Keeping a UIButton selected after a touch

Try using NSOperationQueue to achieve this. Try out code as follows:

[[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] addOperationWithBlock:^{
    theButton.highlighted = YES;
}];

Hope this helps.

"Everything gets better when you turn power on"

    button.selected = !button.selected;

works perfectly... after I connected the outlet to the button in the Interface Builder.

You do not need to setBackgroundImage:forState:, the builder allows you to specify the background (gets resized if necessary) or/and foreground (not resizing) images.

I have an easier way. Just use "performSelector" with 0 delay to perform [button setHighlighted:YES] . This will perform re-highlighting after the current runloop ends.

- (IBAction)buttonSelected:(UIButton*)sender {
    NSLog(@"selected %@",sender.titleLabel.text);
    [self performSelector:@selector(doHighlight:) withObject:sender afterDelay:0];
}

- (void)doHighlight:(UIButton*)b {
    [b setHighlighted:YES];
}

How are you setting the images for the different UIControlStates on the button? Are you setting a background image for UIControlStateHighlighted as well as UIControlStateSelected?

UIImage *someImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"SomeResource.png"];
[button setBackgroundImage:someImage forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
[button setBackgroundImage:someImage forState:UIControlStateSelected];

If you're setting the selected state on the button touch down event rather than touch up inside, your button will actually be in a highlighted+selected state, so you'll want to set that too.

[button setBackgroundImage:someImage forState:(UIControlStateHighlighted|UIControlStateSelected)];

Edit:

To sum up my remarks in the comments and to address the code you posted...you need to set your background images for the full UIControl state that you're in. According to your code snippet, this control state would be disabled + selected + highlighted for the duration of the network operation. This means that you would need to do this:

[button setBackgroundImage:someImage forState:(UIControlStateDisabled|UIControlStateHighlighted|UIControlStateSelected)];

If you remove the highlighted = YES, then you would need this:

[button setBackgroundImage:someImage forState:(UIControlStateDisabled|UIControlStateSelected)];

Get the picture?