How to Debug iOS/OSX Crashes in XCode

Your iPhone app is crashing in XCode, and you're not sure what is wrong. We're here to help! Let's learn how to find information about the crash, and learn how to interpret that crash information.

What a Difference Some Polish Makes...

I like UI design... a lot.  I like to think about the people using our software, and try to do right by them.

I should correct my previous sentence and say I like "UX design" -- I like to think about the needed functionality, the flow of a program, and how to make it easy to use.  I am terribly bad at the design sometimes, and thankfully I am rescued by our wonderful co-founder and designer Jay.

Recently, Jay and I were marveling at the difference a little bit of polish can make in a program. So, I thought I'd share a little bit of blooper-reel /slash/ evolution-of-a-program today for those who find it interesting too.

Helpful settings if you let children play on your iPhone/iPad/iTouch

As one of the resident nerds among my family and friends, one of the typical greetings I get from our children is "Can I play on your phone?" I'm a pushover, so I always say yes.  After a few unintended purchases, intended (but not by me) purchases, and deleted apps, I got wise and changed my settings.  Below is a list of a few settings you might find helpful if you frequently let little ones play on your phone, but not too intrusive for your everyday phone use.

iTunes Sync vs Backup -- How to Ensure You Keep Your Data

One of the great things about working on Decipher TextMessage and Decipher VoiceMail is that I get to help people recover important and personal data (messages from loved ones, photos of grandchildren, and that 11-month conversation with your significant other) on an almost-daily basis.  On the other hand, sometimes I have to heartbreakingly tell people that the data might be lost forever.  If there is one thing that I've learned from all of these interactions, as well as my own iPhone use, it's that to most of us, the iTunes backup functionality is a mystery that we hope will pleasantly surprise us one day.  I'd like to take a minute to remove some of the mystique, and give everyone some much-needed peace-of-mind.

When you plug your iPhone/iTouch/iPad into your computer and run iTunes, there are three forms of communication that you can request happen between your computer and the device: syncing, backing up, and transferring purchases.

What is the iPhone 4's "Group Messaging"?

After you upgraded your iPhone to iOS4, you may have noticed some strange behavior with your group texts. Specifically, you may have sent a group text, had someone reply to you, and then been told by other recipients that they also got the reply.  Or, you may have been the recipient of someone's group text, followed by a reply from one of the recipients.  This behavior is due to a feature released with the iPhone 4 (and in iOS 4) called "Group Messaging".  This post will explain what group messaging is, and how you can disable/enable it if you desire.

Update: There seems to be no way to disable Group Messaging for iMessages. Even if you have Group Messaging disabled, it will still send as a Group Message if all of the recipients are iMessage-able. Be sure to keep an eye on the color of your send button (blue for iMessage, green for SMS) to know which one you're using!

How to Redeem an iTunes Promotional Code on your iPhone

If you're reading this, hopefully that means that you have a promotional code that you need to enter into iTunes -- either a code for a free app or a gift card code -- and we're excited for you because we like free stuff! In this blog post, we're going to provide directions for how to enter that code from the App Store app on your iPhone.  You can also redeem your code in iTunes on your computer, but we will leave that to another post.

Viewing Deleted Messages in Your iPhone Backup

Update: Decipher TextMessage can read some deleted texts out of the backup for you. We hope you'll give it a try! http://deciphertools.com

Many people who purchase Decipher TextMessage write us asking about the ability to recover deleted messages.  When we say "deleted messages" here, we mean messages that were received and deleted between backups, so that there is no record of the message in a backup.  If you have backed-up your device prior to when the text was deleted, you can use Decipher TextMessage to read the texts in that backup to recover it.  But, the iTunes backup schedule doesn't always nicely coincide with the schedule of our accidents, our fits, or children playing with our phone.  When we get those emails, it tugs at our hearts because we know that you wouldn't be writing if that text wasn't important, and it feels awful having lost it possibly forever.

We're working on adding the ability to read as many deleted messages as we can from the backups, but in the meantime, we wanted to explain why some of your deleted texts may not be totally gone, and how you can go and look for them by hand.