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.
Business
iCloud Issues
@chockenberry with a good summary of the problems that are this year’s beta release cycle and iCloud. Although it’s good to see that Apple has backed out pretty much all of the iOS 13 and Catalina iCloud changes, Apple really needs to chalk this one up in the ‘could do better’ column. As Craig says – iCloud can’t be beta – it’s a service people rely on and trust to store their data. With services like this, *ANY* data loss is just unacceptable. Honestly, it’s still the main reason that I minimise the amount of data I actually store in iCloud.
furbo.org
How to Flip an App for Profit
It may well have been written in frustration (and I guess as a little tongue in cheek), but this post from @bhansmeyer does a good job highlighting some of the flaws that still exist in the App Store right now. For me, the sad thing is that there continue to be people out there who are in search of a quick buck and who are willing to do employ unscrupulous practices in doing so (this being a prime example). Recognising that that wish may be somewhat utopian, at the very least it does highlight the vast amount of work Apple has to do to police the store. In this case, I’m guessing they have certain measures in place but if a sudden switch toward one-star app reviews isn’t enough to trigger some sort of app review then maybe Apple should build in a way for consumers to directly report apps that they believe are employing unfair practices. Either way, something needs to be done.
beckyhansmeyer.com
Design
Less… is More? Apple’s Inconsistent Ellipsis Icons Inspire User Confusion
Great article from @jcenters looking at the increasingly popular, although inconsistent, use of ellipsis buttons in iOS users interfaces.
tidbits.com
30 Things We Often Forget When Designing Mobile Apps
A whole host of design tips from 101babich on things to consider and incorporate into your app designs *before* publishing it on the store. I definitely need to add some of these to my release checklist. ?
uxplanet.org
Swift
Timsort and Introsort: Swift’s Sorting Algorithms
You can find a lot of interesting stuff digging around in the Swift Standard Library. This article from @rockthebruno covers one such example – the different search algorithms used by Swift as part of the languages built-in sort() method.
swiftrocks.com
Code
Dark Mode on iOS 13
One of the big new features that many developers have been rushing to implement over the last few months is Dark Mode support. In this weeks issue of @NSHipster @mattt provides 6 action items to keep in mind when adding Dark Mode support to your app.
nshipster.com
Why Model Objects Shouldn’t Implement Swift’s Decodable or Encodable Protocols
Since their introduction, Swift’s Encodable and Decodable protocols have made object serialization significantly easier but as @pablomanuelli points out in this article, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your domain model should implement these protocols directly.
medium.com
Cool Custom View Controller Transitions
@fran_obarrio has been pretty busy writing two in-depth articles walking you through the steps to add some cool custom animated transitions between view controllers to your app. You can find the ‘easy’ tutorial here and the more advanced tutorial here.
medium.com
MVVM with Combine Tutorial for iOS
So, you’ve got your head around the basics of Combine but how do you actually use it in an app? Look no further than this tutorial from @peres that brings together Combine, SwiftUI and the MVVM design pattern to build your own weather app.
raywenderlich.com
Libraries
Migrating from CocoaPods to Swift Package Manager
With Xcode having recently got first-class support for the Swift Package Manager many are thinking about the transition away from Cocopods to SPM. @tiborbodecs is here to help with some step-by-step instructions on how to work through the migration.
theswiftdev.com
Testing
Unit Testing Best Practices in Xcode and Swift
I liked @twannl‘s opening sentence in this article. Learn some great tips and best practices for writing unit tests for your current (or next ?) Swift project.
avanderlee.com
Videos
Swinject to Handle Dependency Injection
In this talk @dr_nerd takes a deep dive into Swinject – a dependency injection framework for Swift for iOS, macOS and Linux showing you how to use the framework to split your app into loosely coupled components that can be easily developed, tested and maintained.
youtu.be
Other
Swift on Raspberry Pi
Put your Swift knowledge to good use and break out of the Apple ecosystem with this step-by-step tutorial from @digimarktech on how to get Swift up and running on a Raspberry Pi. So many possibilities….
lickability.com
Welcome to issue 198! Not long to go now and we’ll find out what some of this autumns new Apple hardware will look like. I’m still hoping for MacBook announcements (though I suspect I’m going to be disappointed). Prepare the popcorn, grab a drink and settle in to watch today’s show. Enjoy.