Category Archives: iPhone

Swipe Conference Highlights: Gamification

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

Of the many excellent sessions at this week’s Swipe Conference, the one titled “Build Better Cocoa Apps Using Game Mechanics” by Paris Buttfield-Addison was unique in its topic. In it, Paris outlined how gamification is currently viewed as something that can be … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mobile, Opinion | Leave a comment

iOS Developers and Designers: Stickin’ together is what good waffles do!

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

We’ve all heard developers say it: “I’m a terrible drawer” or “I’ve got no design skills”. Perhaps we’re even guilty of saying it ourselves – I know I am. But after attending this year’s Swipe Conference I now subscribe to … Continue reading →

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Swipe Conference Highlights: Using gestures as shortcuts within iOS apps

Posted on September 7, 2011 by

Yesterday was the last day of Swipe Conference so I thought I would take this time to reiterate one of the points I took from the first presentation by Josh Clark.  Josh covered quite a few topics and if you … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mobile, UI | Tagged | Leave a comment

New iOS Developers Shouldn’t Use Interface Builder

Posted on July 23, 2011 by

When I first started learning Objective-C and the iOS SDK 2.x a few years ago, one thing that I constantly struggled to get my head around was Interface Builder.  More specifically, why should I use it and how it could … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mac, Mobile | 18 Comments

Lessons Learnt with iOS In-App Purchasing

Posted on July 11, 2011 by

Recently we released an iPhone app to the iTunes appstore which contains consumable products that can be purchased by a user.  I want to share with you some of the pain we encountered when the app went live, and what … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Continuous Deployment of iOS Apps with Jenkins and TestFlight

Posted on June 23, 2011 by

I thought it was about time I should put together a simple guide on using Jenkins to build your iOS application – and for those of us that use the awesome testflightapp.com website for managing our iOS app distribution for … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile, Continuous Integration, iPhone, Mac, Mobile | Tagged , , , , , | 60 Comments

Location, Location, Location: Simulating iOS Location Data

Posted on June 20, 2011 by

Perhaps the most indispensable tool when developing iOS applications is the iOS simulator. However, if you want to test an app whose functionality revolves around utilizing the device’s GPS, then you’re out of luck – Apple’s iOS simulator will only … Continue reading →

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When to use Delegation, Notification, or Observation in iOS

Posted on June 14, 2011 by

A common problem that we often experience when developing iOS applications, is how to allow communication between our controllers, without the need to have excessive coupling. Three common patterns that appear time and time again throughout iOS applications include: Delegation … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mobile | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Why would you use Interface Builder for iPhone Development?

Posted on July 15, 2009 by

I don’t understand why you’d use Interface Builder to create a UI for an iPhone application. When I started building my first iPhone application at Shine, my colleagues advised me to avoid using Interface Builder. They’d tried using it when … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mobile | 44 Comments

Run-loops vs. Threads in Cocoa

Posted on June 2, 2009 by

As a relative newby to the world of Cocoa programming (on the iPhone in particular), I have spent some time trying to understand if and when you’d use a run-loop instead of launching a separate thread. I was unable to … Continue reading →

Posted in iPhone, Mac | 6 Comments