iOS

Today, we will be taking a look at the future of mobile payments and emerging opportunities for developers. Needless to say, with each new opportunity, developers will have to face new challenges. However, since we are talking about money, I don’t think anyone expects a shortage of software developers eager to learn a few new tricks and get into this space.

Cars with next-generation connected infotainment systems will create new opportunities on several fronts. In case you already have an infotainment system with a neat touchscreen and GPS in your car, please accept my condolences; it’s about to become as obsolete as a Nokia 3310 compared to an iPhone.

A large number of modern mobile applications interact with web services in one way or another, and iOS applications are no different. Mantle (a model framework) and Realm (a mobile database) come with the promise of simplifying some of the hurdles in consuming web services through RESTful APIs and persisting data locally. In this article, Toptal engineer Marcin Kmiec shows how to build a simple iOS application using Mantle and Realm and demonstrates how this approach helps to eliminate a large amount of boilerplate code.

Whether you’re an avid angler or an app developer, you may be interested in taking a closer look at the development of a fishing app, which involved some of your fellow Toptalers. The goal was to create an app that would be truly useful in a professional fishing setting, while at the same time meeting a hard deadline. Since Fatsack Outdoors wanted to launch the app at one of the biggest fishing tradeshows of the year, the deadline was non-negotiable.

Detecting objects of interest in images has always been an interesting challenge in the realm of computer vision, and many approaches have been developed over recent years. As mobile platforms are becoming increasingly powerful, now is the perfect opportunity to develop interesting mobile applications that take advantages of these algorithms. This article walks us through the process of building a simple iOS application for detecting objects in images.

iOS 8 introduced a new concept called App Extensions. This new feature did not break down the walls between the applications, but it opened a few doors providing gentle yet tangible contact between some apps. The latest update gave us an option to customize the iOS ecosystem, and we are eager to see this path opening up as well.

You are what you read – and most Toptal members and blog subscribers are software developers. So what do you read? Where do professional developers get the latest information about how their peers work and think? Today, we will be taking a look at a small selection of popular developer blogs frequented by Toptal developers. We’re counting on you (our readers) to expand the list in the comment section.

Passwordless authentication has been the Holy Grail of security for years, but progress has been painfully slow. Until a few years ago, the technology to implement passwordless logins on a grand scale simply wasn’t available. However, the industry juggernaut is slowly but surely changing this. There are a few technical, legal and even ethical considerations to take into account, but be as it may, biometric, passwordless authentication is here to stay.

Apple has released a fully functional WatchKit and SDK that enables iOS developers with all the tools to start building their Apple Watch applications. This article provides quick overview of the Apple Watch functionalities from a developers perspective.