Simulator Versus Device

I had an amusing realization this morning as I finished up a feature for my iPhone app. I implemented a "touch and hold" mechanism (see this excellent description of how to do it) and tested it last night on the simulator, Apple's "virtual iPhone" that makes it faster to turn around and test new code. It worked perfectly.

This morning, I put it on my phone, and it barely worked at all. It took me a few minutes, but I finally figured out the issue.

In my original code, touchesMoved dismissed the timer that eventually puts an indicator in place that you're in editing mode. On the simulator, that's not a problem: You take your finger off the mouse. But in the real world, your finger does not sit perfectly still. Mine doesn't, at any rate. So I had to add literal wiggle room. If you stay within a small radius of touches, the code won't dismiss the timer. Now it works just the way I want.