Category Archives: Technology

I’ve changed my mind about Xcode snapshots

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Steven Fisher

In the recent past, I’ve mocked Xcode’s snapshots. They were sluggish and not especially reliable. I’d like to say they were inefficient, too, but the truth is that they were so slow and so unreliable I never bothered to find … Continue reading →

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How the iPhone GPS differs from a standalone navigation GPS

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Steven Fisher

All models of iPhone since the 3G, as well as the iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G, include Assisted GPS (AGPS). I’ve heard that this isn’t real GPS or that it’s somehow inferior to real GPS. AGPS is actually superior … Continue reading →

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Dennis Ritchie

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Steven Fisher

Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language, has died at age 70. This soon after my post on Steve Jobs, I’m unable to write much on the subject. But the C programming language was a major invention in the … Continue reading →

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Steve Jobs shaped my life

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Steven Fisher

I never met Steve Jobs. I’ve never even been in the same room as him, or (to my knowledge), the same city. So why am I choked up about his death? Because I love the man for what he accomplished, … Continue reading →

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An imaginary conversation with Xcode 4 regarding snapshots

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Steven Fisher

Xcode: Hey… Me: Yeah? Xcode: You want to enable snapshots yet? Me: No. Xcode: I’m just asking. Me: No. Xcode: They’re good for you, you know. Me: I’m sure they are, but see, I’ve already backed up my project. In … Continue reading →

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Objective-C memory management

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Steven Fisher

With Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) coming out soon, you could argue this post is coming almost too late. But there’s a lot of confusion over this, and I don’t think ARC will help much if you don’t understand the why … Continue reading →

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How to reset Wii to lower resolution

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Steven Fisher

So you’ve set your Wii to 480p, then moved it back to a TV that supports only 480i. How do you fix it? I searched for this for a while and found a few wrong and complicated answers. One way … Continue reading →

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Blocks to remove redundancy

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Steven Fisher

Blocks have many complicated uses, from event-based code to multithreading. But they can also be used for very trivial tasks, such as removing redundant lines from code. Here’s a common operation for me: Split a list into sublists based on … Continue reading →

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12 Myths About Concurrency in Objective-C

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Steven Fisher | Comments Off

Old content, but I just needed it now: The difference between foo() and foo(void) by Greg Miller. Hint: Objective-C doesn’t follow the C++ pattern. You probably want foo(void).

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Steven Fisher | Comments Off