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iPhone Developer Provisioning Portal Tips
Recently I've been put on 2 different iPhone development projects and on both projects, I'm responsible for doing the builds. Any developer that has dealt with the provisioning portal knows how confusing and how much of a pain it is to use. It looks to me like there is a bit of confusion over the portal, so here are some tips.
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Inaccurate speed tests
One of the most popular ways to test Internet connection speeds is to use speedtest.net. The problem with using a site like this is that providers sometimes have a feature that increases the bandwidth for the initial part of the download. This allows for faster downloads of smaller files. Unfortunately this really messes with speed tests. For instance, I'm now getting 15 megabits per second down, but the tests are telling me that I'm getting 28-30 megabits per second. This would be fabulous if I got it, but I don't. A more accurate test is to download a large file from a fast host. In my case, I download stuff from Apple and get about 2 megabytes per second which is 16 megabits per second. This is more in line with what I'd expect.
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Abusing NSDictionary
Lately I've been more aware of developers using NSDictionary where a class should be used. While it may seem easier to use an NSDictionary to store data and pass it around, the lack of type checking and easily mistype keys is prone to failure. Creating classes with a bunch of properties has gotten even easier with the latest version of Xcode; you don't even have to synthesize properties. Just define the properties and presto, you have a class where you would have used an NSDictionary. NSDictionaries have their place, but in many cases classes serve developers better.
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Social media for customer service
In the last few years, people have taken their frustrations dealing with customer service reps to social media. Companies, in turn, are reacting quite quickly to complaints and reaching out to customers. While I'm not sure I'm a fan of jumping on social media before giving companies a chance to fix the problem, it seems to be an amazingly effective tool.