Submitted a fairly large iPhone app to the App Store. Look at this:

Hello Mike,

Thank you for submitting BounceOff 1.0 to the App Store.

We’ve completed the review of your application but this version cannot be posted to the App Store because it crashes when the user searches for a name or email without any contacts on their device. We have included additional details below to help explain the issue, and hope you’ll consider revising and resubmitting your application.

Using iPhone 3GS running iOS 4.0.2, here is how we found this crash:

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open the application
2. Select the “Buckets” tab
3. Select a Bucket
4. Select “Invite People”
5. If user has no contacts on the phone, and starts to type a name or an email, the application crashes.

We have attached detailed crash logs to help. If you need information on how to read crash logs, you may want to review the following TechNote: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/technotes/tn2008/tn2151.html

If you have any questions about this response, or would like to discuss it further, please feel free to reply to this email. We look forward to reviewing your revised app.

Sincerely,

App Review Team

That was the rejection email from the AppStore. I’m entirely exasperated at myself for missing this bug. (You idiot, you should know there are people with no contacts on the phone!)

I am completely taken aback and amazed at how detailed this report from Apple is. I don’t get this kind of detail from team members! I fully expected a crashing app to be simply rejected with a statement along the lines of “It crashes, you idiot.” So this is truly great. Even more impressive is that it only took them less than an hour to get back to us once the app went into review. I’m completely happy at how they handled that. Kudos Apple.

However, what is not impressive: IT TOOK 8 DAYS TO GO INTO REVIEW. Yes, I submitted on Thursday morning. On Friday afternoon of the next week, it was reviewed. I guess, having a gate keeper wouldn’t be as bad if they didn’t take so long to get your app into review.

We are on day four of our resubmission. I fear that it will take another 8 days to go into review again. All reports from the experts (aka, chockenberry: http://appdevmanual.com/ ) say that you go back to the end of the line. Instead, it would be nice if it was more of a sliding scale. Say once resubmitted on the first rejection, you get put right back in for immediate review. In the case of further rejections, you go back farther and farther back in the line for each rejection. Even some variation on that. First time, we let you slide back in. Every other time, back to the end of the line.

I picked up an iPhone 4. How?

I woke up at 3 AM the morning Apple started taking reservations. That day their store was having troubles taking orders. I kept checking almost every hour until I finally got a reserved phone at 10 AM.

On the June 24th, a friend and I got to the mall with the Apple Store at 6:45. The parking lot was empty, except for maybe 6 cars. I thought, great, Michigan’s economy might actually pay off this time. When we opened the doors, I was wrong. Apparently the hundreds to thousands of people parked in the back.

I waited in line for 4 hours and 15 minutes before I finally had my phone in my hand. I will NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

Send it to my house next time.

The first thing you notice about the phone is that screen. That unbelievable screen. Oh yeah, and how it makes just about every image on the web look like shit. Well, if you are a website owner, there are some things you can do to make your website look better. Text is fine already. But you have to swap out your images for higher resolution counterparts.

The technique is only supported in the newest browsers. But so what? Who will be running IE 6 on an Android (You can be sure that Android handset makers will follow) or an iPhone?

From the solution I posted at Flowz:

The trick here is that we check to see if the font size for our special class is set to value declared in our high-DPI CSS file. (Our flag) It will only be set if the browser passed the media query. If the flag is set, grab every element in the DOM with the replace-2x class and change the src attribute to point to our high-res counterparts.

Go check it out:
http://flowz.com/2010/07/css-image-replacement-for-iphone-4-high-dpi-retina-display/

I just bought my wife an iPhone after two years of her hating mine.  She downright despised it.  Then her killerapp came along and she just had to have it.  (I won’t tell you what app it is, but I’m sure you can guess it has something to do with Women’s insecurities.

With both of us having access to the supreme mobile device on the planet (come on android and webos!  I’m rooting for you!), I decided to go ahead and buy a MobileMe account so we could have immediate access to a shared calendar.  Gosh, I’ve lived without it for so long, (How long ago was I using Palm Treos?)  I forgot how much I wanted it.

Buying a MobileMe subscription at the same time as your phone nets you $30 off.  I highly recommend it.

However, despite all that MobileMe offers, my hopes and dreams… kaput. <Read on…>

I have an iPhone. I have had one since the first hour it went on sale. My wife stood inline on the day of the launch a week before our wedding. Yeah, I’m a lucky guy.

In my eyes there is nothing out there that comes close.

BUT.

That’s a big BUT.

There are some things that annoy the ever living snot out of me. As you can tell from this site, Kelly just gave birth. At one of the major events in my life, I’m holding in one hand my newborn son, in the other, the most technologically advanced phone on the planet.

And I can’t even SEND A PICTURE of him to all my family and friends!

With the imminent launch of iPhone 2.0, my blood boils at the thought of one more year without MMS.

(And for any of you freaks that say, “but you can email!” Go get your head checked. There is a time for email and there is a time for MMS.)

I’ve held back from writing anything about the iPhone because its such a hot topic and, invariably, there is someone who will say it better than me.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much in the way said about my top issues with the phone. I really can’t believe how few people complain about these annoyances.

First, let me say that the iPhone is, without a second thought, the best cellphone on the market. I have always joked about how if my wife needed to dial 9-1-1 after we were in a car accident and I was lying unconcious with life bleeding out of me, I wouldn’t survive. She wouldn’t have figured out how to make a call! With the iPhone, I now know I will survive the crash. Well, really, at least the ambulance will know to come…

<Read on…>

Nothing in this world makes less sense then how Apple decided to make Home, End, Page-Up, and Page-Down work.

I’m not sure where, when, and why this started. But on every other modern day operating system, these keys work like this:

- Home -> move the cursor to the beginning of the line
- End -> move the cursor to the end of the line
- Pg-Up -> move the cursor up the length of the viewport
- Pg-Dn -> move the cursor down the length of the viewport

Now I don’t know why I am even repeating these descriptions. As much as the sky is blue and earth is below our feet, everyone knows what these buttons do.

Unless you are on a Mac. <Read on…>

Goodbye Sprint. Goodbye Nextel.

Here I come Cingular.

As I stated in a few posts ago I switched to Verizon from Sprint after 10 years. I changed jobs and work says that Verizon is more convenient for everyone. And, hey, they have way better coverage anyhow! Right? Okay, fine, I’ll pay the early termination to get out of my Sprint agreement if you (work) buy me a new 700p to replace my 650. Sweet deal! Right?

Wrong.

<Read on…>

I’m not one to bash Treo Smart Phones or Palm itself. I’m quite a fan actually. I’ve owned both the 650 and 700p. Unfortunately, for people who enjoy tools that are not overly complex and easy to use, Palm is going down the drain.

My 650 was fairly stable. Once in a while it would reboot for no apparent reason but it never affected what I was doing. It never happened during a phone call and was usually when I picked it up the first time and hit power.

I used to tell people to stay as far away from Windows Mobile as you can. Here’s the line I tell everyone. If my girlfriend and I were in a car accident and I was unconscious while she was awake, would she be able to pick up my Windows Mobile phone (specifically, my Verizon Wireless XV6700) and dial 911 to save my dying body? Not a chance in hell. I wouldn’t be typing this story right now.

<Read on…>

[UPDATE: Of course, a year and 2 months after I wrote this, I switched to a Mac for full-time use.]

I just got a new workstation from Dell. It’s a doozy and while not the fastest machine available, by far, the fastest machine I’ve worked on. Whew. We picked it up from the Dell Outlet. It’s a refurbished unit but offers the same warranty as a new PC. How can you go wrong? So price for performance, its the fastest machine out there.

At any rate, I’m pissed. I’ve long known about the Windows Genuine Advantage bullshit, but never really experienced it until now. At work, I was able to avoid installing WGA because of our corporate licensing. This new PC for my home comes with XP Professional. What’s the first thing you do with any new Windows machine? Yep, go and download all of the updates. (Not go and have fun with it like you would on some other machines.)

<Read on…>

I’ve about f’ing had it with Verizon. Don’t even get me started on, “Can you hear me now.”

On an aside, I’ve had more dropped calls from Verizon in two weeks then in the past 6 months with Sprint. Maybe its the area I’m in, northern Detroit Metro, but Verizon has horrible service.

I cannot get email or calendar to be pushed to my phone from Doner. I could with Sprint. I’ve spent the past hour and a half trying to setup Verizon’s PC client to forward mail to my phone. (Which by the way is 13.4 times needlessly more complex the Sprint solution) I need to do this because my company doesn’t allow IMAP from the outside and they don’t support anything but blackberries, yet.

<Read on…>