I spend most of my developer day using Visual Studio for Mac, but occasionally I flip back to Visual Studio 2017 on Windows. Last time I flipped back I tried to build an app that uses the camera and I got stuck on one simple thing - setting the camera usage description. If you double click on the info.plist file in an iOS app project, it will open…
Read MoreIn the first part of this series I used the Azure Custom Vision service to create an image classifier to allow me to easily identify my daughters cuddly toys. Once created I tested it by uploading an image and seeing what tags the classifier found for the image. In the second part I accessed this model from a Xamarin app, so that I could use the c…
Read MoreThis article is an excerpt from Xamarin in Action. Save 37% off the cover price using code fccbennett at http://xam.jbb.io. One of the great things about the MVVM design pattern is that it allows us to maximize the code in our cross-platform model and view-model layers. This means we’ve written the bulk of our code and we’ve also written unit…
Read MoreI keep getting an annoying issue with my iOS simulators. When I run an app in a simulator that needs any form of network connection I get a dialog box popup from the built in Mac firewall asking if I want to allow incoming connections. Even though I click 'allow', I get asked this every time and it's getting tedious. The issue seems to be in the…
Read MoreThe MEAP of my book, Xamarin In Action, has just been updated to include a new chapter covering building cross-platform view models. This chapter talks about how you can use view models to increase the amount of cross-platform, unit testable code in your Xamarin app by moving UI logic away from the platform specific layers down into your cross-plat…
Read MoreI've been working to update the MvvmCross Xamarin Studio add-in to work with Visual Studio for Mac. The add-in has been updated thanks to some help from Matthew Robbins, the author of the awesome MFractor add-in, which if you don't have you MUST get, it's awesome. This add-in is now available from the VS for Mac extension manager!…
Read MoreI'm a huge fan of iBeacons (and if you're coming to MS Ignite NZ 2016 then you can hear me talk about them) and they are pretty easy to get started with on iOS. The most basic use case is beacon monitoring - when your app detects a signal from an iBeacon it can wake up and do some processing in the background. Some of the time this processing migh…
Read MoreOver the last few months I've been busily writing away on my first book - Xamarin In Action for Manning publications. Manning are a pretty serious publisher, they count Jon Skeet amongst their authors so it was quite an honor to be asked to write for them. The first 3 chapters are now available to buy under the Manning early access program - under…
Read MoreI'll be at Microsoft Ignite New Zealand this year talking about iBeacons, and show how to use them from a Xamarin app. This session will introduce iBeacons and discuss how to use them to build context aware applications, and what types of problems those applications can solve. It will look at how you can notify an app when you are near an iBeacon a…
Read MoreAs a change from talking about iBeacons at events, I've decided to start a series of YouTube videos covering a number of topics around iBeacons. My first one, an introduction to building your first iBeacon app using Xamarin.iOS is now up on YouTube! You can check it out below. This is my first one, so would appreciate any feedback.…
Read MoreI recently completed a lecture on backgrounding in iOS and Android as part of the Xamarin University. During this lecture, one topic of discussion came up with no real answer - how Device.StartTimer() in Xamarin.Forms affects backgrounding. With iOS, if you enable backgrounding using BeginBackgroundTask(), you have 3 minutes to stop all backgroun…
Read MoreAfter my Blog post about binding the Estimote iOS SDK, James Montemagno (Developer evangelist at Xamarin) contacted me to say they were about to release an official Xamarin component for accessing Estimote iBeacons and nearables from iOS. This renders my binding library redundant - which is a good thing as its less work for me now to support it!…
Read MoreUpdate: Since writing this, James Montemagno from Xamarin contacted me to say they are working on an Estimote component. This is now available on the Xamarin component store. Check out his blog post here. I've been playing around with iBeacons a lot recently. They seem a really cool technology with a load of interesting potential use cases. My…
Read MoreRecently Apple announced some changes to their requirements for apps submitted to the iOS app store. From the 1st February all new apps must support 64-bit (for updates to existing apps, it's 1st June). Xamarin, not wanting to do anything the easy way have decided that as well as supporting this, they will overhaul their API and unify their Mac a…
Read MoreI thought it would be good to create a page full of usefull links - things that have helped me solve some problems and are complete so there's no real need for me to blog their content. Adding symbols to Xamarin crash reports for iOS - this article shows how to add symbol information to a crash report retrieved from your device via XCode for a Xam…
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