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.
WWDC
So it’s here! WWDC week is upon us!
I was actually encouraged by yesterday’s keynote with Apple delivering some not so secret suprises such as the HomePod – a new home smart speaker combining high-quality audio with Siri functionality – various hardware refreshes and a fairly substantial iOS 11 update along with some slightly bigger suprises such as a fully redesign App Store and new drag and drop functionality between iPad apps. As a side note, it was really good to see the iPad getting a bit of love this year as it’s felt a bit of an after thought in recent years next to it’s it’s more mobile sibling so it’s great to see the addition of new features such as the new Dock and Files app continuing to push the platform forwards.
For me though, the biggest and most existing parts of the keynote were those around machine learning and augmented and virtual reality.
I’m by no means an expert in these areas but I was blown away by the demo of ARKit, something that I can see opening up a huge range of new possibilities for developers. I’ve experimented with AR in the past on iOS but it’s always been a bit of a roll-your-own so I’m really looking forward to spending some time playing with ARKit along with investigating some of the machine learning capabilities that CoreML can provide as I can see these areas growing in importance in the coming years.
In the mean time though enjoy this weeks links and have really great WWDC week!
Business
Scrum of One
Although starting out on a solo developer journey can be both exciting and rewarding, many such developers often struggle with the lack of structure, process and culture that is often inherent when working for a larger organisation. It was with great interest then that I read this article from @leakywellington on how he took one of the more popular Agile development methodologies, Scrum, and adapted it for his solo development activitites along with the benefits it has brought.
raywenderlich.com
108+ App Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Downloads
If you’re struggling for ideas on how to market your app, this link is the one for you. @appsposureaso have listed 108+ ideas on how to market your app in in this single app marketing infographic. It’s a long list but should provide some sparks of inspiration to get things rolling.
appsposure.com
Design
All Thumbs, Why Reach Navigation Should Replace the Navbar in iOS Design
You’ll have seen the double tap, the workaround Apple introduced to cope with the larger-sized screens, but Nav bars continue to fly in the face of this, positioned at the the top of the screen out of easy reach. @BradEllis disusses this problem in more detail, suggesting that now is the time to move away from UINavigationController‘s dated design pattern toward a more ergonomic navigation approach.
medium.com
Swift
Swift’s Evolution
There’s no two way’s about it, I love Swift, I think it’s a great language and streaks ahead of most of the other languages I’ve used during my career however I can’t help but agree with many of the points that @justin makes in this article. Maybe Apple should start dogfooding Swift and their tooling with a bit more zeal.
carpeaqua.com
Kick Your Manual Iteration Habit
I’ll be honest. I’m still not yet at the point where high-order functions are naturally the first thing that pop into my head when I think of loops in Swift (maybe it’s too many years of objc and other languages) however @palimondo makes some persuasive arguments in this article that are worth thinking about.
medium.com
Code
Metal Video Processing for iOS and tvOS
With Augmented Reality and VR features increasingly common, the need for real-time, high-performance video processing has also increased. In this article, @geppyp explains how to combine AVFoundation with the power of Metal to achieve some impressive results.
invasivecode.com
A deep dive into Grand Central Dispatch in Swift
Grand Central Dispatch is one of the fundamental technologies that underpins concurrency on iOS devices but how well do you understand it’s capabilities? @johnsundell takes a deep dive into this extremely powerful framework.
swiftbysundell.com
Tools
WWDC Apps
Whether you’re lucky enough to be attending WWDC in person, or if you’re like me and you’re following preceedings via the interwebs, at some point, you’ll be wanting to download the session videos. If you’ve not got yourself organised yet you’ll want to check out Apple’s official WWDC app for iOS and the unofficial WWDC app for macOS by @_inside. Between the two, it should have most of your viewing needs.
github.com
Libraries
Common iOS Code Vulnerabilities
Not so much a library, more a collection of useful hints from @fel1x on some of the more common vulnerabilities found in iOS applications. It’s a good thing to read through and provides some useful reminders of things to watch out for when developing your own apps.
github.com