Is there a way I can easily set up a notification when the minutes change on the system time for iOS devices?
I need to do some UI updates for time changes. I'd like the UI to update exactly on minute changes, not just every 60 seconds through an NSTimer trigger.
There are no notifications provided by the API but you could roll your own by having a background thread polling the system time and then sending a custom notification to the UI on the main thread.
However, I wouldn't bother. You can't manage time "exactly" on any device with a software UI. The best you can do is get the UI updates to occur below the threshold of user perceptions. Humans can't really perceive time intervals of less than 100-200 milliseconds (1/10th second). Any UI more precise is wasted. A NSTimer can very reliably hit a 100 millisecond window as long as some other part of the app doesn't hang or bog.
Unless you've tested the interface using a NSTimer and found it wanting, I wouldn't go looking for adding complexity.