In part 2 of this post on Swift's protocols, you will learn practical uses for declaring custom protocols in your own apps, and learn further how they improve the architecture of your apps and make them easier to enhance and extend.

In part 1 of this post, I demonstrated how to implement existing Cocoa Touch protocols in your apps. Now you'll learn how and why to create your very own. First, we need to cover the basic construction of a Swift protocol.

It's that time of year again. Right after a new iPhone comes out there is the inevitable deluge of great cases to protect your new investment. This happens with every iPhone release, but perhaps never more markedly than with the introduction of the completely new form factors of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. If ever an iPhone called for a protective case it is these large and larger models, with their increased real estate, slick, rounded edges and extra heft. Rather than clump an assortment of different cases together, I'll be focusing on one great case each week over the course of the coming months. In a break from the norm, this week we are featuring two different waterproof cases: the LUNATIK TAKTIK 360 ($119.95) and the LUNATIK AQUATIK ($89.95).

Enabling notifications on an email thread lets you sit back and wait for that important reply without feeling the need to check your inbox every five minutes. You can turn on notifications for a thread either from the subject line of an email you are composing or by swiping left on a thread inside your inbox. Here are the two methods for enabling notifications on email threads in the Mail app.

Living In an OmniGroup World

By Daniel Rasmus

Just outside of Redmond, WA, center of the Microsoft universe, lies a little city we like to call Seattle. Seattle is the home to OmniGroup, a company dedicated to writing some of the best, and more enduring, Macintosh software around, along with complementary iOS apps to facilitate the increasingly mobile lifestyles of their customers.

I like Apple's Maps app, but a number of times it's taken me to a location that simply didn't exist: an Indian restaurant, a zoo, a hotel in a small town, a Chinese restaurant. I diligently follow Siri's directions and when she says I've arrived, the establishment in question is nowhere to be seen. And in several of these cases probably never existed. If you've had similar problems and prefer maps from third parties such as Google, you can now conveniently access these maps from within Apple's Maps app.

In previous posts I have touched on inheritance in Swift. In this post, I'm going to be diving deeper and giving you a fuller picture of how inheritance works in Swift, and how you can use it to create apps that are easy to extend when you need to add new functionality. Along the way, you will also learn about the important concept of polymorphism and learn how to use Xcode's new playgrounds!

One of the great new features in iOS 8 is the ability to send an audio message. Sometimes it's simply a lot more convenient to make a quick recording than it is to type a message. Why not simply call the person? Because convention requires that we then engage in conversation. An audio message is more efficient. And the party you're sending it to can listen at his or her convenience rather than having to answer the phone.

As a former weather guy, one part of the Apple announcement today really sparked my interest. The new iPad Air 2 will include a barometer. This both excites and makes me wonder just how well this feature will be harnessed. It is likely this is the same sensor introduced in the iPhone 6, though I admit that I haven't been able to test apps leveraging the feature yet.

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