When new device models are announced, one of the things that applications that identify what device they are running on need to do is update their model to device name mapping. When referring to device model, we are not talking about the model property on UIDevice, rather the underlying device model Apple assigns to each of its devices. To get the model, you use the kernel via uname: #import <sys/utsname.h> struct utsname sysInfo; if (uname(&sysInfo) == 0) { NSString *model = @(sysInfo....

If you create a reusable library for Apple platforms, you know that managing it can be a bit cumbersome. In Xcode, you have multiple targets and test targets (iOS/Catalyst, macOS, watchOS, & tvOS) and then you need to keep all of the Xcode configuration consistent between them. One way of handling this is to create a few xcconfig files, but this has its drawbacks too. You can create a base config file for each target to inherit from, then create individual ones for the specific platforms....

Continuing the with the very high production value, this year’s virtual WWDC was very good. This year included collaborative lounges (in Slack) where lots of Apple engineers could answer whatever question you might have. If WWDC continues to be virtual, I think this is a good way of reconstructing the lab experience so long as the questions and answers get archived publicly. watchOS The watch got a very small update this year with support for keys and IDs being brought to the Wallet app and a fully updated Mindfulness app....

Unlike last year’s WWDC where the development was interrupted by the pandemic, this year’s development was done entirely during the pandemic, so it should be interesting to see whether or not things are going to be scaled down. Well, the production of the conference will not be scaled down as Apple has demonstrated that they will spare no expense for their virtual events over the past year. tvOS Since the new Apple TV remote does not have the hardware for gaming, I’m not sure if there is going to be an Apple Arcade push for the TV this year....

My original iPad Pro 12.9" died back in December and I’ve been waiting for the next refresh ever since. I originally thought that it would be in March, but it was in April this year to correspond with new Apple TVs, iMacs, and AirTags. Preorders were this morning and I secured a new 11" iPad Pro as I don’t think the price increase of the 12.9" model is for me. However, both models contain the M1 chip (which I thought was just for Macs) which leads to an interesting problem: iPadOS....