TL;DR – put the following line in your app-ads.txt file:

google.com, pub-3940256099942544, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

Long version: When I upgraded to iOS 15 and Xcode 13, I went to upgrade all my apps. I test them all with Admob test ads, the way you should. When I got done with the changes I made, started getting the error:

Google> Cannot find an ad network adapter with the name(s): (
"com.google.DummyAdapter"
). Remember to link all required ad network adapters and SDKs, and   set -ObjC in the 'Other Linker Flags' setting of your build target.



Which isn’t very helpful. At first I thought there was a bug in a Pod dependency, or one of the libraries. I downloaded an example app from Admob, and that worked. So I thought there was a bug in my code. I looked for “-ObjC” in the ‘Other Linker Flags’ – yup, it was there. I looked all over the web for a solution to this, only to find there were many other people with the same issue.

The guidance from Admob on their forums? That error occurs when there are no ads available (or if the -ObjC isn’t there in the linker flags). So….how do they NOT have test ads? I mean, that’s something that’s always available, right?

Since I do this in my spare time, I let this slide for months. Yesterday, I looked into it again, and spent several hours looking around to see what might be the case. Eventually, I searched for “Admob not showing test ads”, and ran across a thread on Reddit in the r/admob forum. Down at the bottom, user ahmedbilal12321 had the same problem, and solved it by adding the line:

google.com, pub-3940256099942544, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

to the app-ads.txt. This is specifically added so your apps can show test ads.

This is something I didn’t do when I started using app-ads.txt earlier in the year, and test ads showed up for me. Sure enough, this is also in the Admob documentation for test ads – I bypassed that in the documentation when I was searching for a solution.

I added that line to app-ads.txt, waited until Google scanned the file, tried it out, and….. it didn’t work. It was pretty late last night at this point, and I figured that after Google scanned the file, it was going to take some time for it to filter through the rest of the system.

I tried it a few minutes before I wrote this post, and it worked.

That thread was the only place I’ve seen this mentioned. I wanted to post something in hopes it will help someone else. Thanks to ahmedbilal12321 for posting that!

Several other users (specifically on Stack Overflow) have posted they ran into this problem, and ran REAL Admob ads in their apps to test to see if it’s working. DO NOT DO THIS. It will get you suspended or even banned. Add the test identifier for the simulator and any devices you might test on as admob suggests AND run using the test banner/interstitial/whatever ads they provide as tests. DO BOTH. If you do one, and not the other, it can also get your suspended or banned.

Apple is sent out “See you on the 7th” invitations to the press, which has been widely interpreted to mean that that this is the day new iPhones will be announced. I interpret “See you on the 7th” to be a reference to the additional camera that is rumored to be on the new iPhone.

The main thing people have been already been complaining about is that the new iPhone will likely not have a standard headphone jack. I can think of a couple of reasons that they would remove this. I’ll preface this by saying that they wouldn’t just randomly remove something like that unless they felt the benefits outweigh all that complaints they’ll likely have.

The headphone jack takes (relatively speaking) a lot of room in the phone. There are a number of things that they could do with this extra room. The first thing that comes to mind is extra battery space, which translates to more battery life.

Second, along with a second camera, it’s likely that the new iPhone will have a second microphone. This could be leveraged in a couple of different ways. Noise reduction is one. Another is greater fidelity for doing speech recognition. Apple has already said that additional microphones would be of benefit to Siri and this could be applied to speech recognition in general, especially for “simple” dictation of notes and reminders.

Well, the big announcement is tomorrow, and everyone expects it’ll be the the iPad 3. From the rumors, it might even be called the iPad HD.

So a couple of questions…

How are developers going to deal with the confusion of all the apps for the iPad that have the tag HD?

How are iPad graphics going to look on a much higher resolution screen?

How much memory is it going to have and how much more graphics processing power is it going to require?

Apple to Unveil Next Generation Software at Keynote Address on Monday, June 6

CUPERTINO, California—May 31, 2011—Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by Apple engineers. Mac® developers will see and learn how to develop world-class Mac OS X Lion applications using its latest technologies and capabilities. Mobile developers will be able to explore the latest innovations and capabilities of iOS and learn how to greatly enhance the functionality, performance and design of their apps. All developers can bring their code to the labs and work with Apple engineers.

For more details, visit the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 website at developer.apple.com/wwdc.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Press Contacts:
Jennifer Bowcock
Apple
jennifer.b@apple.com
(408) 974-9758
Trudy Muller
Apple
tmuller@apple.com
(408) 862-7426



I’ve been thinking about that Apple might be up to with the North Carolina data center they’ve been working on, and the announcement that Apple is making tomorrow. I think it’s pretty likely that they’re finally going to take the technology they bought from LaLa.com, and create a streaming music service.

What would this mean? No more having to download all your music to your devices. Have a huge iTunes library that won’t all fit on that nice iPod Touch, iPhone, or AppleTV? No problem. They know what music you bought, and can stream it to you. Want streaming only versions of those songs? Apple can use LaLa’s tech to do that too, for a price. It’d sure be something big enough to require a massive new data center.

If AT&T got wind of this early on, this might be the reason they decided to drop the “all you can eat” 3G plan earlier this year. That’s just speculation, of course…. as is the rest of this.

Update: Well, it wasn’t streaming. It was The Beatles… And Amazon is selling the The Beatles Stereo Box Set for $20 cheaper than iTunes, as of this writing.

Apple has gotten a patent on a technology where the device itself changes its physical interface, depending on the situation. Using it like an iPod? You get a wheel. Using it like a remote control, you get the buttons for that. Need a physical keyboard? It would be able to do that too.

This is extremely cool.

via Patently Apple