Adventures in Swift and iOS App Development
About two years ago someone asked me a very good question: Why do we need delegates for UIViewControllers? He thought Swift made things easier, but this delegate stuff seems very complicated. Shouldn't we be able to send a message or initializer between classes? When I first learned iOS, I'll admit it took me months to …
Continue reading "Why do we need Delegates in iOS and WatchOS?"
How does the Apple Watch communicate to the user when they are not looking at the watch face? That is done with haptics. Haptics are sounds and taps letting the user know something is happening. In this lesson, I'll explain to you how to use haptics in Watch OS applications by creating a catalog of all the haptics …
Continue reading "Make a WatchOS 3 Haptic Catalog with a Picker"
Even if you never want to make an app for the Apple Watch, there's one place you might want to think about supporting: Notifications. In a previous lesson, we explored how to make local notifications for iOS devices. That lesson ended with a free bonus: If a phone is sleeping and you have an Apple …
Continue reading "Adding Actions to iOS and WatchOS Local Notifications"
The word notification gets a bit abused in the world of mobile development, especially in the world of Apple development. Notifications could mean internal notifications, where classes use observers to watch unrelated code. When a notification appears, the observer code executes special code for that event. Another type of notification notifies a user that something …
In last week's tutorial of this series, we made a simple dynamic table for the Apple Watch and demonstrated static scrolling tables.Based on some running pace data, we displayed the pace I ran at the mile splits. Many apps will need more than what we discussed. Apps might navigate from the table, insert and delete …
One of the most powerful and important controls on both wearable and mobile devices are table views. Table views come in two flavors: static and dynamic. Dynamic table views read data from a collection type and displays it. Static tables allow for a vertical scroll view with a set of controls. Static table views are …
It's rare to have a one controller application, even in something as small as the Apple watch. Multiple View Controllers, or Interface Controllers as they are called in WatchKit, need ways to move between controllers. WatchOS2 has a simplified version of the iOS navigation types. In this lesson we'll explore these three types of navigation …
There's a legacy from WatchOS1 which is not only frustrating but deceptive. While one would think that a watch would have easy to use built in timers, that is far from the case. WatchOS2 changed this situation slightly, but still makes timekeeping not as easy as one would think. There is a timer in WatchKit, …
Continue reading "How to Use Watch Timers and NSTimers in WatchOS2 and Swift"
It is a myth that using apps on an Apple watch requires a phone. This was true of Watch OS1, but not true of its successor OS. Granted, you still need a phone to load apps, but standalone apps are possible. With the introduction of WatchOS2, this becomes easier as the watch is less dependent …
Not all runners are super high tech, though many of us all do want those new toys, like the Apple Watch. Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever Solstice Holiday you happen to celebrate tends to bring them along to enjoy in a new running season. Some runners may not know how to use the Apple Watch effectively, …
