Technical Authority

I didn't expect this either!  Following up on my previous post about my Apple App Store rejection  - I checked my emails and they accepted my appeal! Truthfully, I was expecting the appeal to get rejected. Part of me wanted to get ready and contest again and become like Harvey Specter from Suits to argue the point for my client. There was not information about why it was approved, honestly I don't think many people would mind if they were stressed out because of this since it was approved and that's all that matters. I was quite fortunate that I was doing this pro bono for the client and would't need to go back and re-discuss commercials or agreements for additional "functionality" to be added to the app. The hardest part possibly would have been brainstorming what to add.  Initially after the rejection I looked at others who were in the same situation and had their apps rejected for being too simple and some of them really did sound like they were p...

It's an easy trap to fall in to... What do I mean by " Tutorial Purgatory "? This is when you end up watching video course, tutorial or reading up on a subject and putting off the "doing" part of it because you don't feel you know enough. It's very easy to get stuck telling yourself " I'll start after I finish this course - I'm still learning " I've been there and it's a hard situation to escape but it is possible and here are a couple of pointers to help you escape it. Udemy is a great perpetuator of tutorial purgatory with many courses being 10+ hours long, you end up feeling compelled to watch it before starting the project you want to work on. I've seen many Udemy courses hitting the 30+ hour mark. Can you imagine watching and working your way through 30+ hours of course content in your spare time after work? How long that would take you? And this is before you even begin working on the project or product you w...

Didn't expect this! I've been working on a React Native application for a hypnotherapist which as a proof-of-concept was an app with instructions on how to use the hypnotic track.  The process has been immensely fun jumping straight into creating a React Native application because of one particular module and its functionality. Not going to digress into the story behind the app - that will be another blog post, we're here for the Apple rejection story. Initially I thought there may be issues publishing onto the Apple store when I was publishing to Android and it took nearly five days to complete the review. There wasn't any feedback on it but I was glad to see it passed is published on Android. The Apple process was pretty convoluted to submit the application but it was finally done. Very impressed Apple were able to review the application so quickly! Well done to the Engineers! This morning I go this message regarding the application: That's not go...

Here's how you fix this issue Ran into this with the iOS version of my React Native application, the fix is very quick and easy: We need to disable dead code stripping for our release, this is how to do it: Open XCode and press: Cmd + 1 Click on your project in the left panel Click on "Build Settings" In the "Linking" section, under the "Dead Code Stripping" section, change the setting for "Release" from "Yes" to "No"

Quick and easy fix if you run into this issue I ran into this issue whilst trying to publish my React Native app for iOS. The fix is quick and easy: change the build system to Legacy. File > Workspace Settings > Build System > Select "Legacy Build System" It's as simple as that! This fixes the issue for publishing your iOS app.

How to add a space to your display name There is a cap of sorts for iOS applications where once your display name exceeds 12 characters, it will strip any spaces in it. There are a lot of posts on StackOverflow about this, however the missed one small detail on how to edit the value. What we need to do is edit info.plist. You can try this in Xcode but it doesn't work, you need to use another text editor - in my case I used Visual Studio Code. Your directory structure may vary, here I am working on a React Native project. Instead of iOS, your root folder may be your project name.  Go to: build > * Your application name * > edit info.plist The value we want to update is " CFBundleDisplayName ".  Where the space(s) are, we need to replace the space here with:      Your CFBundleDisplayName should then look like this: That is all there is to it! Hope this helps you out.

Hope you've all have a great weekend! I thought I'd share this recent experience and deviate a bit from the technical side of things.  Currently I am working on creating a Udemy course and I'll tell you now, do NOT underestimate how much time and effort goes into filming!  Manged to put off starting it because I didn't like the amount of work it would involved to create it (TL;DR I was lazy). The best piece of advise I've heard for getting around this was: "Don't think about it, just do it" Sounds simple? It works surprisingly well, instead of thinking ahead of the big ordeal of filming and producing the content, don't think of all the work and instead jump right it and start. In the end I found myself really enjoying the process and where I was worrying about not having enough content for 30 minutes, I found myself hitting 6-10 minutes a lecture because I was passionate about the subject and kept riffing off with useful information.  W...

Don't bite the hand that feeds you! First and foremost, I am a big supporter of Google and think the company has great potential in the future and is innovating way beyond many of its competitors however, there is one downside I've notice more so recently with Google - but they can change it! The lack of human touch. A recent and ongoing issue (I will update the blog once it is resolved) I am having is with Google's AdSense service. The issue is with domain verification however the process is completely automated. Sounds great? It isn't. I know where it is failing but need support from Google as the issue is on their side, unfortunately the support consists of help pages which don't relate to my issue. I've tried reaching out via Twitter and I've also tried the forums with the usual response to wait or to go to the help pages. This may be a very small minority who have issues like these where the system isn't there...

Splash screen broke my Android Application Scratching your head at this? Been there. I've included the debug output below to make it easier for others to find this page if they too run into this issue: D/AndroidRuntime: Shutting down VM E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main     Process: com.app, PID: 10806     java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.app/com.app.MainActivity}: android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: Drawable com.app:drawable/launch_screen_bitmap with resource ID #0x7f060057 at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2913) So, what is causing the error we're seeing here?  From what I saw, it was an issue with the background colour value. It wasn't obvious when there was nothing in the project called " launch_screen_bitmap " Instead of the being a six character hex value and instead it was a lot longer than that! The location for the file you need ...

Here's how: When I was testing and app with media controls, I would press the lock button, once to lock the screen and a second to unlock it which would instantly unlock it and take you to the app.  By setting the option for ‘swipe’ when unlocking the screen (pressing the power button the second time) you are now presented with the lock screen and can swipe/drag the screen upwards to go the application Go to Settings --> Security --> Screen Lock Choose 'Swipe' That's all there is to it!