Tweak the iOS simulator device size | Hacker News Reader

Tweak the iOS simulator device size

0xced.blogspot.co.at

41 pointsjamesjyu17 comments

Retaining the horizontal resolution and screen size was a wise choice. Apps usually have content that users scroll vertically. So most apps won't have to change their assets for the new iPhone. Games, however, do not use the native UI elements so they probably will be problematic.

I am not an iOS developer though. Perhaps someone who knows better can explain what impact this resolution/size change will have.

Apple is introducing auto-layout in iOS 6, which will make it relatively easy to design apps which scale to different resolutions. There were at least 3 talks on auto-layout at WWDC 2012.

Only new apps will be able to use auto-layout. I was talking about the backwards compatibility, that is whether existing apps will work well.

From the couple of talks I heard, I think Apple said something about auto-converting 'at runtime' in iOS 6 existing guide-based layouts into the new auto-layout thing based on constraints.

I keep forgetting that I am bound by an NDA. Can't say nothing more.

If your app was well-designed, you have to handle the double status bar on iPhone anyway. This change is pretty much the same as the double status bar.

So: well-designed app might not need to do anything at all.

That's great, but the only app that takes advantage of the taller screen is Springboard. All other apps, including your own, will be sized to 640x960.

Apps that have scrollable views such as Twitter should be able to automatically expand to fill the screen and look good.

Should be able to, but I'm assuming there's some kind of Info.plist key that needs to be set (Checking iOS 6 springboard now…)

I'd love to see more about how to reverse engineer this information.

I think it's most likely this wasn't reverse engineered, but was somehow leaked by an engineer at Apple. But, if you wanted to try, you can open the simulator binary in a text editor (/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/iPhone Simulator.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhone Simulator) where you'll find a bunch of strings towards the bottom, including:

* minVersion * capabilities * width * height * eagle * giraffe * forceEagle * forceGiraffe * canTether * homeOriginX * homeOriginY * homeOriginXHalfsize * homeOriginYHalfsize * productFamily * monkey * dogcow * squirrel

I'm not sure how one would have known to look there, but once you do it's kind of obvious that eagle/giraffe are related to customizing some sort of width/height. Based on the other strings, they definitely belong in the .plist, so it's pretty straightforward to figure things out.

I have no idea what squirrel, monkey, and dogcow are for.

It's pretty simple with a disassembler. For instance... http://cl.ly/image/330V1S0y3i1S

A disassembler won't tell you that "giraffe" means "simulated device height"

You have to be creative - giraffes are tall, eagles have wide wingspans. I can only assume future iPhones gather nuts for winter hibernation.

Obviously not. It's up to the tinkerer to figure that out (which is clearly possible by tracing around).

Again, this is pretty trivial with a disassembler such as Hopper that can generate pseudocode.

What disassembler is this?

Hopper - http://www.hopperapp.com/

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