iOS & Android Development

The successful launches of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, along with the release of Apple’s new mobile operating system iOS 8 have impacted the marketing costs associated with gathering downloads for mobile applications, and retaining regular users. According to a new report out this morning from app marketing technology provider Fiksu, the costs associated with retaining a “loyal user” – that is, someone who opens an app three times or more – is now at an all-time high, as of September. TechCrunch

Earlier this week, tweets from Nick Lockwood and James Thomson alerted me to an as yet undocumented new feature in the iOS 8 SDK: you can now use a storyboard scene in place of your app’s launch images. Creating a Launch Screen File The launch screen file is displayed as a splash screen while your app is launching. It’s a single, atomic .xib file that uses size classes to support different device resolutions. It contains basic UIKit views, such as UIImageView and UILabel objects, and uses Auto Layout constraints. Xcode adds a default launch screen file, called LaunchScreen.xib, to your project. Follow these guidelines when creating a launch screen file: Use only UIKit classes. Use a single root view that is a UIView or UIViewController object. Don’t make any connections to your code (don’t add actions or outlets). Don’t add UIWebView objects. Don’t use any custom classes. Don’t use runtime attributes. You can add a launch screen file to an older Xcode project. To c...

Apple's head of design Jony Ive today gave a live interview at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco. In the interview, which BusinessInsider attended, Ive gave some rare insight into the design process at Apple and some of the design choices the team made with the iPhone 6. MacRumors

Apple today released a third golden master candidate of OS X Yosemite to developers, just two days after releasing the second candidate golden master and the fifth public beta. The first golden master candidate was seeded to developers on September 30. Sounds like Apple has issues, too. Reminds me on the _final.ppt _final_final.ppt _final_final_reallyfinal.ppt postfixes in my career! MacRumors

Great assembled, visual overview over all iOS 8 features. UI Design Basics Designing for iOS iOS App Anatomy Adaptivity and Layout Starting and Stopping Navigation Modal Contexts Interactivity and Feedback Animation Branding Color and Typography Icons and Graphics Terminology and Wording Integrating with iOS Design Strategies Design Principles From Concept to Product Case Study: From Desktop to iOS iOS Technologies App Extensions Notification Center Multitasking Social Media iCloud Passbook In-App Purchase Game Center iAd Rich Media Ads AirPrint Accessing User Data Quick Look Sound VoiceOver Routing Edit Menu Undo and Redo Keyboards and Input Views UI Elements Bars Content Views Controls Temporary Views Icon and Image Design Icon and Image Sizes App Icon Launch Images Bar Button Icons Newsstand Icons Web Clip Icons Creating Resizable Images iOS Human Interface Guidelines

With the iPhone 6, Apple debuted a new display technology called Retina HD, which resulted in wider viewer angles, higher resolutions, higher contrast and a thinner display. Developer Hamza Sood has now discovered frameworks within iOS 8.1 Beta 2 that contain '3x' assets that point to higher resolution displays in the new iPad models. MacRumors

Apple and its suppliers are delaying plans to mass produce the larger 12.9-inch iPad in order to deal with strong demand for the iPhone 6 Plus, reports The Wall Street Journal. Apple was originally planning to mass produce the larger tablet in December, however the company has remained unsatisfied with the production output from its suppliers for its larger iPhone. MacRumors

Last week, Pioneer announced that it became the first company to offer support for Apple's CarPlay vehicle integration feature in five of its 2014 NEX in-dash multimedia receivers through a firmware update. Now, Josh Carr of technology repair firm Fix Denver (via TUAW) has put together a four-part video walkthrough of downloading, installing and using CarPlay on Pioneer's $700 AVH-4000NEX receiver, giving an overview of various apps and features. MacRumors

NSProcessInfo isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion operatingSystemVersion Ironically, the new NSProcessInfo APIs aren't especially useful at the time of writing, since they're unavailable for iOS 7. As an alternative, one can use the systemVersion property UIDevice switch UIDevice.currentDevice().systemVersion.compare("8.0.0", options: NSStringCompareOptions.NumericSearch) { case .OrderedSame, .OrderedDescending:     println("iOS >= 8.0") case .OrderedAscending:     println("iOS < 8.0") } NSHipster

That marks a very slight increase in adoption over the past two weeks, as back on September 21, iOS 8 was installed on 46 percent of devices. 47 percent of iOS users continue to stick to iOS 7, possibly due to a number of bugs that have plagued the launch of iOS 8. MacRumors

Several years ago, digital reading platform issuu gave up on the iTunes App Store after several rejections stemming from its then too-competitive nature with Apple’s planned Newsstand service. Now, it’s back. The company has released its first iOS app that brings a variety of free publications to iPhone and iPad users worldwide, with over 10,000 new ones being added daily in 30 languages. TechCrunch

Der Verkauf von iPhone 6 und iPhone Plus beginnt am 17. Oktober in China. Der verzögerte Starttermin ist auf die Prüfung durch eine Regulierungsbehörde zurückzuführen – sie zeigte sich besorgt über Systemdienste in iOS. Heise

Apple has released a new Activation Lock Status tool (via iDownloadBlog) that will make it easier for people buying a used iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to avoid getting a device that is locked to another user. iCloud - Activation Lock

Every web marketer knows about the call to action. But how many web marketers really understand the call to action? The answer, I’m afraid, is not very many. The call to action has a fascinating psychology behind it that includes width, color, border size, copy, and cool CSS effects. Yet, at the same time, this psychology goes far beyond those elements. When we understand the psychology of the call to action, we take huge strides forward in our effectiveness as marketers. To know the psychology of the call to action is to be a wizard of conversion optimization because psychology drives the entire science and art of conversion optimization. If you know just a little bit about the psychology that motivates our behavior, you will massively increase your power. Here are the psychological principles that power the CTA. KISSmetrics