How-To

Do you always measure ingredients exactly when following a recipe? Do you say things like, "According to my pedometer app, I've walked 3.8 miles today."? Do you use decimals when filling out your weight on medical forms?

If you do, you'll be happy to know you can also quantify exactly how much battery power your iPhone has left.

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. 

In this age of multi-device households, sharing accounts with family members can be a little stressful. Add a tween or teenage into the mix, and it might be enough to push you over the edge. If you’ve ever had your phone ring with a FaceTime call from your 12 year-old’s best friend or received the “iCloud is full” error message after adding a new device to your household, this article is for you.

First, it’s important to know a little bit about your Apple ID and iCloud. Your Apple ID is what gives you access to iCloud, FaceTime, iMessage, iTunes, the App Store, and Game Center, among other services. Since these are the most-used services in my house, they are the ones I’m going to talk about here. Some families choose to share an Apple ID for some services and use separate Apple IDs for others. There is no “one size fits all” cure for family device management—it all depends on your family's preferences. If you forgot your Apple ID, here's how to reset your password.

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.

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.

Losing an iDevice is not something any of us plan to do—but it happens. The easiest way to keep track of your device is to turn on the Find My iPhone feature. Hopefully you'll never need it, but if you do, it's a lifesaver! And using Find My iPhone in conjunction with Family Sharing means you can find any family member's lost iDevice. Here are some reasons that you'll want to use Find My iPhone to see the location of your devices and family members:

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.

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:

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!

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.

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.

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. 

There have been a couple of times now that I’ve been startled out of a deep sleep by my iPhone emitting a high pitched screeching sound. The sound was to make me aware of an AMBER (child abduction) Alert. 

I think AMBER Alerts are a great thing and help save lives, but what annoyed me was that the alert was from a city almost 300 miles away from me. Was it really relevant to me?

Most of the time the alerts are pinged off of cell towers and are specific to the area. I’m not sure why I received this particular alert, but it made me consider turning it off.

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.

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.

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 14 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)

Core Data is the technology that allows you to store and retrieve information on an iOS device. Although it is an advanced technology often difficult to grasp, my goal in this post is to simplify Core Data so it can be easily used by beginners.

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