iPhone Development Blog

Allowing 3rd party iPhone applications to run in the background is an often requested feature in the official SDK. Apple has responded that they can’t do that primarily due the increased, and unpredictable, battery drain. However Apple is also notorious for claiming that they are not working on something and they have absolutely no interest in working on it, until they surprise everybody with a working solution. With that in mind I decided to poke around a bit in the new 3.0 SDK.

There are 1,000 new API:s in 3.0, so there’s a fair amount of ground to cover, but a new framework called AsyncPRocessIngLibrary caught my attention. I have not been able to find any documentation for this framework, but it’s not in the PrivateFrameworks directory, so it’s presumably fair game.

Here’s an example of what you can do with this library that was discovered today:

UInt32 numProcessors = MPProcessorsScheduled();
/* Schedule task across available processors.
   Major hint of new hardware... */
for (n = 0; n < numProcessors; n++ ) {
   MPCreateTask( MyTask, kMPStackSize, NULL, NULL, taskOptions, taskID );
}

This is all pretty standard multi processing code. What’s new and interesting here is the taskOptions:

enum {
   MPTaskOptionNone                   = 0,
   MPTaskOptionTerminateOnAppExit     = 1 << 0,
   MPTaskOptionTerminateOnThreadDeath = 1 << 1,
   MPTaskOptionTerminateOnSemaphore   = 1 << 2,
   MPTaskOptionKeepRunning            = 1 << 3,
   MPTaskOptionLurad                  = 1 << 4,
   MPTaskOptionGetauscht              = 1 << 5
};
typedef UInt32 MPTaskOption;

Most of these flags are self-explanatory, but unless you set the 4/1 bit, they don’t behave as expected.

Example:

UInt32 taskOptions = (MPTaskOptionKeepRunning | MPTaskOptionLurad);

It’s important that before attempting to launch your background process, you first need to ensure that the device you’re running on is capable of this:

if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] isProcessFoolEnabled]) {
// start your process here
}

written by Nick \\ tags: humor

I have a great idea for a new iHouse. This is relovutionary; nobody has every thought of this idea before. Now I just need to pardner with a very solid iHouse builder to make this realty. I come up with the ideas, you bring the expertise!

You must have at least 2+ years of experience with building iHouses, dealing with Mapple’s approval processess and selling on the Hip Store. Please send me all examples of relevant, prior work so that I can try them out for free.

This is a very simple house. For an experienced iHouse developer this project should only take a few days hours to compete. So I’m being extensively generous in offering to share the guaranteed-to-come future profits with you: 50/50.

This iHouse idea is so super extraordinary that you need to be prepared sign tripplicate NADA and non-complete contract.

If you are good and professional I will email you back.

—

It cracks me up each time I see these messages on Craigslist and other message boards. The above was aggregated from actual posts. A few minor edits were made to protect the innocent. Now back to our regular scheduled program.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor

An interesting quantum mechanics effect makes it possible for some lucky owners of the current generation iPhone to connect to high-speed 3G networks today.

Hubert Hochsztapler, a researcher at the institute for nano-technology at The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, discovered back in 2004 that old GSM cellphones could be used as 3G phones using the quantum tunneling phenomenon.

Would it work on the iPhone?

The iPhone was not tested by Hubert Hochsztapler and his colleagues, but our own lab reports today confirm that most current iPhones are already 3G capable. No new hardware is required.

The iPhone contains an accelerometer which measures minute movements of the iPhone. This turns out to be a great benefit to achieving the 3G capability. But due to interference from the accelerometer when it’s inactive, you first need to open an application on the iPhone that makes use of the accelerometer. The Safari browser is an excellent choice, since it will also allow you to visibly enjoy the effects of the faster data connection provided by 3G.

First turn the iPhone from portrait mode to landscape mode, back and forth a couple of times to ensure that the accelerometer is engaged and working. You should see the display change between portrait and landscape mode. Now start downloading a very large web page and simultaneously begin shaking the iPhone lightly along its y-axis. Think of the iPhone as the yoke of an aircraft. You want to avoid pitching and rolling the iPhone as you’re shaking it.

If you hit the right shaking-frequency (41 Hz seems to be optimal), the electrons in the iPhone will reach their tunnel state and the radio transmitter will “tunnel-up” and connect to the AT&T 3G network in your area (if one is available).

Impact on Apple’s stock price?

A Gartner analyst recently reported that Apple has already placed an order for 10 million units of the new 3G iPhone from their manufacturers in Asia. But when current iPhone owners discover that their iPhone already is 3G capable, they will not upgrade as Steve Jobs has decreed they should. This will effectively turn Apple’s 10M order into one big iBrickload of phones, says April F. Olson, an analyst covering the AAPL stock for Hochs Securities.

It doesn’t work with all firmwares

This technical trick has been confirmed to work only on non-jailbroken 1.1.4 firmware phones (also known as the 4.1 release in the U.S.).

Please report your success with your “new” 3G iPhone in the comments below.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor