Douglas Hill’s posts in 2015

1 June 2015

Really excited to join the incredible team at @PSPDFKit today. »

8 June 2015

Going to watch the WWDC Keynote at Yoyo Wallet attending.io/events/wwdc-keynote-relay-yoyo-wallet »

Safari Shared Link extensions sound intriguing. The new way to make RSS apps? »

News looks like a kid’s pop up book. »

9 June 2015

Objective-C __kindof is nice: +NSEntityDescription insertNewObject… and +UITableView dequeueReusableCell… no longer return id. »

Now I can scrap github.com/douglashill/touch-prediction — it’s built in. »

23 June 2015

We just released Cambugs First Words to help children become fluent, confident readers itunes.apple.com/app/cambugs-first-words/id929792621?ls=1&mt=8 »

2 July 2015

I had a quick look at variance with Objective-C generics. Covariance and contravariance are supported. gist.github.com/douglashill/802ed825389cc5de6e9d »

6 July 2015

Typing in @SlackHQ is much easier after turning on correction and replacement from the contextual or Edit menu.

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15 July 2015

iOS 9’s UICollectionView interactive movement is astonishingly easy to implement and ‘just works’. »

22 July 2015

Reasonable to not expect a nullability conversion warning for this?

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30 July 2015

It isn’t immediately obvious how to enable secure decoding with NSKeyedUnarchiver gist.github.com/douglashill/05d8ac23e6435ae578ad »

Another lively evening at @NSLondonMeetup. Flattered to be ID checked going into the bar. »

Key takeaways:

13 August 2015

Apple bug: UIPresentationController lets you initialise it incorrectly openradar.appspot.com/22269465 »

Another iOS 9 bug: the new back button results in apps in the wrong order in multitasking openradar.appspot.com/22277673 »

One more: I really like swiping from right-to-left to go forward in Safari; iOS 9 Slide Over breaks that. openradar.appspot.com/22278219 »

24 August 2015

Specific bugs with Apple’s UIPresentationController:

More general problems with UIPresentationController:

Of all these UIPresentationController problems, the important one is that adaptivity is limited openradar.appspot.com/22394182 »

Tumblr had a similar problem combining a custom presentation with a popover cocoa.tumblr.com/post/92070238973/how-can-i-use-both-uipopoverpresentationcontroller »

I fixed @steipete’s presentation controller hack gist.github.com/douglashill/e1e1d6fd3d59a3c59295 »

Still a hack »

25 August 2015

It’s nice when an old question on Stack Overflow is trivial to solve with new API. Progress! stackoverflow.com/a/32200627/2207249 »

28 August 2015

Had a fantastic time seeing great people at @NSLondonMeetup yesterday. Good times! »

29 August 2015

3D Gunstar Heroes: buy buy buy! nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-3DS-download-software/3D-Gunstar-Heroes-1043756.html »

4 September 2015

Bugs with iOS using the wrong view controller for the status bar:

Wouldn’t it be nice to coordinate two view controller transitions? openradar.appspot.com/22565398 »

7 September 2015

UIPageViewController needs to learn some adaptivity. »

This is Xcode’s Page-Based Application template using two pages because it’s in ‘landscape’.

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9 September 2015

Looking forward to running iPad Pro and Apple TV simulators on my 11″ Macbook Air. »

App Store submissions don’t seem to be open yet for apps built with the iOS 9 SDK. »

Still no UIUserInterfaceSizeClassLarge developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIKitDataTypesReference/index.html#//apple_ref/c/tdef/UIUserInterfaceSizeClass »

Marketing came in too late

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My favourite feature on the iPad Pro is the four speakers: stereo now works in landscape. »

My least favourite addition to the iPad Pro is the crap filling in spaces on the keyboard: \ | ^ ` and worst of all caps lock. »

Software keyboard can do better. We can have different characters available for programming and for prose. »

10 September 2015

watchOS for Watch, tvOS for TV, iOS for i »

About 750 APIs are __TVOS_PROHIBITED

grep -r __TVOS_PROHIBITED /path/to/TV/SDK/frameworks

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Force/3D touch in not available on the iPhone 6S simulator. Trait collections’ forceTouchCapability is Unavailable. »

11 September 2015

iOS 9 SDK/Xcode 7 App Store submissions are open. @cambugs is in. »

14 September 2015

Undo and cancel are both translated into French as annuler. And this happens:

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2 October 2015

Apple rereleases Xcode 3 for nostalgic Mac OS X Leopard and iPhone OS 2.0 development.

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On my Mac the Movies folder contains videos; on my iPad I go to the Videos app to see films. I search for the wrong thing every time. »

I fell in love with Shovel Knight all over again playing thought Plague of Shadows. Really challenging, but so much fun. »

Just found Plague Knight can fly indefinitely by mapping two attack buttons and charging while throwing midair. Feels godlike. »

4 October 2015

The Martian was great, just like everyone said. I don’t think I’m made for space travel. »

Made a parts of speech highlighter at @sideprojectlon today. Might be useful for foreign language reading.

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My test article about water on Mars: 1jour1actu.com/science/de-leau-coule-sur-mars-75142/ »

5 October 2015

Nice to see improvements to WWDC video search — developer.apple.com/news/?id=10052015a — but I still see vastly better results from asciiwwdc.com »

Ah, Apple’s search inside WWDC videos only covers WWDC 2015. That’s why I see zero results developer.apple.com/search/?q=uipresentationcontroller&type=Videos »

27 October 2015

It’s bug time. First, back button truncation openradar.appspot.com/23255903

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UIKit bug: status bar inset can be applied twice openradar.appspot.com/23256354

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UIKit bug: form sheets underneath status bar on iPad in compact widths openradar.appspot.com/23257624

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Not interfering with adaptive presentation — an acceptable use case for respondsToSelector:? openradar.appspot.com/23260682 »

It’s hard to make a minimal UISearchBar look good on a dark background openradar.appspot.com/23262835 »

Presentation controllers do not know their future container traits. Makes adaptive presentation controllers harder. openradar.appspot.com/23273355 »

UIPageViewController uses orientation. Very broken in this age of adaptivity. openradar.appspot.com/23274100

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Last UIKit bug for now. Why do we have separate methods for trait and size changes? openradar.appspot.com/23263181 »

28 October 2015

Hmm, Facebook is showing an event time inconsistently. On some screens it’s an hour earlier than it should be. Daylight savings bug? »

29 October 2015

It doesn’t seem advertised or confirmed anywhere, but OS X El Capitan Disk Utility can resize Core Storage volumes. Free space reclaimed! »

2 November 2015

Spectre was quite exciting, although seemed lacking cohesiveness. Great action scenes. »

Spectre’s north Africa scenes were especially gratifying since I recently went to Morocco. Train wasn’t as luxurious in real life. »

4 November 2015

OS X Photos with Optimize Mac Storage uses more space than I expected: it downloaded 32 GB of a 46 GB library. »

8 November 2015

With Halloween over, what do you do with the leftover half-mouldy pumpkin? vine.co/v/eluVIMdpvu2 »

Pumpkin: final smash vine.co/v/elu3vBvLil0 »

State of video on Twitter:

9 November 2015

I somehow only just realised @1Password 5 is available, after it’s been out for a year. Not sure why it didn’t autoupdate. »

10 November 2015

There’s talk of a sequel to Radiant Historia: the smartest time travel game I’ve played. Yes please! #rh_atlus »

11 November 2015

I’m pretty pleased how this photo of Saturday’s Guy Fawkes fireworks turned out. New iPad wallpaper.

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12 November 2015

I agree with everything here. Fix the root cause and make iOS self sufficient. twitter.com/SteveStreza/status/664918885473259522 »

13 November 2015

iOS Keychain programming guide is very misleading. This post from five years ago is helpful. useyourloaf.com/blog/keychain-duplicate-item-when-adding-password.html »

Switching Bank branch -> Charing Cross branch on the southbound @northernline at Euston is not pleasant. Like a maze. »

15 November 2015

It’s @sideprojectlon today from 12. Bring something cool to work on. »

Just learned about @JetSmarter from @mostgood. Turns out ‘accessible private jet travel’ is a thing. »

There shouldn’t be spelling mistakes in your source code. I’m making tools to help with this. »

I’m looking for beta testers for my Mac spell checking tools. Email me if you want to get involved: hello at douglashill.co »

Apple Pencil has high latency offset by excellent prediction: when implemented properly it feels great. »

Just found the iOS Short Name setting and fixed the horribly formal ‘D Hill’ labelling in Messages. support.apple.com/en-us/HT202590 »

16 November 2015

Going to @SwiftLDN for the first time tonight. I’m the lost Objective-C developer using using key-value coding in Swift. »

17 November 2015

Great talks and people at @SwiftLDN. I wonder if @radexp’s github.com/radex/SwiftyUserDefaults could work in Objective-C. »

The red dot in the 7 Up logo is a character called Cool Spot. What? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Spot »

A shame I missed games in the early ’90s. This is so surreal: Cool Spot SNES Gameplay youtube.com/watch?v=nsbwXl-EuHw »

18 November 2015

The German word for cotton is Baumwolle: tree wool. So logical. »

20 November 2015

Xenoblade Chronicles X comes out in two weeks. It’s been a while coming. Hype crescendo time. »

Your Apple TV Tech Talks Status. »

25 November 2015

I wrote about our problems with UIPresentationController and adaptive presentations at PSPDFKit. Read more »

26 November 2015

Good point by @kharrison: with iPad Split View, all scroll views should be ready to avoid the keyboard. useyourloaf.com/blog/split-views-and-unexpected-keyboards.html »

I have a class for avoiding the keyboard. No subclassing necessary. github.com/douglashill/DHAvoidKeyboardBehaviour »

And UIKeyboardDidChangeFrameNotification works better than watching for showing and hiding notifications. Simpler too. »

28 November 2015

Wii U ordered. Too many great games to not buy it; not enough time to play them. I don’t know how this will work. »

This weekend @cambugs Phonics is free. Get your children reading confidently. itunes.apple.com/app/cambugs-phonics/id676677690?mt=8 »

Cambugs First Words is also on sale this weekend: the next step on a child’s journey to fluent reading. itunes.apple.com/app/cambugs-first-words/id929792621?mt=8 »

4 December 2015

Back from seeing the PSPDF home team in Vienna; Christmas coming up; Swift open source; Xenoblade Chronicles X out. Good times. »

5 December 2015

The @Nintendo_NWR 2015 charity telethon starts in a couple of hours. It’s always a good laugh. nintendoworldreport.com/sitenews/41550/6th-annual-nwr-live-podcast-telethon-for-childs-play »

8 December 2015

It sucks that @ThreeUK blocks iPads on pay as you go. I pay per MB; why does it matter what device I use? #makeitright »

12 December 2015

Apple Pencil really calls for a higher level API. UIDrawView would be even better than example code. twitter.com/drwave/status/668535669052960768 »

13 December 2015

Tried out the iOS update Install Tonight feature and it didn’t work: device is still not updated this morning. »

15 December 2015

I’m down for any game featuring riding motorbikes up launching space rockets. Bayonetta is intense fun. »

I find iPad two finger cursor positioning not useful at all. It seems optimised for large adjustments, which were never a problem. »

16 December 2015

Covent Garden Apple Store had 100 Apple Pencils in this morning. Gone by lunchtime. »

19 December 2015

All my OS X text replacements have disappeared. That’s really not cool.

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I heard signing out and in to iCloud might help, but will that hose my Photos library and need to download everything again? »

29 December 2015

The iOS shift key is still broken openradar.appspot.com/24021283 »

I’ve been very frustrated by iCloud email’s false unread badges openradar.appspot.com/24021271 »

30 December 2015

Current status: fast

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