Swift Developments is a hand-curated newsletter containing a weekly selection of the best links, videos, tools and tutorials for people interested in designing and developing their own apps using Swift.
News
Swift 4.2 Released
Due to timing, this didn’t quite make it into last weeks issue but I couldn’t go without mentioning it. Hot on the heels of iOS 12, Swift 4.2 is now officially out! @tkremenek has posted a run-down of many of the new improvements including a bunch of Swift Evolution language proposals and a number of updates to the standard library. Added to this @twostraws has also been looking at bleeding-edge of the Swift language and digging into what’s on the horizon for Swift 5.
swift.org
Business
6 Winning Monetisation Strategies
Monetisation is a tricky beast. Get it right and you have a bunch of happy users and a sustainable business model. Get it wrong and your users can leave in droves. In this article @bassface25 takes a look at 6 classic monetisation strategies and provides some useful advise on how to find out what works for you.
novoda.com
Design
Designing and Developing Siri Shortcuts
Introduced in iOS 12, Siri shortcuts can provide a unprecedented level of integration between your app and the underlying operating system allowing your users to customise their experience like never before. The key though is how to inform your users that the shortcuts are actually there. @maxrudberg has some ideas that might help.
maxrudberg.com
Swift
How CaseIterable Works in Swift
One of the great new features in Swift 4.2 is the introduction of the CaseIterable protocol, which defines a convenient way to access an array of all enum cases. Now this in itself is great but one of the huge advantages of this new protocol is that you don’t need to constantly update your code as you add new cases as the Swift compiler automatically generates all the necessary code for you. @rockthebruno has been looking at how this works under the hood.
swiftrocks.com
Bloom Filters and Swift 4.2
A bloom filter is a memory efficient data structure that lets you rapidly determine whether an element is present within a set. It’s not your bulk-standard collection type though. Unlike standard data structures, it uses a probabalistic approach telling you whether an element *may* be in a set or is definitely NOT in a set. This may sound a little strange but due to it’s space efficiency it makes it a great option when working with data sets that are impractically large. @khanlou shows you how to build your own.
khanlou.com
Code
iOS 12
Following hot on the heels of last weeks iOS 12 release, @mattt has written a great article covering some lesser known, but no less interesting, features of the iOS 12 release. Definitely worth a read.
nshipster.com
Marzipan: Porting iOS Apps to the Mac
With the official availability of Marzipan rumoured to be some time next year, @steipete has been looking at the current state of play and what it really takes to port an iOS applcation to macOS.
pspdfkit.com
Migrating to Unified Logging – Swift Edition
Although the introduction of the new(ish) Unified Logging System into macOS and iOS might have passed some developers by, it actually provides a number of benefits over your traditional NSLog and print statements. @jaredsinclair digs into the detail and provides some useful tips to keep in mind if and when you decide to make the transition.
bignerdranch.com
Testing
Functional UI Testing in Exist with EarlGrey and Sencha
@BelleBCooper with an interesting, in-depth, look at how to she uses EarlGrey and Sencha for functional/acceptance testing in her iOS app Exist.
hellocode.co
Videos
NSSpain Videos
This years edition of @nsspain was held a few weeks ago and the videos from the first day are already starting to surface. There’s some great talks in here so take a look and see which of them pique your interest.
vimeo.com
Other
How Apple’s Awesome Motion Watch Faces Are Made
Want a peek behind the curtain? To close things out this week we have this interesting video and article from @almoststephen on how Apple’s motion watch faces are made. Beautiful.
hodinkee.com