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Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

blog.equinux.com

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Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#31

Post by seandougall »

nv-vn wrote: post #27
valuearb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are worried about any of the sensors on your phone always being on, remember that Apple and Google need their relative OSes to make battery charges last as long as possible. So always on stuff is problematic. For a good user experience Bluetooth and wifi usually need to be on, but GPS, camera and microphone usually don't.

How is always-on useful for Bluetooth? In fact, it's a huge vulnerability if that's the case. On Android I simply turn it on to connect to something and off to disconnect.

You can do that on iOS too -- and discoverability is, as usual, a transient state that you invoke manually. So most people probably leave BT on, but not discoverable, most of the time.

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#32

Post by HappyTypist »

valuearb wrote: post #26
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

So does this mean that the iPhone camera is always awake and scanning for said box with code?!

if you are worried about any of the sensors on your phone always being on, remember that Apple and Google need their relative OSes to make battery charges last as long as possible. So always on stuff is problematic. For a good user experience Bluetooth and wifi usually need to be on, but GPS, camera and microphone usually don't.

GPS is basically always on - on iOS if you have a background location app, you're being located every 5 minutes at least.

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#33

Post by pfranz »

kharms wrote: post #20
Theodores wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Also the box and placing was no 'security measure', just the way it worked. It is very interesting to see how the view of the person trying to 'break the cipher' is different to the mindset of the team that had to get it to work. They were probably security paranoid about the hackability of their work but in a totally different direction to that 'seen' by someone 'breaking the cipher'.

While I imagine it's not a security measure, I don't think it's "just the way it worked" either. It sounds like a conscious decision to limit false positives.

To elaborate what the parent was talking about when they said "the way it worked" (it might also be what you're talking about). My guess is that the box is useful to straighten, unskew, and scale the image before applying the OCR.

You could /try/ to do it looking at the baseline and cap heights of the text itself, but you wouldn't know the scale in either direction. I imagine those font identifiers would have been a lot better if they could have known those things.

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#34

Post by rbritton »

jolux wrote: post #19
mikeash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can generate promo codes on iTunes Connect. They're fairly limited: you can only get 100 promo codes per app version, and you're not allowed to use them for commercial purposes. As long as you're not selling these cards, I don't think Apple would have a problem with them.

Starbucks used to have cards that would let you download individual apps that worked like this.

An old episode of Build and Analyze discussed participation in the Starbucks promotion: http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/80

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#36

Post by userbinator »

I feel like I've seen that font before, on non-Apple electronic products, where it was used for similar serialisation and part numbering purposes. It actually looks like a monospace version of http://www.identifont.com/find?font=code&q=Go

I wonder if Apple actually designed this font, or just asked for permission and extracted it from the built-in font of some industrial printing machine.

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#39

Post by madeofpalk »

userbinator wrote: post #36

I feel like I've seen that font before, on non-Apple electronic products, where it was used for similar serialisation and part numbering purposes. It actually looks like a monospace version of http://www.identifont.com/find?font=code&q=Go I wonder if Apple actually designed this font, or just asked for permission and extracted it from the built-in font of some industrial printing machine.

That font is extremely different from the one Apple is using. Compare the Q and K for the biggest differences that wouldn't be effected by 'monspacifying' it.

Re: Cracking the code behind Apple’s App Store promo card design

#40

Post by oeauns8sr »

raldi wrote: post #35

> Surrounding box, w/ proportions of the box (ratio 3 width : 1 height) I don't understand this part. The aspect ratio of the box seems much more extreme than 3:1.

It is. I downloaded their image and it's like 540x128 or so. If it were 512x128 it would be 4:1, but it's slightly larger, like 4.2:1 (er... 21:5?). I was highly confused by that as well.
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