As a tennis player, I often need to know when sunset will be (since the outdoor courts where I play don't have lights). Conveniently, Siri can tell me the time of sunrise and sunset. You cannot only find the time for today but also for any day of the next week. (Note, however, that Siri won't give you information for dates in the past.)
By Sarah Kingsbury
If the Calendar app is closed, Siri may be the fastest way to reschedule an appointment. If you're already in Calendar looking at the appointment you've realized you need to reschedule, dragging the event and dropping it into the new time slot can be even faster than using Siri.
By Becca Ludlum
With all of our information in "the cloud," it feels like we have everything at our fingertips. Emails, dates, calendar appointments, and phone numbers easily pop up on whatever device we're using and sometimes we take for granted how it all syncs up. Syncing your Google and Yahoo contacts with your phone is a super simple process and I'm going to walk you through it now.
By Violet Cooper
If you need to call someone, but it's not convenient to place the call right now, you can use the Reminders app to help you remember to make the call later. If you use Siri to create the call reminder, you'll be able to call the person directly from the reminder notification.
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 20 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, Xcode 6.3 and iOS 8).
So far in this series, you have learned just enough about table views to get through some basic exercises. In this post, I'll cover some of the basics by way of review, and then we will take a deep dive into the world of managing lists of data with table views.
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 19 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, Xcode 6.3, and iOS 8).
Now that you have learned the basics of Core Data and have learned how it works behind the scenes, we're going to finish implementing the main pieces of Core Data in the iAppsReview project and show you how to distribute a pre-populated database with your apps. You can download the project we have created so far from this link.
We've shown you before how to customize the Today view in your Notification Center by removing unwanted widgets and reordering the widgets you do want. But you may have noticed there's no option to remove the Apple Weather widget, which is frustrating if you've also got a widget from your preferred third-party weather app and want to remove any redundant widgets.
A lot of photo collage apps are popping up, and RealTimes (free) is the newest of the bunch. The app automatically makes 15-to-30-second videos using your iPhone’s photos and videos.
By Abbey Dufoe
If you’re a public transportation user and you don’t have Moovit (free), then you’re missing out.
Moovit is a transit alert app that acts like Waze for public transportation. While Waze allows users to input alerts like traffic, a cop sitting in the median, or an accident on roadways, Moovit users can report delays, out-of-service lines, incidents, crowdedness, or route change for public transportation.
By Abbey Dufoe
A lot of people feel that their fingers can’t type properly on the iPhone keyboard, especially if they have an older model and less space to type.
Enter MyScript’s Stylus keyboard (free). This keyboard model allows you to write into the keyboard extension with your finger or your own stylus of any variety. Tip: writing with a stylus is better—and it's more accurate. The app is more likely to pick up thin pen writing over sloppy finger writing.
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin build it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 18 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here. (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, Xcode 6.3 and iOS 8.)
We've been discussing Core Data in my last several posts and now you should understand the basics of:
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 17 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here. (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, iOS 8 and Xcode 6.3.)
In my previous post, you learned how to generate Swift classes from entities in a data model and you were introduced to the mmBusinessObject class, which provides an easy-to-use wrapper for Core Data classes. In this week's post, we're going to create our app's custom business controllers and take them for a test drive!
By Jim Karpen
While iCloud Photo Library has generally replaced iTunes for syncing photos between your computer and your iPhone or iPad, you can still opt to use the iTunes software. I can think of a couple reasons you may want to do this. If you'd like to keep a limited selection of your photos on your device in order to save storage space, iTunes may be a good choice. Also, some people simply don't feel comfortable using the cloud.
By Jim Karpen
Now that the Apple Watch has been available for a month, some experienced users are developing strong opinions about the best and most useful apps. And they've taken the time to post short lists of these.
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, How to Unleash Your Inner App Developer, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 16 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here. (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, iOS 8, and Xcode 6.3.)
In my previous blog post, you learned how to add Core Data to a project and design entities in a data model. In this post, you will learn how to generate entity classes from the entities in a data model and use them within your app. You can get the latest version of the iAppsReview project at this link.
By Carolyn Grayson
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, How to Unleash Your Inner App Developer, I will take you, the non-programmer, step-by-step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 15 of the series. If you are just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here. (This post has been updated to Swift 1.2, iOS 8, and Xcode 6.3).
In my previous post in this series, I discussed some of the basics of Core Data, the technology that allows you to store and retrieve information on an iOS device. You learned about entity data models, databases, and how you can improve on Apple's default Core Data implementation.
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, How to Unleash Your Inner App Developer, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure and you will experience how fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 10 of the series. If you're just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here (this post has been updated to Swift 1.2, iOS 8 and Xcode 6.3.)
In my previous post, you learned the basic mechanics of calling methods on an object. There's very little you can do in Swift, the language of iOS development, without calling methods. In this post, we're going to put into practice what you have learned about calling methods and integrate social media into the iAppsReview app we've been working on in this blog. I'm also going to introduce a new Cocoa Touch Framework concept known as collections. You can get the latest version of iAppsReview from this link.
By Kevin McNeish
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, How To Unleash Your Inner App Developer, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 9 of the series. If you're just getting started now, check out the beginning of the series here (this post has been updated to Swift 1.2 iOS 8, and Xcode 6.3.)
In my previous post, I taught you how to write your very first line of code. In the process, I touched on the concept of calling methods in Swift. In this post, we're going to take a closer look at the important concept of calling methods, and we will also work on converting the prototype iAppsReview into a fully-functional app.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Do you prefer to text in complete, grammatically correct sentences? Are you one of those people who know when you should use a comma versus when you should use a semicolon? Did you know that you can use Siri to punctuate your texts and emails like a pro?
