In a recent post I noted that iOS 8.1.1 is now available for download. This morning I added a sentence to that post reminding people to BACK UP FIRST. That's because it's not uncommon for something to go wrong when one updates. For example, when I updated to iOS 8, I encountered an error, and the only way to get my iPad out of it was to restore to factory settings. Doing so means that everything is lost. Fortunately, I had backed up first, so it wasn't a problem.

In iOS 8 you can now quickly access your contacts via the App Switcher by double clicking the Home Button. If you don't want to look at a list of your favorite and most recent contacts every time you use the App Switcher, or if you don't want anyone else to easily see who you call or text most often, you can disable the feature in settings.

In part 2 of this post on Swift's protocols, you will learn practical uses for declaring custom protocols in your own apps, and learn further how they improve the architecture of your apps and make them easier to enhance and extend.

In part 1 of this post, I demonstrated how to implement existing Cocoa Touch protocols in your apps. Now you'll learn how and why to create your very own. First, we need to cover the basic construction of a Swift protocol.

It's that time of year again. Right after a new iPhone comes out there is the inevitable deluge of great cases to protect your new investment. This happens with every iPhone release, but perhaps never more markedly than with the introduction of the completely new form factors of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. If ever an iPhone called for a protective case it is these large and larger models, with their increased real estate, slick, rounded edges and extra heft. Rather than clump an assortment of different cases together, I'll be focusing on one great case each week over the course of the coming months. In a break from the norm, this week we are featuring two different waterproof cases: the LUNATIK TAKTIK 360 ($119.95) and the LUNATIK AQUATIK ($89.95).

Enabling notifications on an email thread lets you sit back and wait for that important reply without feeling the need to check your inbox every five minutes. You can turn on notifications for a thread either from the subject line of an email you are composing or by swiping left on a thread inside your inbox. Here are the two methods for enabling notifications on email threads in the Mail app.

Living In an OmniGroup World

By Daniel Rasmus

Just outside of Redmond, WA, center of the Microsoft universe, lies a little city we like to call Seattle. Seattle is the home to OmniGroup, a company dedicated to writing some of the best, and more enduring, Macintosh software around, along with complementary iOS apps to facilitate the increasingly mobile lifestyles of their customers.

I like Apple's Maps app, but a number of times it's taken me to a location that simply didn't exist: an Indian restaurant, a zoo, a hotel in a small town, a Chinese restaurant. I diligently follow Siri's directions and when she says I've arrived, the establishment in question is nowhere to be seen. And in several of these cases probably never existed. If you've had similar problems and prefer maps from third parties such as Google, you can now conveniently access these maps from within Apple's Maps app.

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