after jailbroken my iPhone 3GS, i was always worried about the security since i stored most of my id/password on it. recently i had a little concern that maybe some apps i installed on my phone didnt have an icon and i couldnt see the process via sbsetting as well. so that means there're some apps on my phone that i can never get access to and i dont even know what they are doing.
and as a developer, im quite interested how can process and icon hidden be achieved by code. with these technologies, a good daemon can be made to serve iPhone users.
so my question is, am i thinking too much or process and icon hidden really exist in iPhone? if the answer is yes, how can i do this by code? any clues are welcome!
thx a lot!
cheers
What you want is a daemon background process. You're probably not going to learn how to program a unix daemon process here. However there are a variety of ways to get a program to run in the background. Pick a Unix compatible programming language, find a good book on the subject, go to Starbucks, buy some coffee and enjoy.
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I am writing an iPhone app, and I have a remote server that will deliver content. I would like to have my app poll the server once per day to see if there is new content, even if it's not running or in the background. I would also like to do this without setting up an APNS. Any advice?
You can't do that, either when your 'not' running or if you are running in the background. The best you could do is to download once per day when your app is first run / pushed to the foreground.
You could use remote notifications to "prompt" the user to bring the app to the foreground so that it could download something?
With the current apple IOS guidelines, that is about the best you can do.
I read that you are trying to avoid using APNS, but I am wondering if you are trying to avoid it for the right reasons, especially when it is designed to efficiently solve the scenario you are describing. I've seen many developers seek alternative solutions to APNS simply because the technology appeared to be complex to use after looking at Apple's documentation. The online documentation does go into a lot of details, right down to the binary protocol level.
But just to be sure you know, there are open-source libraries whose only purpose is to shield you from all these technical details. Some libraries are more complex than others, but some are remarkably user-friendly. If you have not done so already, you might like to take a look at JavaPNS and other similar projects.
I want to make an app that runs in the background so that if a user is reading a web page or PDF file on an iPhone or iPad, he can mark some words, see the meaning of those words, and then have those words stored in the app's database. He can then afterwards look for the words which he has learnt and increase his vocabulary.
Does the iOS 4 API allow that? What are the limitations? Advantages? Disadvantages?
Thanks in advance
No is does not, you can only run voip. audio or navigation apps in the background.
Only one app can run at a time, and installing one app cannot effect any built in app. So no, there is no way to achieve what you are trying for here.
Your best bet is to instruct users to copy the word, open the app, and then you can snag whatever is on the clipboard then.
(Note there are multitasking APIs, but you still cant access anything outside of your app even if you convince the OS to let you run in the background for a little while)
is it possible and how to implement forbiden exit from application on iphone/ipad?
we have an application that must permanently work on ipad device. user should not have any way to exit from application. could you advise how to implement this functionality?
By jailbreaking it and installing custom software that enables you to do that.
Or putting a lot of tape over all the buttons.
Anyways, you can't do this with a standard app on a standard device. Just think about it - would be a pretty annoying thing for apps to do, wouldn't it?
Apple's own human interface design guidelines would forbid this. Your app can't encroach on the abilities of the OS that transcend your own application's responsibilities. The whole point is to have a consistent experience for the device and if you're modifying something as fundamental as switching apps, you're violating that principle.
If you can't exit the app, you're essentially turning your device into a single purpose unit. How do you expect to get back to the app list if you disable fast app switching and the home button?
Whatever solution you find would not be approved by the app store.
You should look at whether the current multitasking features can help chip away at your reasoning for needing the app to always run in the foreground.
If you are talking about an enterprise app locally distributed, you might be able to do this, though probably not.
The best idea would be to physically break or block the hardware button.
Or issue alerts to the device every 10 seconds making the thing effectively unusable when outside the application (you can ignore incoming notifications for you in-app).
Why do you have this requirement?
There is no way to implement this functionality. You cannot do it.
You can't do it, But if you jailbreak and configure the "Home-Button" settings you can :)
Btw, If you do it, the only way to quit will be a shutdown... And to shut down every time would be kinda annoying...
I want to write a perlscript on my iPhone that is able to give me a heads up at certain points so I'm wondering how I would go about doing that.
Is there a way to get a message through the gui from a script running in the background? I've been looking without much luck. I had a thought about inserting a fake sms into the sqlite db as a last resort but it seems somewhat unlikely that it would work.
It would be nice to be able to make a push notification style popup appear but that might too much to ask.
Any ideas?
For reasons of security and stability, Apple does not allow scripting languages on the iPhone. You can run them on a jailbroken phone but I'm given to understand it's a hassle.
From the Apple Push Notification Programming Guide:
Note: On a desktop system, a
background process is often the means
whereby users are informed of
downloadable data for an application
that currently isn’t running. But on a
device such as the iPhone, background
applications are, for performance and
security reasons, prohibited. Only one
application may be executing at a
time.
The iPhone is a secure and reliable phone first and a computer second. Computing is sacrificed to ensure a reliable phone.
I found a solution I liked so I decided to share it. I found an app for jailbroken iPhones called GriP - Growl for iPhone. Which changes the way push notifications and other messages are handled. It also makes it possible to send messages from the command line via something along the lines of:
/usr/bin/GriP -t "Title" -d "Description"
It has worked great so far.
Thank you for your help TechZen and molecules.
Do you want information from your phone itself or from an outside source? If you want information from an outside source, you could set up a Perl script on a computer to e-mail yourself notifications (see Sending Email with Perl Best Practice).
I need to build an application which will run on OS X, polling for data, and displaying that data full-screen in a purty, graphical way - generally "identifier: value" text in some sort of tabular format, but possibly with spark-lines to display historical changes, and "animations" (nothing fancy, just fading text and similar) to show updates.
However, I've no idea where to get started. I've no experience with desktop application development or development on a mac.
Where/at what should I be looking for OS X development information which will get me quickly up-to-speed (coming from a web-dev background)?
For OS X development, and a really nice overview that will get you writing actual applications quickly, I'm not sure anything can match Aaron Hillegass' book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.
It's considered by many to be the Bible of Cocoa programming, and it is example driven. You are writing applications that you can actually run throughout.
It is useful, although not as much so, for iPhone development, which you don't mention in your question, but you do in your tags.
If you really want to go native with OS X that will mostly mean learning Objective-C and Cocoa. You get started by becoming an Apple Developer Connection (ADC) member and downloading XCode. Inside the ADC site there is a lot of information that will help you get started, Objective C reference, sample code, etc. .
Depending on your background you might want to consider using Adobe Air for your application, if you know Flex or Flash that might be easier for you to learn.
There are also a couple of question already up on stackoverflow on this subject https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=learn+cocoa
Take a look at http://www.realsoftware.com. It's a cross platform development environment. Easy to learn, established user community, lot's of sample, shared code to get you started.