Under the Bridge

Here’s a handy little tool to add to your bag of iPhone programming tricks: iPhoneSimulatorExchange! What it’s for is to — wait for it — exchange iPhone Simulator binaries, eponymously enough:

Create 1-click installers of your iPhone Simulator apps to share with other developers for testing. Or to send it to someone to create Screencasts for reviews.

There’s actually been a good number of times when we just wanted a client’s feedback on a proposed workflow or the like and we’d wished that there was a way to get something quickly without the whole send me your device ID let me issue a new provisioning certificate now try and get iTunes to recognize it yadayadayada. And especially when we needed something signed off on by someone who doesn’t actually have an iPhone at all. Yes, that happens. But finding any old Mac to install the SDK on, now that’s a great deal less of a burden! So we’re quite looking forward to using this. It seems brain dead simple, start it up and it shows the apps installed in your simulator,

then just click the ‘Build Installer’ button and it creates a one-click installer with your splash screen, like

Double-click that, and it proceeds to install itself. Could it get any simpler? We think not. Yes, we can see this making working with clients a good deal less hassle, indeed. Much thanks to these GrandTotal fellows for this!