OrchardNest

Last month, outspoken CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney ranted about the App Store in an interview with CNBC: Apple has locked down and crippled the ecosystem by inventing an absolute monopoly on the distribution of software, on the...

This is part of a monthly series of blog posts in which I showcase some of the side projects I work on for my own use. As with all of my side projects, I’m not focused on perfect code or UI; it just needs to run! I’ve cheated slightly...

This is part of a monthly series of blog posts in which I showcase some of the side projects I work on for my own use. As with all of my side projects, I’m not focused on perfect code or UI; it just needs to run! I am a huge advocate of...

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new client app I’ve been working on over the past few months: Revival, truly uncomplicated task planning for everyone: I was originally contacted by Wonderboy Media with the intention of working...

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new client app I’ve been working on recently: Gyfted, the free universal wishlist. I worked as the only iOS developer on the project working remotely from the UK. The app provides a free and easy...

With iOS 12.3, Apple unveiled a new design for the TV app featuring an industry unstandard 16:9 aspect ratio for cover artwork. This new design was used for both TV shows and movies which had been 1:1 squares and 3:2 portraits...

On our The Checked Shirt podcast yesterday, Jason and I were discussing the announcements at WWDC and in particular the new “Dark Mode” in iOS 131. One question Jason asked (as I’m running the iOS 13 beta) is how Safari treats websites;...

At WWDC 2017, Apple introduced the Vision framework alongside iOS 11. Vision was designed to help developers classify and identify things such as objects, horizontal planes, barcodes, facial expressions, and text. However, the text...

In January 2019 I started working with a large brand on an exciting new project; bringing UKTV to the Apple TV. UKTV is a large media company that is most well known for the Dave channel along with Really, Yesterday, Drama, and Home....

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a big update for the Reaction Cam app I built for a client a few years ago. The v1.4 update includes a premium upgrade which unlocks extra features such as pausing video whilst you are reacting,...

Back in 2014, I was approached by a team representing Nigella Lawson to work on an app centered around food photography. As a big fan of Nigella, I jumped at the chance and spent several months working on the Foodim app. Nearly five years...

When I launched my iTunes Artwork Finder a few years ago, I had no idea how popular it would become. It is currently used thousands of times per day to help people find high resolution artwork for their albums, apps, books, TV shows, and...

If you’re an entrepreneur that is looking to get an app built by a large digital agency, how do you ensure you are staying on top of the project if you don’t have any knowledge of how app development works? That was the predicament that...

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on some big updates to the DrinkCoach+ app that I developed for Orbis Media and the HAGA last year: The big change is a new ‘month-at-a-glance’ screen with a scrollable calendar giving you a...

A couple of months ago I started streaming some of the many video games I play on Twitch. For those that aren’t aware, your Twitch profile can be customised with a number of text or image based panels along with a relatively new...

I’ve recently been implementing auto-renewable subscriptions for a client and came across the need to create a bulleted list of notes1. There are numerous tutorials available that show how you can do this but all of the ones I found had a...

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new client app I’ve been working on for the last few weeks: Solcaster, the reverse weather app. I worked as the only iOS developer on Solcaster for Reidefine LLC working remotely from the UK. The...

Since the launch of the iPad in 2010, any app that runs on the iPhone will also run on the iPad in a scaled format. This is normally1 in the 3:2 aspect ratio which the original iPhone had all the way up until the iPhone 5 when they changed...

Yesterday was the start of WWDC 2018 and one new feature in iOS 12 caught my attention amongst the many that were demonstrated: The demo was part of the new Shortcuts system and showed that apps could reveal some functionality to Siri,...

I was recently asked some questions about how I work for an article about developers who work from spectacular locations. You can read the full piece over at InfoWorld but I’ve put their full questions and my answers below: What work do...

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new client app, DrinkCoach+, that I worked on over the summer: I worked on DrinkCoach+ for Orbis Media as a freelance iOS developer. The app was designed for the Haringey Advisory Group on...

Since iOS 6 it has been the case that any localization that utilises a right-to-left language (such as Arabic) will automatically flip your views so that everything scans from right-to-left. Usually this is desireable but there are certain...

Since iOS 9.3 it has been possible to add Apple Music tracks to the media library as such: let library = MPMediaLibrary() library.addItem(withProductID: id) { (entity, error) in if let error = error { NSLog("Error:...

One of the great things about Twitter is the way it can connect you to other developers. For many years, I’ve been chatting with Lisa Dziuba and she got in touch with me last year along with her colleague Ahmed Sulaiman to tell me about a...

For the past couple of years, I have worked with Two Thirds Water on the Great British Bee Count iOS app for Friends of the Earth. Today, an updated version of the app has gone live to support this years count which runs from 19th May...