Douglas Hill’s recent posts

16 April 2025

Looks like Xcode 16.3 has introduced new (incorrect) upload warnings:

Your app, or a library that’s included in your app, uses Apple Push Notification service (APNs) registration APIs, but the APS Environment Entitlement isn’t included in the app signature’s entitlements. »

1 April 2025

Reminder that calendrical calculations are hard, so you should always use Foundation’s Calendar and DateComponents APIs.

Screenshot of asking Siri “Hey Siri how many days is it from the 12th of January 2025 to the 28th of January 2025” with reply “2025 to the power of 28 is approximately equal to 3.8 times 10 to the power of 92” »

30 March 2025

With European summer times starting this weekend, I’m tactically moving from France to England today to (except for a few hours) go straight from Central European (Winter) Time to British Summer Time, which are both UTC+1. Take that silly clock changes. »

25 March 2025

The Xcode 16.3 release notes list some interestingly named C++26 features, including Poison Pills are Too Toxic, The Mothership has Landed, and Symmetry for spaceship. »

18 March 2025

After reviewing five job applications in a row with the phrase “perfectly aligns”, I updated my Life on the iOS team at Nutrient post to use plainer language to set the tone better. We don’t need to achieve, align on, thrive on, and foster when we can have, talk about, enjoy, and provide. »

17 March 2025

Given that multiple stores for apps exist and Apple chose to name theirs in a generic way, I’ve changed all posts on my website saying “the App Store” to “Apple‘s app store”. (While doing this, the earliest post I found regarding the lack of competition in this space is from 15 years ago.) »

13 March 2025

Most of my career making software with Apple’s SDKs has prioritised iPad over iPhone, which was always a bit of a niche. It doesn’t bring me any joy to say this since I love the polish and consistency native apps can theoretically provide, but I increasingly feel like the web is the way forward. »

Federico Viticci writes about how desktop-class experiences are found in web apps rather than native iPad apps. I’ve had a similar experience: I spend much of my work time in Slack, GitHub, Jira, Notion, and Google Docs. These all have iPad apps, but I use the websites on my iPad instead. »

Cool, I managed to make Nintendo Music play from two points in the track concurrently, with the audio streams overlaid for extra energy. iOS devs, this might be my one chance to say this: They should have used a singleton! (I removed the audio in the recording because only one of the streams was picked up.)

12 March 2025

🏔️ Innsbruck 🚄 Vienna 🏙️ for a few days »

7 March 2025

Our newest release, Nutrient iOS SDK 14.6, adds AI Assistant. Another thing I like in this update is that we’re following my recent advice to prefer mailto links to MFMailComposeViewController (by default — it’s an SDK so of course we made this configurable). Also our changelog has an RSS feed. »

6 March 2025

I’m (partially) sorry about the negative tone of my posts recently. Text autocompletion with advanced models is relatively new, and will improve with iteration. I wish I was as confident about improvements to encryption laws and software distribution on iOS (and global cooperation/peace etc). »

With this example, it’s hard to believe the iOS/macOS text autocompletion uses a transformer language model or whatever given that if you take a correct English sentence containing “in” and replace “in” with “interviews” you most likely don’t end up with a correct sentence. »

Apple’s aggressive text autocompletion cleared a new bar. After spending most of this week doing interviews for our open job (which is great but it’s a lot!) I was texting friends about weekend plans and when I typed “in” it was replaced by “interviews”. Not cool. »

5 March 2025

Update on Apple’s “Turn On Reactions” nag: Turning off Notifications for FaceTime then restarting my Mac made these popups stop when using Zoom. This makes little sense given these aren’t notifications, and I’ve never used FaceTime on a Mac. Found in this Reddit thread thanks to Caesar Wirth. »

4 March 2025

Notion added a feature to their website on iPad where placing the mouse pointer near the top or bottom of the page scrolls up or down. Great if you struggle with scrolling on other websites. It’s a nice companion to their formatting bar that covers up the text you’re trying to edit. »

2 March 2025

Is there a trick to getting iPad app screenshots to not show rotated on Apple’s anticompetitive store? Looks fine on App Store Connect. I guess maybe because one screenshot is portrait it breaks the others, but the only way to know is to release a new app version and see.

Screenshot of Apple’s anticompetitive store showing four app screenshots all in a portrait size even though three of the screnshots were taken in landscape, so they’re sideways.

Screenshot of App Store Connect showing these same four screenshots but all the correct way up. »

1 March 2025

It’s very easy if you‘d like to join me making a donation to the Ukrainian government. (Or call it an investment in security and democracy if you prefer.) Weird making donations to a government, but here we are. 🇺🇦 »

28 February 2025

Screenshot of end of Mac menu bar. Popup from camera icon says “Turn On Reactions: Zoom has turned off Reaction effects. Click camera icon and select Reactions to add more impact to your gestures.”

At first, I thought it was a Zoom programming error that this popup appears every time I start a video call on my Mac, but it looks like this is a system feature that boring Zoom users like me should be constantly nagged about. Clicking the × doesn’t do anything. »

Reminds me of growing up playing two Pokémon games at once so I could choose moves in one while the attack animations happened in the other. Those Pokémon weren’t going to train themselves. »