JSON has taken the data-interchange world by storm with its' lightweight, easy to understand format. The explosion of mobile apps, and their consumption of network based data, helped fuel JSON's growth. CapTech's recommended approach for web services utilizes JSON as the interchange format.

While JSON has been around for several years - RFC4627 was published in July of 2006 - working with JSON in an iOS project required that you download one of the many frameworks and integrate it into your project. My personal choice has been SBJSON - https://github.com/stig/json-framework.

The hardware capabilities of iOS devices have improved dramatically in the two most recent generations, which has helped fuel the growth of increasingly complex apps featuring augmented reality and photorealistic gaming. While such advances are great for the iOS platform, it is important for developers to consider older generations of iPhones and iPod touches that are still a significant portion of the installed base. This post will cover some important perfomance tweaks to improve the user experience on these slower devices.