iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [167]
App Store The App Store is where users can go to easily download iPhone apps. Once you own an application, the App Store automatically notifies you when there's an update. Apple collects a 30 percent royalty and the rest goes to the developers. The App Store can be accessed for the iPhone or from iTunes on the user's desktop.
Bluetooth A communications protocol that is similar to Wi-Fi, except that it is a peer-to-peer technology. It is a local area network connection also known as a personal area network. The iPhone 3.0 SDK offers ad hoc connectivity built on Bonjour-powered data sharing.
Bonjour A general method to discover services on a network. Bonjour can help devices find each other on the same network with ease. With Bonjour, one device can advertise a service, and then other devices can search for that service on the network with the service name alone.
Cocoa Touch Cocoa Touch is the API for creating software applications to run on Apple's iPhone and iPod touch.
Core Animation Most of the UI animation effects you see on the iPhone are created using the Core Animation libraries. For example, when views flip or curl, that's the Core Animation library at work.
Core Data Core Data is a framework that makes working with data far less tedious. Instead of having to manually edit XML, binary, and SQLite objects directly, you can use higher-level entities that represent the same data.
Core Graphics The Core Graphics framework is an API that provides low-level, lightweight 2-D rendering with superb output fidelity. The Quartz 2D API is part of the Core Graphics framework.
Core Location Use the Core Location framework to determine the current latitude and longitude of a device, and to configure and schedule the delivery of location-related events.
firmware This refers to the iPhone operating system. Apple releases updates to the iPhone's firmware regularly. Each firmware is assigned a new version number. To date we have had the following iPhone OS firmware versions: 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, and 3.1.
framework A framework in the iPhone SDK is a software programming library or API. Examples of iPhone SDK frameworks are the Core Location framework and the OpenAL framework.
head-to-head Describes a scenario where two players are playing a game against each other on the same device, usually at the same time.
In App Purchase In App Purchase allows applications to process financial transactions for purchasing content and services from within your application.
Inspector The Inspector is a component of Xcode that allows developers to modify UI control properties. Using the Inspector, you can modify anything from colors to size.
Instruments Instruments is an application for debugging and profiling Mac OS X and iPhone OS code. Instruments helps you understand what is going on behind the scenes of applications.
Interface Builder Interface Builder is an application for designing and testing user interfaces. It is a part of Xcode and allows developers to use a visual editor, instead of code, to create their user interfaces.
iTunes iTunes is Apple's digital media player application. iTunes connects to the iPhone and iPod touch and synchronizes music, video, and apps to the device. It is also used to update the OS firmware on the devices.
localization (i18n) This is also known as internationalization and localization. This feature means applications running on the iPhone can handle different languages and regional differences.
Multi-Touch The technology that allows users to use multiple fingers to control many iPhone OS applications.
NSMutableArray The NSMutableArray class creates a modifiable array of objects. This class takes the NSArray and adds insertion and deletion options in addition to basic array capabilities.
opacity Refers to how opaque something is. If something is completely opaque, it cannot be seen through. Opaque and transparent are opposites of each other.