MFi Technical for iOS Device

If you want to access MFi technical specifications and/or sample quantities of licensed components for development purposes you can apply for development license. The MFi Manufacturing License is need by companies who will manufacture MFi accessories as finished goods.

If you want to develop cases for iPhone, iPad or iPod you don’t need any license. Low Energy/BTLE/Bluetooth 4.0 or standard Bluetooth profiles supported by iOS are not part of the MFi Program so if you want to develop any products using Bluetooth then you don’t need MFi License. If you are an iOS application developer and want to develop app that communicates with MFi accessory then you don’t need MFi license.

After your device approved by Apple you have to make changes to your iphone application to support that hardware and communicate with device. Changes should be as follow,

1. Provide external accessory framework for communicating with external hardware connected to an iOS-based device through the 30-pin dock connector or wirelessly using Bluetooth. 
2. Configure info.plist file correctly to support external accessories. Include the UISupportedExternalAccessoryProtocols key to declare the specific hardware protocols your application supports into info.plist file.
3. Import external accessory framework that used to communicate with accessories attached to your iOS device. This is useful to integrate accessory level features into your iOS app.
4. Create EASession object, which is useful for managing the accessory interactions. Data transfer in your app occurs through NSInputStream and NSOutputStream objects.
5. Accessories are not visible until its connected to iDevices. Application can get the appropriate accessory object and open a session using one or more of the protocols supported by the accessory.

The iPhone or iOS application developer should be in touch with manufacturer of device to understand different configuration of device, Input/output support by device, services provided by device etc. External device must support set of protocols for sending and receiving data between device and application.

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iOS 7 Expected Features

As we all know “Change is the nature of the universe”, we always want something new that make our lives more exciting, provide more gestures, fill colors and put extravagant pixels on our finger tips, that our eyes can’t differentiate them. World’s leading smart phone giant is about to launch its most advance mobile operating system that will run on i-Devices called iOS-7.

In this era of robust mobile devices, operating system plays huge role for success of the device. Several unique feature provided by operating system can attract crowd to purchase the device along with design and hardware residing the devices.

Here we are going to enlist those entire features, which will boom the market of i-Devices as well as iOS 7.

Application Enhancement:

1) Screen Sharing Feature

All mac users must be aware of Screen sharing feature provided by Mac OSX. We mac users always want each thing present in Mac OSX should be inside your tiny mac (iPhone / iPad).

2) Camera App Enhancement
There is a separate category for photo editing app on app store. People are always seeking for the app using which they can show-off on social portals by applying Sepia, Negative or Vintage theme. But these are old-fashioned way to edit your photograph or images.

Some innovative ideas are expected to be integrated with Camera app that can excite users to take picture only using device running on iOS.

3) Customizable Theme, Lock screen and notification Bar
“Real Power lies in the customization”. Sometimes there are too many restrictions for iOS users being unable to customize few settings. To overcome this restriction people are tempted to do Jailbreak, which voids warranty from Apple.

Apple should provide little freedom to their users in this version of iOS by enabling them to customize their Theme, Lock Screen as well as Notification Bar.

Apple should also provide API to their iOS application developer to bring more innovative customization.

4) “i-Creative”
One app is still missing in core apps provided by Apple or built-in apps for iOS, that is app for creative people who always want to produce some artistic object by playing and integrating Photos, Music, Text, Drawing and other creative stuff altogether.

5) Facetime Enhancement for Group Chat
Apple has always improved on Facetime and iMessage. In this iOS upgrade we expect further enhancement of Facetime to provide group videoconference.

6) iCloud + Music
In iOS 7, we expect some portion of iCloud will be extended to Music Library, where user can save his favorite music track.  From iCloud user will be able to stream music to ‘N’ number of devices where he/she uses same iCloud account.
This enhancement will save few devices’ memory that is to be utilized for some other purpose.

7) Emergency Weather Buzzer
This will act as an emergency alarm for users. It can be either core OS feature or a separate app for specific advance weather dependent functionality.  

Hardware Enhancement

1) RFID technology integration with iOS
If Apple integrates RFID technology and configurable Tag Detection using iPhone, then user can operate Car, Garage door and Door-lock system simply by showing iPhone to the sensors. 

Even you can eliminate smart key in 5-Star Hotel, just by replacing it with Hotel/Motel specific an iOS APP.

2) Magnetic Chip integration with iOS
If Apple integrate configurable smart magnetic chip with iPhone in upcoming model and provide a way to use iPhone as passes used for Bus, Train, Tram and many more.

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