James Montemagno
James Montemagno

Live, Love, Bike, and Code.

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James Montemagno

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App Configuration Settings in .NET MAUI (appsettings.json)

.NET MAUI is right around the corner and Preview 13 is out right now! There are so many great features packed into .NET MAUI and my favorite has to be all of the great Dependency Injection and configuration that goes into the MauiProgram startup. If you want to know more checkout my most recent YouTube video breaking down Preview 13 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dkk-74x-V8] and all of the configuration that is built in including Essentials, Blazor, and more. But, what if you want to do oth…

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Implementing In-App Subscriptions in iOS & Android with no backend servers

Over the years I have created several apps [https://montemagno.com/my-apps/] that I am super proud of, and for the most part, I have always put them out for free onto the app stores. More recently I have been experimenting with different monetization strategies for the apps so users can unlock features or just leave a tip. For the longest time I kept things simple with a "non-consumable" one-time purchase. The strategy is straight forward, they either purchased the item or they didn't. Based on…

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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 side effect…

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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 devices moving to ARM64…

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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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I crush code and share it, publish NuGet packages, speak at conferences, upload videos, pretend I am good at playing video games, tweet up a storm, drink gallons of coffee, and ride my bike. Checkout my monthly newsletter that you should subscribe to!