ios - The Dangling Pointer

The Dangling Pointer

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A collection of 20 posts

Preventing Spam iCloud Calendar Invites

I woke up this morning seeing two notifications of calendar appointments I just couldn't miss. [sarcasm] Annoying, right? Here's the best part. No matter what I do - Accept, Maybe, Decline - the sender of the spam appointment receives the notification of my action. There'

Swizzling in AFNetworking somehow breaks iOS' NSDoubleLocalizedStrings

Tools to Help Test Localization Apple provides some pretty slick tools to help with localization testing in your apps. I had completely forgotten about two launch parameters that make it possible to find those pesky layout problems early: * NSDoubleLocalizedStrings - Any calls made to NSLocalizedString will double the strings to

Rediscovering CouchDB

Rediscovering CouchDB

I'm currently writing the materials for my presentation on Core Data & Synchronization of data for RWDevCon 2016. One of the requirements for the demonstration app is a web service that provides a REST API to sync with. One of the requirements of the talk is that I

iOS 9 Good Morning & Afternoon Weirdness

I had a user write in to get some help clarifying a behavior with the Migraine Diary app I wrote on iOS 9. The user explained that every morning she turns on her phone and Migraine Diary shows on the screen and when she opens it, it tells her Good

Recording Your iOS Device with QuickTime Player

Recording Your iOS Device with QuickTime Player

The Task You need to record your iPhone or iPad's screen to show someone a bug or demo a feature to your customers. In the past the only method available was to use a program like Reflector to emulate an AirPlay/Apple TV and then record on your

Providing Emergency Contacts with iOS 8

Providing Emergency Contacts with iOS 8

The Problem Something that has been missing on iOS for a long time is a reliable way to provide emergency contact information. Imagine you're out and about and you end up having an accident or have an acute attack from a known medical condition you have. We all

Core Data Object IDs can change

I thought I knew a lot about Core Data with having used it a lot over the past years. Today, I learned something new that I feel like I should have known for a long time. NSManagedObjectIDs can change. Seriously. If you want a different notion of identity, you can

Live Storm Chasing App

Enjoy chasing storms from your couch like me? There's a great app called "TVNweather Live Storm Chasing" that I've been using to watch live streams from actual storm chasers out in the field. You'll see names like Reed Timmer (TornadoVideos.net) and

On the Importance of Glue

Glue is the thing that ... well ... glues everything together. You don't see glue (if the product is made right) but it plays an important role in the overall satisfaction with the product. If you buy a bird house that has bad gluing technique or not enough glue, you

Stop Being Lazy with Accessibility

I'm making a pledge as a software developer to think of accessibility with every change I make. My first step was to turn on iOS' VoiceOver and test everything I'm working on with it. In the first five minutes of using it, I've

iOS Background Refresh & Force Killing

If you've done any work with background refresh (application:didReceiveRemoteNotification:fetchCompletionHandler:) on iOS 7 you know that it can be a pain to debug your code with. Some things I've discovered: 1. Background refresh will start your app if it's not running. 2. If

NSNotificationCenter Block-based Observer

Back in iOS 4, a nifty block-based observer method was added to NSNotificationCenter: * (id)addObserverForName:(NSString *)name object:(id)obj queue:(NSOperationQueue *)queue usingBlock:(void (^)(NSNotification *))block; Super convenient, right? I love using blocks to pass simple callbacks to controllers instead of creating a delegate protocol. There is a catch

Fixing Layer Transparency Issues in Xcode

If you're looking to get higher frame rates and general application performance tweaks from your iOS application, you may need to take a look at transparent settings on your subviews. Any time you set a subview to be transparent, the OS has to blend multiple layers together to

iOS Basics: nil vs NULL vs NSNull

Yes, there are three ways to represent a null value in Objective-C. NULL = Absence of a value with C-style pointers nil = Absence of value with Objective-C object variables NSNull = A nil boxed as an object for storage in a collection If you try adding nil to a NSDictionary or NSArray,

iOS - Customize Table View Cells

Ever wanted to have alternated colors on your table view cells? If so, you've probably done something inside of cellForRowAtIndexPath and applied a background color to your cell there. Would you be surprised to know that's completely wrong? Yup. Wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG. I didn'

iOS - Pull App Version From Bundle Configuration

We all like to put the current application version number in an "about" screen somewhere for users to reference. It's a pain, however, to have to update that screen every time we do a release as well as the version in the target configuration for the

iTunes Connect - Invalid Binary

I spent the past week pulling out my hair trying to submit an update for Centare's EyeOnWeather application to iTunes Connect. I kept getting a reject from the system and all I got for an error message was "Invalid Binary." THANKS, THAT'S SOOPER. Eventually

UITextView having rounded corners

I've been using a UITextView in an app and realized that it didn't have any rounded edges like the default behavior exhibited by the built-in iOS apps. For example in the calendar app, setting the Notes field shows: Inside of Apple's Human Interface guidelines

Xcode 4 - Problem submitting App with Static Library

I'm submitting a new version of my Migraine Diary App to the App Store and was running into problems with Xcode 4 giving me the following error: "[Your App Name] does not contain a single-bundle application or contains multiple products. Please select another archive, or adjust your

iOS Basics - UINavigation Controller & Back Button Text

I've brought an old project out of the moth balls recently, the Migraine Diary application I wrote as part of my master's thesis. It was my first "real" iPhone app and I call tell I didn't know what I was doing entirely