James Montemagno
James Montemagno

Live, Love, Bike, and Code.

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James Montemagno
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Staged Rollouts & Phased Release on Google Play and App Store Connect

As an app developer it is hard enough to create your app, test your app, prep the app store listings, and then get your app approved. The last thing you want to think about is how fast or slow to roll out your app and updates to users. For the past 10 years all I have ever done was just release the app to everyone all at once, and for a long time this all that was available to us. However, now there are options for developers from both Google and Apple that can manage your release. Unfortunately…

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Yosuda spin bike review, a $230 Peloton & Apple Fitness+ DIY bike

Last year I ventured into building my own workout area at the house, and it all started with a $400 investment to put together a DIY spin bike [https://montemagno.com/building-an-at-home-diy-spin-bike-for-peloton-apple-fitness/]. It has been 9 months and over 150 rides of my Sunny SF-B1002 Bike [https://amzn.to/37gQMcB] and moofit cadence sensor [https://amzn.to/349DpZM]. They continue to go strong and I love them. Looking back, I did a lot of research up front about what bike to get, how heavy…

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Long-running Operations on macOS and iOS with NSProcessInfo

One issue that sometimes comes up in app development is keeping your app alive and running during long running processes. In my case with My Stream Timer [https://www.mystreamtimer.com], when the user starts a timer, it needs to keep running no matter what. My first solution was to simply turn on Screen Saver mode. var appDelegate = ((AppDelegate)NSApplication.SharedApplication.Delegate); appDelegate.MainWindow.Level = NSWindowLevel.ScreenSaver; This solution "works" but has the si…

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5 Years of Merge Conflict

It feels like just yesterday that Frank [https://twitter.com/praeclarum]and I were sitting at a bar in Redmond enjoying a nice craft cocktail and talking about the best way to store settings in shared preferences. After chatting with someone for 2 hours about isolated storage how could you not become best friends and start a podcast [https://montemagno.com/so-we-started-a-podcast-merge-conflict/], record 266 episodes, and have such amazing listeners that they have downloaded our podcasts over 1.…

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Setting Up an M1 Mac for Xamarin Development

Who just upgraded their MacBook after 8 years?!?! This guy!!! Let's set it up for mobile development with Xamarin for iOS & Android development in C#. That is right, I finally decided to go all in on an M1 MacBook Air (8-Core GPU, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM) thanks to the $500 "credit" from participating in the DTK program.  Not only was it time for an upgrade since my machine was 8 years old, but also because this new generation of machines marks a pivotal transition for macOS devic…

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Code Generation from XAML in Visual Studio is Mind-blowing Awesome

The more and IDE or code editor can do for you the better I say. Visual Studio has been crushing it with new refactorings, IntelliSense, and IntelliCode [https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/], one of my favorite features ever. One thing that I have always been hoping for as a XAML developer is deeper connectivity between the XAML and the View-Model. We have seen increased IntelliSense in this area, but with the release of Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 [https://devblogs.microsoft.c…

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Cross-Platform In-App Purchases for Xamarin.Mac Apps!

This week, one of my best friends Frank Krueger released his brilliant app iCircuit 3D [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icircuit-3d/id1539977373] for macOS (he also wrote an awesome blog [https://praeclarum.org/2021/02/08/tech-of-icircuit3d.html] on how it was made). While I know that catalyst support for Xamarin (and .NET MAUI) is coming soon, I still think there are great opportunities to monetize macOS apps written in C# today (see iCircuit 3D!). I released my In-App Billing Plugin [https://gi…

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How-to Integrate Helpful Support Emails in Mobile Apps with Insightful Data & Logs

In the mad rush to finish my most recent app, My Cadence [https://montemagno.com/introducing-my-cadence-for-ios-a-simple-cadence-sensor-display/], I forgot to integrate an essential feature. A feature that enables my users to easily get a hold of me to report issues or request features, which is of course email support. Both Google Play and the App Store enable you to supply a support website and email, however this is a very lack luster experience for both you and your users. For your users the…

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