AlertViewController is UIAlerController subclass. It adds ability to display UIImage above the title label. Functionality is achieved by adding \n characters to title, to make space for UIImageView that is added as subview to UIAlertController.view. Set title as normal but when retrieving value use originalTitle property. It is a bit of a hack, yes. But works on iOS 9, 10 and latest iOS 11 (beta 5). I find it easier to maintain than trying to implemnet class that mimics behaviour of UIAlertController from scratch. Get is on GitHub. (more…)

Goal of MLCamera demo is to demonstrates using of Vision and Core ML frameworks, to process AVCaptureVideoDataOutput and to perform image classification. Complete working demo can be dowloaded from github. Relevant WWDC session are Introduction to Core ML, Vision framework building on Core ML. Apple provides few models converted to its Core ML supported format here. Apple also provides tools to convert most popular machine learning model types to Core ML supported format. With that out of the way let’s get started. (more…)

Apple will introduce new News.App in upcoming iOS9 release. News app is basically locked down, cleaned up RSS reader. It is to be sort of replacement for deprecated News Stand app. Some say it is response to Facebook’s native news articles. Is News.App going gain more traction then News Stand did ? Is it horrible for open web and publishers ? I don’t know, but I think it would be cool to get my little blog on it. It turns out to be surprisingly easy. Simply login to icloud.com/#newspublisher. Provide some simple info and logo image. Logo has to have height of 256 px and width up to recommend 2048 px or maximum 2560 px (hmm, wonder what would be the resolution of theoretical bigger iPad). Then wait for approval process. In my case it was about 2 weeks. If my very modest blog can make it on there, then any blog (more…)

According to TechCrunch article Apple’s App Store saw $1.7B in billings transaction in July 2015 alone. To date, the company has paid out $33 billion to App Store developers, it said – $8 billion of which was in 2015 alone. Large chunk of growth has come from China. In fact China has overtaken U.S as number one source of downloads. And its now number three country by revenue. This explained my continuos puzzlement by downloads stats for Memory Game. I though it was some sort of outlier, or possibly due to the popularity of Apple Watch in China. Not so. China truly is market not to be ignored. Business model for this particular game is first two levels are for free, then £0.79 (tier 1) to unlock all levels. Alternatively you can share on social media to unlock level three for free. My (more…)

Let’s start with quick summary in first paragraph and explain details later on. Apple only offers Retina on iMac because they plug screen directly to PCI ports on motherboard. Current generation of chipsets does not have ports with big enough bandwidth to handle 5k resolution at 60Hz. HMDI 2 is not yet supported, Thunderbolt 3 will be coming out in Intel’s Skylake chipsets, due late 2015 – early 2016. However if you own 2013 Retina Macbook Pro, 2012 Mac Pro, or Retina iMac (😄 I know) you can get close enough today by using 4k display. Before I delve into details let me point out, there are quite a few of them out there, but not very many actually support 4k at 60Hz, be sure to get one which does it. It will have to have DisplayPort 1.2 input, not 1.1. I list some suggestions further down. Lets dive into details by defining what does retina for (more…)

I dare you to stop watching this talk once you started ! John Carmack  (@ID_AA_Carmack) legendary programer of revolutionary genre defining games like Wolfenstein,  Doom and Quake, now CTO of Oculus , delivers captivating talk on how light behaves in real world, and the approximations and compromises that are involved in simulating that behaviour with computers. This lecture was delivered at QuakeCon 2013 (yearly convention held by ZeniMax Media to celebrate and promote the major franchises of id Software and other studios owned by ZeniMax.). QuakeCon has historically had a reputation as the “Woodstock of gaming”, and a week of “peace, love, and rockets!”.  (more…)

Gold Master version rained upon us few weeks ago and we have been through traditional new OS release chaos. Neglecting good night sleep in favour of making our apps behave as expected on buggy new OS. This seemed to have been somewhat more demanding then a year ago, but it might be just me being whiny little b**** and forgetting how demanding it was last year. If you indulge me I’d like to reminiscent for awhile. If memory serves me right it was shocking change. Complete redesign of apps was is order, flat design arrived. iOS 7 was buggy as hell on launch but our apps for the most part carried on working as normal. Worse case was your app looked somewhat old, but if your business was dependent on having app that was stable(as stable as any app on iOS 7.0.0) and performing as before on iOS 7, there was (more…)