Since iOS app extensions run as part of a host application rather than as part of their containing app (i.e. your app’s extensions run in somebody else’s app), data sharing isn’t automatic. Finding standard locations like the documents directory doesn’t work for shared data. In this post I’ll go through the details of how to…
Recently I’ve been working on some iOS 8 app extensions, and I’ve run into a few non-obvious details that might come in handy for anyone else in the same situation. Some of the following relates to bugs still in the system, and so will probably only be relevant for a limited time. Debugging: General The…
After my past travails using iCloud with Core Data, I was both interested and concerned when Apple announced CloudKit at WWDC 2014. In this post I’m going to go over what Apple has planned for CloudKit from the perspective of someone wanting to sync app data via some cloud-based means. “Planned” is a key word…
My Passbook and iBeacon enabled business card was something of a hit at WWDC last week. Some people wanted more detail on how it worked or how to create their own version. This post describes the process, from the perspective of a software developer. If you’re not a developer, there are numerous web sites that…
At WWDC 2014 Apple introduced Swift, a new programming language for iOS and OS X developers. Objective-C has had a long and distinguished run with Apple, but times change and we move on. In recognition of this, and in reference to the [objC retain]; shirts of days gone by, I set up a Teespring campaign…
I’ll be in San Francisco during WWDC next week (though without a ticket). This is the only time of year I ever think about business cards, and this year I decided that paper business cards suck and it was time to do something cooler. Instead I’ll have an electronic card distributed via Passbook. Electronic cards…
Last year I did a series of posts here where I ran through problems I had encountered with Core Data’s iCloud integration, with various solutions and workarounds I had been able to devise. Then iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9 came out with numerous visible (and internal) updates and people started asking me, so,…
If you’re writing an iOS app and you need to know the user’s current location, the answer is straightforward: use Core Location. That fires up device GPS (when available). Apple’s A-GPS combines this with things like local Wifi networks and IP addresses to work out the device’s location. All of this, of course, assuming that…
Over at the Big Nerd Ranch blog, my friend Mark Dalrymple continues his “Inside the Bracket” series with an article on practical uses of Objective-C’s run time introspection. Last time you saw the parts of the Objective-C runtime API that let you query a bunch of the metadata the compiler keeps around once it’s done…
This week was DBX, Dropbox’s first ever developer conference. The big news as far as I’m concerned is their new Datastore API. In a break from their file-oriented past, Dropbox now has an API for syncing structured data between devices. I’ve long been a happy Dropbox user and I’ve lately been a frustrated iCloud developer.…