How to Get Back the iOS 7 SDK After Upgrading to Xcode 6

iOS 8 finally launched on September 17, and with it, the public release of Xcode 6. However, after upgrading you will notice that you can no longer compile using the iOS 7.1 base SDK. This is a problem for any app that isn’t yet compatible with the iOS 8 SDK. To see what SDK’s you have installed, open the Terminal app on your Mac and enter:

How to Automatically Update Xcode Build Numbers from Git

Xcode provides two places to keep track of your app’s revisions: version and build. To see them, click on your Project name in the Navigator, and then click on your main build target under Targets. Click on the General tab. In this post I’ll show you how to automatically update your build numbers with every release build! First, an overview.

How to Generate Beautiful Apple-Style Documentation in Xcode 5

Good code should be self-documenting, but sometimes you also need to generate external documentation for reference purposes. In this post I’ll show you how to use two open-source tools and a build script to create beautiful, Apple-style HTML documentation files in Xcode. I’ll also show you how to create docsets for Xcode so that your class references show up right along side Apple’s! It will be a seamless and dare I say, enjoyable, process for generating documentation.

How to Get Back the iOS 6 SDK After Upgrading to Xcode 5

iOS 7 finally launched on September 18, and with it, the public release of Xcode 5. However, after upgrading you will notice that you can no longer compile using the iOS 6.1 base SDK. This is a problem for any app that isn’t yet compatible with the iOS 7 SDK. To see what SDK’s you have installed, open the Terminal app on your Mac and enter:

ls /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs

If you only see the iOS7 SDK folder listed, you will need to extract the iOS6 SDK folder from an old copy of Xcode 4.6. Or you can just download it here. Copy your extracted iPhoneOS6.1.sdk folder into the folder shown above. Shut down and restart Xcode. You will then be able to select from both SDK’s when building or running.

If you just need to download the iOS 6 simulator, open Xcode and go to Xcode > Preferences > Downloads.

iOS Training: Your Second iOS App

Yesterday I conducted my second after-work training session at IIN for developers looking to learn XCode and Objective-C. Everybody walked out of there with a working Note Taker app! Here’s what we covered:

• Table views and UITableViewController
• UITableViewDataSource protocol
• Prototype cells
• NSMutableArrays
• UINavigationController
• Segues
• Delegates
• Reading and writing to NSUserDefaults

Thanks to those who came! Next week I’ll do a repeat of this week’s session for those who couldn’t make it. After that, we’ll keep working on the Note Taker app to delete and reorder rows, and using model objects to store our data. See you then!

iOS Rant Night

Last night I attended the NYC iOS Developer meet up at Time Inc. headquarters. The theme of the event was “Rant Night” and featured 6 experienced developers venting their frustrations about developing for Apple’s platforms. Here’s what they had to say:

iOS Training: Your First iOS App

Last night I conducted an after-work training session at IIN for developers looking to learn XCode and Objective-C. I’m happy to say that everybody walked out of there with a working Tip Calculator app! Topics covered:

• Creating a new Github repository
• Connecting XCode to Github
• XCode overview
• Utility App template
• Storyboards
• Connecting IBOutlets and IBActions
• Basic protocols and delegates
• Converting strings to numbers and vice versa
• Formatting currency

Thanks everyone for coming! Looking forward to the next session…