Secure your iPhone with a Long Numeric Passcode

September 28, 2014

A great way to secure your iPhone is to use a long passcode. But setting a typical long passcode that has letters and numbers in it results in an unlock screen that looks like this:

Lock screen with alphanumeric keyboard

I find the alphanumeric keys too small to hit accurately, especially if I’m one-handing the phone.

But did you know you can set a long numeric passcode, and your lock screen will look like this?

Lock screen with long numeric keyboard

So much better! You get the benefits of a long passcode, but you retain the convenience of a large number pad for one-handed use. As a bonus, people can’t tell how long your passcode is, which makes it even harder to guess.

You know what’s best?

September 20, 2014

You know what’s best?

Writing Thread-Safe Classes with GCD

September 13, 2014

This is the fifth post in a series about Grand Central Dispatch.

So far, we’ve learned that a multi-threaded program means that access to our data structures must be protected by some kind of synchronization mechanism. We used GCD’s serial queues to gate access to our data structures.

We also discussed using concurrent queues to implement a Readers-Writer lock. To keep this post simple, we’ll stick to using serial queues.

One serious issue remains: whoever uses your data structures have to remember to use dispatch_sync(), otherwise you get errors. This is obviously a problem, especially when your code is used by someone not familiar with your arrangement (for instance, when your code is part of a framework).

Wouldn’t it be great if we could encapsulate the synchronization behavior into our data structure, so that its users don’t have to worry about asynchronous behavior?

Encapsulation, of course, is what classes are really good for. Instead of requiring synchronization code in our user’s codebase, we should make thread-safe classes.

RIAA Music Revenue Share Over Time

August 24, 2014

I updated my old chart to include 2012-2013 data:

GCD Target Queues

August 14, 2014

This is the fourth post in a series about Grand Central Dispatch.

Come with me on a little detour, so we can take a look at a neat feature in GCD: target queues.

We begin our trip down this scenic byway by learning about a set of queues with very special properties: the global concurrent queues.

Global concurrent queues

GCD provides four global concurrent queues that are always available to your program. These queues are special, because they are automatically created by the library, can never be suspended, and treat barrier blocks like regular blocks. Because these queues are concurrent, all enqueued blocks will run in parallel.

Each of the four global concurrent queues has a different priority:

DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_HIGH
DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT
DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_LOW
DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_BACKGROUND

Blocks enqueued on a higher-priority queue will preempt blocks enqueued on a lower-priority queue.

These global concurrent queues play the role of thread priorities in GCD. Just like threads, it’s possible to use all CPU resources executing blocks on a high-priority queue and “starving” a lower-priority queue, preventing its enqueued blocks from executing at all.

You can get a reference to a global concurrent queue this way:

dispatch_queue_t defaultPriorityGlobalQueue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0);

humancode.us

Secure your iPhone with a Long Numeric Passcode

You know what’s best?

Writing Thread-Safe Classes with GCD

RIAA Music Revenue Share Over Time

GCD Target Queues

Global concurrent queues