Apparently, “The iBooks app uses the ePub format — the most popular open book format in the world. That makes it easy for publishers to create iBooks versions of your favorite reads. And you can add free ePub titles to iTunes and sync them to the iBooks app on your iPad.”

Great news.

This is an update to my previous article about iBooks.

I am now starting to accept offers of work so if have a project or idea that you would like to talk to me about then please do get in touch, either via the Contact page here or via the main website’s Contact page.

You can read more about OTSOverlayView and download the code in an example project from the OTSOverlayView page.

The Source Code area has it’s own RSS feed but I will endeavour to post notifications in the main blog as well.

One of the main functions of the the iPad is that of an eBook reader. To quote Apple, “The iBooks app is a great new way to read and buy books. Download the free app from the App Store and buy everything from classics to best sellers from the built-in iBookstore.”

This implies that iBooks documents will only be available via the iBookstore which is a shame because I’d like to see a way for individuals and organisations to publish and distribute their own iBooks documents. For example, as a software developer I could create an iBooks version of my application’s user guide and my customers can load it onto their iPad and have the guide right where they expect it. Similarly schools could generate their own iBooks content and distribute them to their students.

How cool would it be to be able to drag an iBooks document into iTunes and then be able to sync it onto your iPad. Even better, allow iBooks documents to be emailed to you on the device and have iBooks import them.

Apple even have the perfect means to allow people to generate iBooks applications: Pages. I’d love to see both the Mac and iPad versions of Pages include an ‘Export to iBooks’ option.

The reason this may never happen: piracy. It would be really easy for people to convert existing eBooks into iBooks documents and distribute them and this is something the publishers would hate to see happen (understandably really).

Early in 2008 I wrote a simple AppleScript application to allow people to use multiple data files with FileMaker’s Bento. For some reason that I’ve never really gotten to the bottom of it caused some people problems by duplicating data files so a while ago I decided to re-write it as a proper Cocoa application. I had great plans and aspirations for it and a fairly substantial feature list but as time has passed development has dragged on and on without me releasing it. I’ve decided that I have to remedy this and realistically the only way I am going to do this is by scaling back the features and functionality in the application. This article describes what is staying and what is going and, perhaps more importantly, why.

For the first few years I was writing Windows VB6 applications, something that grated slightly because by then I had become a Mac user at home and even had a Mac at work (we were doing our development using VMWare by then so the base machine was irrelevant) and I wanted to start writing Cocoa applications. However at the start of 2008 I solved a simple video encoding problem using AppleScript and the company then began to look at the Mac platform in a whole new light and I was given the opportunity to become a Cocoa developer, something I have now been doing for a couple of years.

In the spring of 2008 I made a cheeky and very optimistic request: I asked to be sent to WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference, and, to my surprise, my request was granted. In all honesty, although I did learn an awful lot, I was probably a bit too inexperienced as a Cocoa developer to get the most out of the sessions. However I also experienced what is perhaps the more valuable side of WWDC, the networking. I met a lot of Cocoa developers and realised just how fantastic the Mac developer community is. I also met a lot of successful indie developers, both those that made their living by selling application and those who contract their development services out. The seed was planted.

For several reasons which I will not be going in to, the time is now right for me to make the jump from being an employee to being self-employed and on Monday 4th January 2010 I will start working my three month notice period and from the start of April I intend to earn my living by undertaking contract work. I am also planning to release some of my own OS X and iPhone applications and, if rumours are true, some applications for Apple’s upcoming tablet device.

I have decided to document some of my experiences in making this switch and I hope it will provide some useful information for other aspiring indie developers. I will be documenting as broad a range of topics as I can, ranging from setting up and marketing my company through to the business side of Apple’s App Store, from collaborating with other developers to dealing with clients and I hope that these articles will become a useful, business-orientated, subset of my developer blog.

xScope is a set of tools that can be used to perform tasks pertaining to on-screen graphics. For example, one tool allows you to measure dimensions, there is a loupe tool to allow you to inspect colours at a pixel-level and there is a tool that allows you to set up and display vertical and horizontal guides. The other tools are on-screen rulers, screen overlays to show the visible areas of alternate screen sizes, a tool that allows you to draw on-screen frames and a crosshair tool that provides co-ordinate information.

In a previous article, The Evolution of Lunchbox I mentioned that I use a designer for my artwork rather than trying to do graphics myself. Because the vast majority of developers should be doing this here is my guide to why you should use a designer and some tips about finding one who will work well with you.