This is not the first time that Apple patent shows they have interest on 3D camera technology. In November last year, one Apple patent shows that Apple is developing advanced three-dimensional object recognition and verification technology. According to PatentlyApple report (March 30,2012) one patent released this week shows that Apple is developing a 3D camera technology for the future iOS devices. This 3D camera is described as an advanced component with advanced micro-lens, depth, chroma and brightness sensor. This camera will be able to identify facial expressions, gestures, by adjust...

Kent Nguyen has a great article about how building iOS apps takes a lot of work. And, here at Parse, we agree. Making a well-designed app is not a trivial task. Many non-developers hugely underestimate the amount of sweat and tears that goes into a single app.The big component that is overlooked and that Kent stresses is the server component. An app is not an island. Users expect their apps to richly interact with the internet.This means you need to worry about developing code on servers, communicating with servers, APIs, and a whole plethora of network issues.And this is the exact reason why ...

One of my New Years resolutions was to finally learn the iOS SDK and build a 'real' application.I am happy to report that progress is going really well and wanted to share something that I have noticed about iOS programming.It only looks scary... it's not. It's actually very easy.Now, I am not building Mail, Angry Birds or Photosynth or anything, but the core concepts of the SDK are not that bad once you spend some time learning delegation. If you don't understand delegation, iOS programming is VERY hard. Even if you have GUI experience and aren't coming from the web, it's going to be tough...

My friend contacted me on twitter and asked for advice on different sources on how to learn iOS apps. Since this paragraph will already exceed 140 characters, I'm posting here, instead.(Obviously, reading this blog regularly is a great way to pick up some iOS development tricks)To get started, some people buy a book or find some good online tutorials. I tried both approaches, and the online tutorials were definitely better. I found Stanford's class on iPhone Development, available for free on iTunesU, to be a great place to start. However, watching lectures is time-consuming and, frankly, bori...

There is a huge bug when Group Messaging is disabled in iOS 5. I'm shocked Apple hasn't fixed this yet.Today a friend sent out a text message blast, announcing they got a new phone number. Shortly after, I got text messages from three random people I don't know. I was confused how these people got my number, but then I realized they were replies intended for my friend who sent out the text blast.If you've ever used the Group Messaging feature, it's supposed to thread messages sent to groups, showing the person's name above their reply. But in order to use this...

I am by no means an Apple fan. For one thing, I find Windows (and Linux) stable and fast, so you are not going to hear me argue that my computing life was transformed once I made that Switch (with a capital letter). Admittedly that is partly because I am familiar with how to fix and tune Windows and remove foistware, but it is not that hard. For another, I am not an admirer of Apple’s secretive approach, or the fact that most requests for comment from journalists are responded to with silence. For a third, I dislike the notion that all apps for its popular mobile platform must be distri...

Yesterday the NPD Group issued a report on U.S. tablet sales in the U.S., from January through October of 2011. Worth noting up front is that the numbers in this report are about sales — actual tablets sold to actual customers — not “shipments” from the factory to stores and warehouses.Much-reported on is that second-place went to HP, after its fire sale on the discontinued TouchPad. What hasn’t gotten much commentary is the extraordinarily contorted way that NPD reported these numbers.The report begins (emphasis mine):U.S. tablet sales, exc...

So you've got a DVD stuck in the external USB SuperDrive that connects to the MacBook Air? And you've tried hitting the magic Eject button on the keyboard to no avail?And you've tried drutil tray eject at the command-line? And you've tried booting with Option held down and clicking eject? And you've tried plugging the drive into other machines (Macs, Windows PCs, Linux machines) to no avail?What do you do?Clearly you hit the physical eject button, right? Every DVD drive has one of those. On the SuperDrive you first look for it on the front:Hmm. Nothing there. Perhaps it's one of those pinhole ...