I see that NSURLConnection has been deprecated, but does that implies it should no longer work? Both example programs as well as my app which utilize NSURLConnection get the same SSL errors (CFNetwork SSL Handshake failed) even when testing an http connection!
NSURLConnection no longer working?
I noticed this as well. It looks like something is broken in the new security features of networking conections in iOS 9 and watchOS 2.0 (they made a lot of security changes)
In my case NSURLConnection was requesting an SSL version of the network resource if port 443 was open even if it wasn't responding to requests.
Please search these forums for App Transport Security. Lots of threads on it.
Thank you, just did the search and you beat me to it.