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iOS7

ImageiOS7 is here. It’s strange and new and transforms the experience of the iPhone into something drastically newer, as opposed to the iterative changes the iOS has been going though since its inception.

Part of me dislikes the new look, but like anyone who has ‘drank the Apple juice,’ I’m more than willing to give Jonathan Ives’ new design a chance. In fact, I already like it more now than I did several hours ago when I first downloaded it (ps – I’m a little peeved that I was not able to download the beta earlier through the developer program … i have to look into that to see what’s going on). Mostly, I’m impressed by the way that the OS itself has incorporated so many new gestures that bring up new screens and control panels. It does a lot to bring more functions closer to a ‘one touch’ feel.

I expect a lot of users will be up in arms by the weekend demanding that Apple restore their old OS, but I say, ‘To hell with ’em.’ Apple is a walled garden that we’ve all bought into. I say jump in and enjoy the new surroundings.

Skip over to Mat Honen’s article at Wired and get a walkthrough of some new features (and some gushy praise)

 
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Posted by on September 18, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Beware

I just walked into an Apple store for a few minutes while I was getting a coffee next-door. I have to warn you NOT to go to an Apple store right now unless you want to buy an iPad Mini or iPhone5. I took some time to play with these devices and wish I hadn’t. 

On the plus side, my 2 yr contract with Verizon runs out in January, which will make it possible for me to upgrade to the new iPhone.

On the minus side – that seems too long to wait now. But even more tragic is that the iPad Mini is too damn cool. Having held one in my hands, it pained me to put it down and walk away. They work exactly like an iPad, but let’s be honest – it’s just a better size: Big enough to get a ‘full screen experience’ (it also loads iBooks that don’t run on iPhones – like mine.) but small enough to thumb-type easily a la iPhone.

-crap… gotta run. 

 

 
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Posted by on November 5, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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Defining some terms (JS)

After playing with codecademy’s JS course for about two weeks, I’m nearly finished. That said, I am not ready to go on with the next subject, I need some serious review and practice.

I’ve talked about this before with respect to MasterMind, but I thought I would pursue this a little more explicitly. I also thought that since I am working on making the MasterMind project as a way to practice what I’ve learned, apply it to another coding language (to get some flexibility) and develop the whole thing as an app, I might as well also use this app as a step-by-step in making an app and getting it into the app store.

That’s what this blog is supposed to be about anyway, perhaps by following a specific example in real time, it might be a lot easier for me to focus my thoughts and outline the process more clearly. I’ll outline that process as a series of goals in my next post.

This one is meant to be a place where I can post what I understand about JS as an object-oriented programming language. Specifically, I wanted to define some terms in plain language. 

This is important because I would like anyone who reads this to help edit these definitions for me to make sure they are both accurate and clear.

These definitions are also important so that I can use these terms in my discussion about constructing the MasterMind program.

_________________________

My definitions:

Arrays are collections of items (that may be objects)

                  Example:

                  var contacts = [bob, mary];

                  where bob and mary are objects with a variety of characteristics.

Classes are templates to create objects with similar qualities. (classes are what constructors make)

 

Objects are (self contained units) things that have:

                  Properties (these can be values, variables or other objects)

          Methods are functions that operate on Objects

          Members are the specific examples of Objects

          Properties are the characteristics of each object

 

Prototypes  ???

 

 

Constructors are specialized Methods that are used to create groups (or Classes) of Objects

                  Example:

 

                  function Person(first,last,age) {

                                     this.firstname = first;

                                      this.lastname = last;

   this.age = age;

   var bankBalance = 7500;

where three parameters are sent in as variables and one is set within the constructor

 

                  Constructors are called to create new objects as below:

 

                  var john = new Person(‘John’,’Smith’,30);

where john is the new object of the type Person and he has the characteristics listed –these match up to parameters in the constructor.

 

 

_______________________________

 

OK… next: map out Mastermind.

 
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Posted by on June 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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