IT'S JUST CODE

16 Aug 2010

Why Apple's Facetime costs a SMS for each call - And most likely why.

Recently when using my iPhone4, I changed out the micro SIM to try a Telecom Sim and noticed this screen below and thought that was interesting.

iPhone SMS screen showing possible charges

So I asked VodafoneNZ on Twitter, and they confirmed these charges.

Twitter conversation - read from the bottom up

So obviously I looked at my bill to see what I have been charged for.

Vodafone bill - I got my iPhone on the 5/08/2010

And there are two charges to a UK number (44).

After reading around a bit and with details from Vodafone, what am I really charged for using FaceTime?

MY THEORY ON COSTS.

1. When you first get your phone, Facetime needs to register with this 44 number to say, "hey I got facetime, you can facetime me"

2. If your carrier settings change, it may need to re-register with this service as I can see I have been charged 2x and I know my carrier settings have changed once.

3. When calling your friends in New Zealand using the Facetime button in contacts (eg not switching to a Facetime call during a normal call). I can see I am charged one of my SMS messages on my account, luckily I get heaps.

4. When calling a friend overseas (I have no clue).

ANOTHER THEORY

1. SMS to the 44 number for each new contact you Facetime

2. SMS might or might not be required for any subsequent Facetime calls (could use push notifications).

@tarlen's possible explanation

Since I have only successfully had 3 Facetime calls with friends and only been charged 2x, I think the international message is only to register me and the device.

WHY SHOULD I PAY A SMS MESSAGE TO FACETIME.

I think this is both good and bad, overall it might be the price to pay so we don't get Facetime voice spam.

GOOD

• When the price of something is free then it is very easy to spam - eg email spam, costs virtually nothing to send an email, lots of spam.

• SMS messages in general are very reliable, I don't recall or know of missing a SMS message in the last year or two.

• I get enough SMS messages bundled in my plan to not worry one bit.

BAD

• Well Apple has a super massive data centre that they bragged about at WWDC last year that can send millions of push messages very quickly and can handle massive loads. They could have used this. It is possible that they are.

• Do I have to pay even if the use does not pickup. (this could be good, as that could also be used by spammers to simple call you, hang up and see if you call back).

• Cost and international costs which are not in my free bundle. (assuming Facetime uses SMS messages for all calls).

I am open to any comments here.

3 Aug 2010

Making your software life a lot easier.

For many projects, you create your own development folder structure. One key task is making sure you have what I call the deploy folder.

In this folder is only the files and folder that will be copied to the server or to a client.

One of my favourite tools is DropBox.com , DropBox simply creates a set of folders on you computer which are automagically synced to the cloud. You can also create a new folder within this set and share that folder with your clients or friends. Files in these shared folders are also synced near instantly. Its really quite "magical", I think of DropBox as the poor mans file server.

To my point. I like to automate the deployment of my file deploy folder to a dropbox shared folder. I do that with 1 click and this file.

So this file is located in the sub directory "compile"

Look at the first line it says.

#! /bin/zsh

This means don't use the old mac Bash Shell but use something called zShell. It has a few extra commands that will come in handy.

What is cool about zShell is that you can find where the command file was executed from. Which means you can sync files relative to your project directory.

Now I use "rsync" to copy on the changed files, "-v" means shows me anything that is copied. "-a" is archive mode which only copies missing files or changed files. and --exclude allows me to exclude any types of files or folders that I want ignored (yes I have some PSD files in my deploy).

If you write this code in TextMate and save the file as mirror_files.commmand.

Then since OSX does not allow you execute this file by double clicking it.

In TextMate goto Bundles > Shell Script > Make Script Executable.

Or using terminal the below command will make it executable

chmod u+x mirror_files.command

Now you can just double click this file to run it.

When you run the file you should see something like this.

This really does make life a lot easier for me and my clients.

3 Aug 2010

Getting your iPad on 3G.

Get the XT Prepaid Mobile Broadband 500MB - you don’t have to pay monthly - Confirmed By Telecom ^JL.

If you use your iPad now and again outside of your wifi zone. You could get 500MB of data from Vodafone or 2º but it’s going to cost you $20/month. You must also pay every month. On XT Prepaid Mobile Broadband 500MB, you pay for what you use and have 6 months to top up.

You need to tell them at the Telecom Store that you want the 500MB Mobile Broadband prepaid rate on the sim when you buy it. (they will probably look at you confused).

The cheapest is $29.95
(it says per month, but it should say, “500MB of data capped at 29.95”).
http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/mobilebroadband/plansandpricing/prepaid

This 500MB prepaid rate basically means you pay 10c/Mb up to $29.95 which is 300MB. Then you get a free 200MB if use that in a single calendar month.

“If you use less than your data allowance you’ll only be charged for what you use, and your credit balance will roll over to the next calendar month.”

Which means if you use only 100MB in a month, you only pay $10. If you use 300MB in one month you are billed $30 and if you use 500MB of data in 1 month you will be still be billed $30. You can add another 500MB though by topping and getting 1GB for $60 (I am rounding my values up to make my example clearer).

You must top up every 6 months.
“Any top-up credit needs to be used within six months otherwise it will expire and you need to make sure you top up at least once every six months to avoid your Prepaid account being deactivated.”

http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/yourmobile/topup ("By the way, just so you know…")

This means if you use you iPad now and again on 3G it’s pretty good, if you need heaps of data, eg 500MB to 1GB this plan is good.

You can see lots more options here if you have more data requirements.
http://www.whiteandblack.co.nz/2010/07/ipad-data-plans-comparision-xt-vodafone-and-2-degrees/

Thanks to Matthew Buchanan for his assistance with pulling the correct data together for this post.

23 Jul 2010

Mac OS X: ssh key generation and deployment

http://www.geektimes.com/macintosh/os/x/10_3/and/ssh_keygen.html

Creating RSA keys for OSX / Linux

18 Jul 2010

sponno's iPhone-Photoshop-JSX-Icon-Exporter at master - GitHub

http://github.com/sponno/iPhone-Photoshop-JSX-Icon-Exporter

Photoshop - iPhone App Icon Export for iPhone 4/3 Touch and iPad.

Creates all 6 icons sizes that are required for these devices from homescreen, retina display, spotlight search

1. To use this script, double click the script file, photoshop will launch and ask you for a 512x512 icon file of any 
image format (jpeg, psd, gif, png etc.)
2. Select the file and photos shop will create 6 icon files and save these with the correct names in the save folder as 
the 512 image.

3. Add these images into your iPhone project and update you app plist.
Read Apples Q&Q 1686 on how to add this icons to your info plist
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/qa/qa2010/qa1686.html

24 May 2010

Video JS | HTML5 Video Player

http://videojs.com/

HTML5 video player, fallback support for IE, Opera, works with iPhone and supports, h.264, ogg and webm

24 May 2010

Duplicate line in xCode with Ctrl+D, finally.

http://www.xinsight.ca/blog/xcode-trick-creating-a-shortcut-to-duplicate-a-line/

More details on all the commands to make your own.
http://www.erasetotheleft.com/post/mac-os-x-key-bindings/

12 May 2010

OSX SVN remove pesky svn files from a folder

In Terminal navigate to the correct folder first.
To see what this command is going to remove run

find . -name .svn

Then when you want to remove these files. Note the traling slash semi colon.

find . -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;

2 Apr 2010

Developer-To-Developer iPhone App Distribution Without Ad-Hoc Provisioning

http://www.mobileorchard.com/developer-to-developer-iphone-app-distribution-w...

A pretty simple way to send an app for another developer to re-sign and install on their machine. Watch 2min Vimeo video to see how easy this is.

26 Mar 2010

SSH Public/Private keys.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11128067#11128067

Quickest way to generate and share SSH keys.
1. Generate key (if you haven’t done this before).
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C “tekkub@gmail.com”

2. Upload key.
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh user@host ‘cat - » ~/.ssh/authorized_keys’

You may have to login to the server and mkdir .ssh
If you get permission denied, delete this servers .ssh folder and recreate it again.