages: translate or not translate?
Rus
Recently, TNS, which conducts surveys of public opinion and social networks in 27 countries of the European Union, prepared a report on how Europeans use and perceive languages. And ABBYY introduced us to some of the most interesting findings made in this document.
Secrets of the successful design of the children's application - an interview with the developer
Rus
In this interview we will try to uncover important topics and get answers to many questions regarding the design of children's mobile applications and the designer’s place in the design process.
Cross-platform development for mobile with Xamarin
Rus
Quite recently, Xamarin announced the release of a new version of its toolkit for cross-platform development of mobile applications, but there are still no sane articles in Russian on this topic. A small overview appeared on Habré, not related to coding, there were a couple of attempts to tell about it in a little more detail, but it didn’t go beyond the process of creating the Hello World application. It's a pity. This time we will try to correct this unfortunate misunderstanding.
Subway Surfer creators explain how collaborative development works
Eng / Eng / Rus
Small studios have to become smarter - an example of this can serve as Kiloo Games, who tried the model of joint development and won. In fact, the Subway Surfers developers did not create the game themselves. Instead, they teamed up with another studio to multiply the strengths of both companies and create a better end product.
How to create Year Walk
Angl
In ancient times, people tried to look into the future using various very strange methods. Meet the ancient Swedish phenomenon of moving through time during various kinds of first-person adventures that blur the line between two and three dimensions, as well as between reality and the supernatural. Stroll through the dark 19th century Swedish forest where strange creatures roam. Solve mysterious puzzles, touch and listen during your search to predict the future and, ultimately, find out if your loved one will love you.
White Nights: Mobile Games: June 27-28 in St. Petersburg
Official site
The number of tickets is limited, as long as their cost starts at $ 200.
3 Forum Apps4All
Official site
The number of tickets is not limited until their cost is 2000 rubles.
3 ways to create a stunning mobile product for a brand
Angl
Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices, and they are becoming the main channel for their reach and engagement. Brands need to offer innovative mobile experiences that are relevant, priced and meet the needs of users.
Jumptap: traffic from tablets continues to grow
Eng / Rus
By the end of 2012, tablets on the network consumed 18% of all traffic, smartphones - 78%, and regular phones, only 4%. But they believe that, given the trends in the use of recent months, by the end of 2013, the percentage of tablets will increase to one third of all traffic (29%), and the share of smartphones will drop to 70%.
Nokia again
Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 -> Part 4 -> Part of the “Lead Mobile Analyst”
Last week there was an interesting article about what was going on at Nokia and why the crisis happened to the company (Part 4). Naturally, Eldar Murtazin has his own point of view on Nokia.
iOS
')
Animation UIView: moving along an arbitrary trajectory on the example of a circle
Rus
To move the heirs of the UIView along a more complex path, you have to go down and go to the Core Graphics framework level. In this case, the number of examples in the network decreases and it is difficult to find the necessary. And if it is, then the quality of implementation often leaves much to be desired. I encountered this situation when it became necessary to animate an interactive book for children.
My sales experience on the App Store. $ 29K for 15 months
Rus
I want to share my experience in developing and selling my iOS application from the Productivity category. I will not tell about the application, so as not to be considered for advertising. Just graphics and conclusions that I drew.
Programming low latency sound in iOS
Rus
The article will discuss the features of the low-level API for working with sound in iOS, which had to be encountered during the development of Viber. It will be about choosing the size of the hardware buffer and the behavior of AudioUnit when the sample rate changes.
Qt for iOS: preview
Rus
At the recently held Embedded World 2013, a demonstration of portability of applications was presented at the Qt booth: Qt5 Cinematic Experience was launched on a number of devices running iOS, Android and QNX. It was reported that this is the same application, but attentive users may have noticed the absence of a particle system in the example on the iPad. Today, the official Qt blog has an announcement revealing the nuances of portability.
ABI: Android will overtake iOS by downloads, but Apple will remain the leader
Eng / Rus
There are several ways to measure the success of a mobile platform, but if you are interested in the number of downloads, then analysts from ABI Research predict that in 2013 Android will become the leader. According to the latest prediction of the company, 58% of the downloaded applications for smartphones this year will be Android applications, while the share of iOS will be only 33%. But if you include in the report data on the downloads of applications for tablets, these figures will look slightly different.
The program of a dozen lines collapses Springboard
Rus
It is highly likely that applications causing SpringBoard to reboot (including crashing all other applications) can pass App Review and get into the AppStore without any problems.
We increase profits from iOS applications three times. No progress, just the technology ...
Rus
In this post I would like to tell the story of the development of the free version of my application, which was released a little over a year ago. Tell me how I managed to increase the number of downloads (and, in this case, profit) three times using technical means only.
Cyto: our trial and error method
Rus
A year ago, we, the Ukrainian studio Room 8, began to make our first game called Cyto. No one in the team had practically any experience in game development and application development for iOS, but everyone had ambitions to do something really awesome. We had to learn everything literally on the go, and sometimes we felt like elephants in a china shop.
Android
Under the hood: a patch for Dalvik from Facebook for Android
Rus
Facebook is one of the most functional apps available on Android. With features such as push notifications, news feeds and a built-in version of Facebook Messenger (in fact, a full-fledged application) that work simultaneously in real time, the complexity and amount of code generates a number of technical difficulties encountered by other Android developers. - especially on older versions of the platform. (Our latest applications support the old version of Android 2.2 - Froyo, which is almost 3 years old).
Cloud Support for Android Applications
Rus
In the cloud platform of Windows Azure Mobile Services, instrumental support for Android has been added to the existing support for Windows 8, Windows Phone and iOS. The released Android SDK is open source and is available on GitHub along with all other SDKs.
Acceleration of crypto operations or porting experience for Android
Rus
The Android platform includes the Bouncycastle framework, which is designed to perform crypto operations, such as encryption or digital signature verification. A distinctive feature of this framework is that it is entirely written in Java, without the use of native code. This increases its portability, but significantly reduces the speed. In the first approximation, the implementation of crypto functions using native code can give a significant performance boost. This can significantly increase the speed of an application using cryptography. Let's see if this assumption is confirmed.
Google Play Celebrates Birthday
Sell-out!
Exactly a year ago, the Android Market was transformed into Google Play. And on this occasion, announced week discounts.
Launched The Humble Bundle with Android 5
Official site
All the proposed games, except Android, can also be run on Windows (offered in both standalone version and keys for Steam), Mac, and also in Linux (it is possible to get a bundle through the Ubuntu Software Center). As usual, the soundtracks are also included with the games.
Customization of Intel Android emulator
Rus
As a result, you will get an emulator with an open file system and access to Google Play.
Mobiroo offers "rental" paid apps for Android
Rus
One common opinion is that Android users are not very willing to buy applications. Mobiroo offers a solution to subscribe to a “download-all-what-you want” service, which gives you access to many paid applications at once for a fixed fee. In many ways, this is a kind of Netflix equivalent for applications.
Android 4.x has finally overtaken Android 2.3.x
Eng / Rus
Google has published new data on the distribution of different versions of Android. For the first time, more people use newer versions of the operating system than 2.3 Gingerbread.
Ouya opened a portal for developers and started accepting applications
Angl
Prefixes will begin to arrive to users (those who participated in the Kickstarter campaign) already on March 28.
Microsoft
Unity has opened reception applications for Windows Store
Angl
Users can port their applications to Windows 8 and Windows RT. While support for Windows in beta mode.
Blackberry
BlackBerry community ported applications to platform
Eng / Rus
When asked whether BlackBerry was counting on users to take on porting applications, Saunders said: “We definitely didn’t count on it. And we did not try to make it easier for users to port applications for our platform, but we were afraid that this might happen. ”
Money
Amazon opens its own advertising network for mobile developers.
Eng / Rus
Amazon based on Android creates its own ecosystem: its application store, its gaming ecosystem, its currency and, of course, its “iron” environment from Kindle Fire. Today, Amazon has taken the next obvious step and offered developers a mobile advertising API that will allow them to use Amazon ads in their applications in place or in addition to ad networks from other companies such as Google, for example.
Development
How Halfbrick Studios develops games like Fruit Ninja, Age Of Zombies and Jetpack Joyride
Eng / Rus
Interestingly, literally all Halfbrick games use basically one engine (almost completely written in C ++). The core team for working on the engine consists of six “hardcore programmers” who provide a stable architecture for the rest of the teams working on individual games. One of the biggest teams at Halfbrick right now is the cloud service team, which provides technology that integrates games across platforms. For this purpose, Halfbrick uses Amazon's EC2 platform and recently switched to the NoSQL database in order to improve scalability.
Scringo SDK: for retention and engagement
Eng / Rus
The sad reality of mobile development today is that less than half of the users who have downloaded the application use it more than once. And this is exactly the problem that Scringo wants to solve - an innovative set of tools for developers. Scringo allows you to add various functions to the application that are designed to keep users in it — messages between users, a “radar” to detect nearby program mates, an activity feed that can be public, interactive feedback from the developer, etc. And all this can be added to the application in minutes.
AppGlu launches a mobile platform that allows you to update applications without developer intervention.
Eng / Rus
Without timely updates, applications can quickly get bored. But the problem is that, in most cases, the only one who can update the application is the one who created it. The new corporate platform AppGlu is designed to enable entrepreneurs to update applications without the intervention of developers.
AppGyver: a prototype application in a few minutes
Eng / Rus
“It’s more for designers and product managers,” explains the director. “If you have layouts, storyboards, or Photoshop files, you can use AppGyver to turn them into interactive prototypes. It literally takes a few minutes. ” - he writes. The service also gives access to animation and native navigation, which is another advantage over competitors.
Europeans and European languages: translate or not translate?
Rus
Recently, TNS, which conducts surveys of public opinion and social networks in 27 countries of the European Union, prepared a report on how Europeans use and perceive languages. And ABBYY introduced us to some of the most interesting findings made in this document.
Secrets of the successful design of the children's application - an interview with the developer
Rus
In this interview we will try to uncover important topics and get answers to many questions regarding the design of children's mobile applications and the designer’s place in the design process.
Cross-platform development for mobile with Xamarin
Rus
Quite recently, Xamarin announced the release of a new version of its toolkit for cross-platform development of mobile applications, but there are still no sane articles in Russian on this topic. A small overview appeared on Habré, not related to coding, there were a couple of attempts to tell about it in a little more detail, but it didn’t go beyond the process of creating the Hello World application. It's a pity. This time we will try to correct this unfortunate misunderstanding.
Subway Surfer creators explain how collaborative development works
Eng / Eng / Rus
Small studios have to become smarter - an example of this can serve as Kiloo Games, who tried the model of joint development and won. In fact, the Subway Surfers developers did not create the game themselves. Instead, they teamed up with another studio to multiply the strengths of both companies and create a better end product.
How to create Year Walk
Angl
In ancient times, people tried to look into the future using various very strange methods. Meet the ancient Swedish phenomenon of moving through time during various kinds of first-person adventures that blur the line between two and three dimensions, as well as between reality and the supernatural. Stroll through the dark 19th century Swedish forest where strange creatures roam. Solve mysterious puzzles, touch and listen during your search to predict the future and, ultimately, find out if your loved one will love you.
Conferences
White Nights: Mobile Games: June 27-28 in St. Petersburg
Official site
The number of tickets is limited, as long as their cost starts at $ 200.
3 Forum Apps4All
Official site
The number of tickets is not limited until their cost is 2000 rubles.
Marketing
3 ways to create a stunning mobile product for a brand
Angl
Consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices, and they are becoming the main channel for their reach and engagement. Brands need to offer innovative mobile experiences that are relevant, priced and meet the needs of users.
Devices
Jumptap: traffic from tablets continues to grow
Eng / Rus
By the end of 2012, tablets on the network consumed 18% of all traffic, smartphones - 78%, and regular phones, only 4%. But they believe that, given the trends in the use of recent months, by the end of 2013, the percentage of tablets will increase to one third of all traffic (29%), and the share of smartphones will drop to 70%.
Nokia again
Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 -> Part 4 -> Part of the “Lead Mobile Analyst”
Last week there was an interesting article about what was going on at Nokia and why the crisis happened to the company (Part 4). Naturally, Eldar Murtazin has his own point of view on Nokia.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/172133/
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