If you’ve thought about learning iOS and Objective-C, have you thought about why you want to learn? What do you want to do with that knowledge? Are you hoping to stay relevant? Put an app on the App Store? Show your friends what you can do? If you’re not sure, here are five great reasons to learn iOS and Objective-C. …
When to use PhoneGap versus developing a native iOS app
After my article on How to become a professional iOS developer, a reader asked: What’s your opinion on systems like PhoneGap? When would you use that versus going native? This is a common question, and the answer most iOS developers give is “YOU NEED TO GO NATIVE” without really explaining why. And since they’re iOS developers, of course this is …
How to become a professional iOS developer
If you’re wondering how you can become a professional iOS developer, here’s what I’d recommend you do, in this order. I speak from (a) my professional experience in 5 years as an iOS consultant and 8 years as a software developer and (b) as a hiring manager – I’ve hired several iOS developers over the last 3 years to handle …
Can I learn Objective-C without knowing C?
Absolutely – you can learn Objective-C without knowing C. And in fact, if you’re interested in learning to build iOS apps, you should just learn Objective-C first – it’ll get you there much more quickly than learning C first, then Objective-C, then the iOS frameworks… I learned Objective-C without knowing C, and I still don’t really know C (despite the …
How I Reduced a View Controller by ~100 Lines (from 400 to 300)
The other day, I reduced a view controller in my iOS app by approximately 100 lines – from about 400 to about 300, and it felt great. Just reduced a View Controller by ~100 lines (400 -> 300) by moving its tableView dataSource to another class. Feels good. — Josh Brown (@jtbrown) March 11, 2014 I’m so tired of working …
Learn to build any iOS app you want with the Big Nerd Ranch Beginning iOS Bootcamp
If you’re interested in learning iOS, maybe you’ve done a little research already. There are books, workshops, videos, tutorials, and more – 30 million Google results, in fact, and the sheer number of options might have you paralyzed with the fear of choosing the wrong thing. You might choose something, then invest the time and money to start learning, only …
What’s your favorite service for tracking usage statistics in an iOS app?
On the iOS Programming subreddit, someone asked: TestFlight’s FlightPath beta cancelled. What is your favorite service for tracking usage statistics in a live app? I’ve tried Flurry Analytics, Google Mobile Analytics, and Localytics for tracking usage in my iOS apps, and I’ve settled on Google Mobile Analytics. It works similarly to Google’s web analytics – you can track new and …
How to add Facebook and Twitter sharing to an iOS app
In iOS 6 and above, you can just use UIActivityViewController to allow the user to share on Facebook or Twitter. And, in fact, UIActivityViewController allows you to share or send data to several other services, like Mail, Messages, the Camera Roll, Reading List, Flickr, Vimeo, AirDrop, and more. To use UIActivityViewController, you just need to pass some data to it …
The right way to check the iOS version in an app
Update 2018-03-02: if you’re developing in Swift, you should use availability checking. For example: if #available(iOS 11.0, *) { // use iOS 11-only feature } else { // handle older versions } The other day, I added UIAppearance to an app. It made my life so much simpler – I deleted a ton of code and just set the tint …
Year in Review 2013: What I learned from launching one failed and one successful product (and a bit about coauthoring a book and consulting)
I always enjoy reading Year in Review posts – I find them to be insightful, inspiring, educational, and just generally fun to read. I hope you find this one to be all of those. I’ll break down what we did, how it went, and what I learned so you can learn from my experience without having to go through the …