• When is zip not zip?

    Like most experienced iOS developers, I use an automated build system. A colleague of mine and I have spent portions of the last 2 years building up our system so what we do looks like magic to others! As part of this system, we've written tools and put together scripts to package our application as an .ipa (iPhone application). An .ipa file is simply a zip file with the extension changed.

  • Fixing Missing Sound Output

    As I was trying to troubleshoot why my media center Mac Mini froze twice over the last 2 days, I discovered that the sound output didn't list the Built-in speaker. After a bunch of searches with different suggestions, I decided to reset the NVRAM. The problem is that the Apple support docs say to use Command-Option-P-R at startup and my Mac Mini doesn't have a monitor or keyboard hooked up to it. After some additional searching I found the following command:

  • The best, underutilized and poorly implemented accessibility feature

    [Update - October 21, 2015: It looks like the issues with News have been fixed with the iOS 9.1 update. Yeah!]

  • Recovering from a hack

    At the end of last week, I got a message from my sister about a problem with her email account. It is a Google Apps for your Domain account and luckily, I don't manage it! Around the same time I got her message, I received email from Google that her account was suspended. Turns out when I setup the Google account, I added an admin account for me and had email forwarded to my main email address. This turns out to be a good thing as I was able to reset her password and get her going again. My sister explained that she had checked her email from her work Windows machine and it had some type of virus/malware on it and that caused her account to be compromised. Ouch. Like a good brother, I helped get things going again and told her (and the rest of my family) to enable 2 factor/2 step authentication everywhere it was available. In addition, I told her never to check her Google email from her work computer and just use her phone. That's probably good advice; don't use machines that aren't under your control if you can help it. Email can wait and with a smartphone, it is easy enough to check mail on the phone.