2012

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31 posts

Steve Jobs: Pixar, The Early Days

To mark Toy Story's 30th anniversary, a previously unseen interview with Steve Jobs from 22 November 1996 is released.

Gems

KVC Collection Operators

The article discusses Key-Value Coding (KVC) Collection Operators in Objective-C, which provide a concise, Ruby-like syntax for performing aggregate operations on collections using valueForKeyPath:.

Development

Monthly update #0271 • November 2012

Monthly update 271 • November 2012 • 2012-11-01 - 2012-11-30

Monthly Updates

A Wanted Man by Lee Child

In A Wanted Man, Reacher hitches a ride with kidnappers, then joins the FBI to pursue them after a roadside murder in Nebraska.

Books

NSOrderedSet

NSOrderedSet is not a subclass of NSSet due to problems with Objective-C's single inheritance and the mutable/immutable class pairs in Foundation's class clusters.

Development

NS_ENUM & NS_OPTIONS

NS_ENUM and NS_OPTIONS are the modern, Apple-approved way to declare enums and bit-masks.

Development

NSURLProtocol

NSURLProtocol is the most powerful (and least-known) piece of Apple’s URL Loading System.

Development

Monthly update #0270 • October 2012

Monthly update 270 • October 2012 • 2012-10-01 - 2012-10-31

Monthly Updates

NSLinguisticTagger

NSLinguisticTagger offers powerful tools to process natural language. It breaks strings into tokens, finds parts of speech and stems, pulls out names of people, places, and groups, and spots languages and scripts.

Development

AddressBookUI

The Address Book UI framework in iOS, used alongside AddressBook.framework, provides controllers for managing contacts but includes a uniquely valuable function, ABCreateStringWithAddressDictionary(), which formats address components into a localised string.

Development

Monthly update #0269 • September 2012

Monthly update 269 • September 2012 • 2012-09-01 - 2012-09-30

Monthly Updates

Spy Game

Spy Game (2001), directed by Tony Scott, is a sharp and thrilling espionage film that keeps you hooked. Robert Redford is outstanding as Nathan Muir, a seasoned CIA operative racing against time to save his protégé, Tom Bishop, played with intensity by Brad Pitt.

Movies

Monthly update #0268 • August 2012

Monthly update 268 • August 2012 • 2012-08-01 - 2012-08-31

Monthly Updates

CFBag

The article explores the CFBag and CFMutableBag Core Foundation types, which implement a bag (multi-set) data structure, allowing multiple occurrences of elements with associated counts.

Development

CFStringTransform

NSString and its toll-free bridged counterpart CFMutableString in Foundation and Core Foundation are highlighted for their exceptional Unicode handling, with CFStringTransform enabling powerful string transformations like stripping diacritics, naming Unicode characters, and transliterating between scripts such as Latin, Cyrillic, and Hiragana.

Development

Monthly update #0267 • July 2012

Monthly update 267 • July 2012 • 2012-07-01 - 2012-07-31

Monthly Updates

Brave

A Bridge Too Far (1977), directed by Richard Attenborough, shows Operation Market Garden. This Allied plan in 1944 aimed to seize bridges in the Netherlands to end the war fast. It failed. The film uses a large cast.

Movies

NSSortDescriptor

NSSortDescriptor is a Foundation class used to sort collections. It is created with a key (property to sort on), ascending (true for ascending order), and optionally a selector or comparator for comparisons.

Development

NSCache

NSCache works like NSMutableDictionary but removes objects automatically when memory runs low. This saves you from handling memory warnings or setting up timers to clear space.

Development

NSIndexSet

NSIndexSet and its mutable version, NSMutableIndexSet, form a sorted set of unique unsigned integers. They act like an NSRange that allows gaps.

Development

Monthly update #0266 • June 2012

Monthly update 266 • June 2012 • 2012-06-01 - 2012-06-30

Monthly Updates

Quiet by Susan Cain

Susan Cain challenges the prevailing notion that extroversion is the sole determinant of success.

Books

Steve Jobs at the D: All Things Digital Conference

There’s lots of video of the late Steve Jobs, primarily from his famous introductions of Apple products over the years, and his oft-quoted Stanford commencement address.

Gems

Monthly update #0265 • May 2012

Monthly update 265 • May 2012 • 2012-05-01 - 2012-05-31

Monthly Updates

The Grey

The Grey (2011), directed by Joe Carnahan, follows men who crash in Alaska. Liam Neeson plays Ottway, a hunter who guards oil workers. He knows wolves and death.

Movies