APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Category Archives: Mac
A Cupertino Yankee in the Court of King Ballmer
This post summarises my opinions of Windows Phone 7 from the Microsoft Tech Day I went to yesterday. There’s a new version of Windows Phone 7 (codenamed Mango) due out in the Autumn, but at the Tech Day the descriptions … Continue reading
Posted in Business, iPad, iPhone, Mac, tool-support, WebObjects, WinPhone
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On platform-specific strategies
I’m writing some library code at the moment that needs to work on both Mac OS X and iOS. The APIs I need to use on each platform are different, so I need different code on each platform. I also … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering
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Storing and testing credentials: Cocoa Touch Edition
This article introduces the concept of key stretching, using code examples to explain the ideas. For code you can use in an app that more closely resembles current practice, see Password checking with CommonCrypto. There’s been quite the media circus … Continue reading
Posted in Authentication, code-level, Crypto, iPad, iPhone, Mac, password, PCAS
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On NSInvocation
I was going to get down to doing some writing, but then I got some new kit I needed to set up, so that isn’t going to happen. Besides which, I was talking to one developer about NSInvocation and writing … Continue reading
Posted in Foundation, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering
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On Timeless Programming Books
Recently, the Dog Spanner wrote about Programming With Quartz, a book written at the tail end of 2005 but which is still useful to Mac developers everywhere. I have to agree, this book is still on my shelf and gets … Continue reading
On the broken(?) Mac App Store
A day after the Mac App Store was launched, people are reporting that it has been cracked. There are two separate stories here, a vapourware circumvention of the FairPlay DRM used to generate the receipts and a report that certain … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Crypto, Encryption, Mac, Vulnerability
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On the Mac App Store
I’ve just come off iDeveloper.TV Live with Scotty and John, where we were talking about the Mac app store. I had some material prepared about the security side of the app store that we didn’t get on to – here’s … Continue reading
Posted in AAPL, Business, code-level, Encryption, government, iDeveloper.TV, Mac, Policy, Talk
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An example of unit testing working for me
Some specific feedback I was given regarding my unit testing talk at VTM: iPhone fall conference was that the talk was short on real-world application of unit testing. That statement is definitely true, and it’s unfortunate that I didn’t meet … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support, VTM
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On stopping service management abuse
In chapter 2 of their book The Mac Hacker’s Handbook (is there only one Mac hacker?), Charlie Miller and Dino Dai Zovi note that an attacker playing with a sandboxed process could break out of the sandbox via launchd. The … Continue reading
On private methods
Let’s invent a hypothetical situation. You’re the software architect for an Objective-C application framework at a large company. This framework is used by many thousands of developers to create all sorts of applications for a particular platform. However, you have … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, PCAS, software-engineering
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