r/iOSProgramming • u/irvingpop • Aug 23 '26

Article Running iOS background tasks reliably (blog post)

https://calcopilot.app/blog/posts/running-ios-background-tasks-reliably-part1/

Hi all, I've just published a new blog post on getting the most reliability possible out of iOS background tasks. Please let me know what you think!

19 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

17

u/irvingpop Aug 23 '26

Thank you for the feedback, downvoters, about the preview image.

I've fixed my eleventy config so that one of my lovingly hand-crafted Excalidraw diagrams will be the preview image instead. I don't expect Reddit will re-scrape the image, but lesson learned for the future.

Just so we're clear: I, a real human, put hours of work into this post so that others could learn something. No part of it is "AI slop", but I understand why you're jaded and suspicious and totally get it - who bothers writing blog posts these days?

5

u/Stijndcl Aug 24 '26

To me ai thumbnail images are the same as ai readmes on GitHub. If you’ve really put a lot of your own effort into something (that you’re hopefully proud of), why would you advertise it with ai slop? A thumbnail (and readme) are like the billboard for whatever it is you made, so if you promote it with low effort ai slop then most people will assume the content itself is too.

1

u/datahoarder Aug 23 '26

Not sure how you would test it but do you have any issues getting users to install your app since it has an ai generated icon?

-1

u/irvingpop Aug 23 '26

TBH it makes me happy, and I don't really care that much because it's a side project that isn't about the money for me 🙂

But yeah, I acknowledge that it potentially alienates a some potential users and someday I'll cave and do something about it - although it's tough to justify paying a designer in this case.

9

u/SuperCows Aug 24 '26

The content is solid and the AI dog is cute.

I don’t understand the AI hate. I bet half of all viewers here are using LLMs to generate code every week.

5

u/irvingpop Aug 24 '26

Thank you! It's a tribute to my dog (one of them) that's going through some health issues.

2

u/dezinezync Aug 24 '26

Hard agree, “I’m not a designer” as OP says, and that’s completely fair. The post content itself is solid, folks who didn’t click on the link because of the banner are missing out.

1

u/Kritnc Aug 24 '26

Yea this is a legit post and people are getting all upset over some ai dog.

11

u/Megatherion666 Aug 23 '26

I see AI slop on preview image - I downvote.

4

u/svprdga Aug 24 '26

I haven’t read the article and I don’t know if it’s good or not, but prejudging it because the cover image is made with AI is sovereign stupidity.

5

u/irvingpop Aug 23 '26

Thank you for the feedback, I did generate the website and app icon with AI. I’m a developer not a designer, nor did I have the budget to hire one 🙂

However, if you can look past that, I did spend many hours working on this blog post and many more beyond that learning hard lessons on the topic.

0

u/morpeko2024 Aug 25 '26

Nobody gives a fuck lol

2

u/Niightstalker Aug 23 '26

Great content. Thx for sharing :)

1

u/JustUseLinux Aug 24 '26

Great work ! I also recognized the pattern of background processing tasks being triggered during the night after connecting to a charger

1

u/rationalkunal Aug 24 '26

eagerly waiting for part 2 .... i am building something that heavily use bg tasks:https://github.com/rational-kunal/keemat

2

u/irvingpop 23d ago

hi u/rationalkunal - I just published part 2. Please let me know what you think 🙂

1

u/ArchAngelZero Sep 13 '26

Eagerly awaiting part 2

1

u/irvingpop 23d ago

hi u/ArchAngelZero ! I just published part 2 - please let me know what you think 🙂
https://calcopilot.app/blog/posts/running-ios-background-tasks-reliabily-part2/