iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

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.

If you want to quickly call, FaceTime, or text a contact, there's no need to open any of the related apps. Those who have iOS 8 on their iPhone can quickly access Favorite and Recent contacts via the App Switcher.

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.

I like the features of Safari in iOS 8. In a previous tip I showed how to request the desktop version of a site by tapping in the address bar and then dragging down on the Favorites window that pops up. I also just learned of a quick way to add the current page to Favorites, to your reading list, or to shared links.

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.