Insights is dead, long live Insights

In my previous post I sang the praises of Xamarin Insights and explained how it enabled me to locate a bug with the FillLPG for Android application.

At that time Insights as in Preview Release and all Xamarin subscribers has free access to the service, many like myself building it into production applications. We all knew that the time would come when Xamarin would decide that the product was mature enough and take it out of preview and start charging for it. At the recent Evolve conference (which I was not fortunate enough to attend) it was confirmed that existing users would still have access to the service but that plans were still being worked out.

Xamarin Insights to the Rescue

So, calling webservices from mobile applications is a solved problem yes? Well, not quite. I’ve been developing desktop and web-based applications for many years now and when it comes to accessing the Internet there are normally only a couple of scenarios to consider, you either have access or you don’t – simple.

However, in the world of mobile it’s not that simple. Mobile devices are just that, mobile, and can move in and out of coverage and between data connections numerous times during an application lifecycle. As mobile developers we know that this happens and we guard against it but checking that we have a valid connection and maybe even that we can ‘ping’ the target resource somewhere out there in the cloud.

Moving to new Virtual (really) Private Server provider

With all the post-Snowden privacy concerns I recently started to consider how much of my data was being stored on US servers, and hence fell under US legislation. It didn’t really surprise me that the answer was ‘quite a lot’, when you consider GMail, Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, Squarespace etc, but what was the alternative?

Xamain.iOS – Mapping & My Location

So, you’ve created your MKMapView in your view controller and instantiated a CLLocationManager which you’ve called RequestWhenInUseAuthorization() on. Everything tells you that this should be enough so that when the Map loads and requests the current location iOS will prompt the user whether they want to allow the device to share it’s location – but the prompt is never displayed and neither is the location.

I watched a Xamarin University course on iOS Mapping (IOS 230) and when I followed along with the exercise using a new project (not the one provided in the course materials) the location was still not displayed. But, when I ran the Completed project in the course materials I was prompted to allow location sharing and when I clicked ‘Allow’ the location was displayed. Looking at the code it did not seem to be any different from mine (but of course it had to be).

Users, you just can’t please all of them…

Recently I released the new version of the FillLPG for Android application as a Beta, that is working but with the potential for a few bugs and missing features. Because of my current work load I have not been able to put as much time into what is essentially a ‘pet project’ so I was running the risk of it never seeing the light of day.

On the whole it was received very well and there was a lot of positive feedback and feature suggestions. Then there are the ‘1 Star Brigade’ – you know, those who are so disappointed about an app that they just can’t let it go by and can give it a ‘virtual middle finger’ by leaving a 1 Star review – but frequently without taking the time to explain the reason for their displeasure.