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News
Official Swift Blog
Just an hour after last week's issue Apple released this, a blog 😎. This feels very different to Apple's previous attempts at blogging and is clearly being run by people who want to get the word out about Swift. I really hope this becomes a source of opinion and best practice rather than just a mechanism for getting news out, but even if it is just news this is a welcome effort. Bravo.
apple.com
Apple and the National Federation of the Blind Resolution
This post by Mark Riccobono on the National Federation of the Blind website is wonderful. I didn't link to all of the fuss around this topic as there was very little sensible to link to, just a whole lot of misinformation and misquotes. The truth is that Apple are leading the way in mobile accessibility, and have been for years. It's nice to see a post like this coming direct from an organisation like this.
nfb.org
Tools
Realm
Realm is a new serverless database + ORM library for iOS (and apparently Android coming soon). From a quick look at it, it looks to be super simple which has me interested straight away, it also promises a low memory footprint and thread safety. This is definitely one to watch.
realm.io
Jazzy
More goodies from the team at Realm. This time it's not the database but a documentation generation tool. Unusually, it doesn't actually generate documentation from source code, instead it uses the AST (which I didn't realise included comments before seeing this) to generate both Swift and Objective-C documentation from your code. AppleDoc style comments are compatible and the whole thing is output in the beautiful new visual style of the iOS 8 documentation. Lovely.
github.com
Code
Revolved
I always love having a poke around inside an app I didn't write but it's been a while since I came across a full app that's been open sourced. This week Bartosz Ciechanowski open sourced his 3D playground app, Revolved and it's a cracker. If you're interested in a non-trivial example of GLKit, OpenGLES and integrating the whole thing with UIKit then you need to be all over this.
github.com
Standard Controls
Brent Simmons on whether or not to use standard controls. With iOS 7 there was definitely a swing back to standard controls over the completely custom UI that we were seeing built in iOS 6 apps. Brent also posted a follow up article which is also worth a read and Greg Cox also posted about the cyclical nature of this problem.
inessential.com
How to break (and fix) the accessibility of a table view
Talking of Accessibility (we were, check the News section), I came across this blog post disguised as a gist by David Rönnqvist this week. While I have tested with Voice Over many times, I had not come across this table view "Actions" overlay before. David talks about how easy it is to break this with custom UI and the steps you need to take to ensure it is working.
github.com
Design
Schnapps
This is a cute tool. It's not directly related to iOS design but I really like the idea, it's like watching this but for a design process. I'd love to see some of the designers I admire use this tool.
schnappsformac.com
Business and Marketing
A better way to ask “How much would it cost to develop this app?”
Quoting for any software development is always challenging (and used to be the worst part of my job when we did this) so I am always interested in any technique which avoids me having to come up with a single number to quantify what needs to be a very fluid process. Matt Mayer explains how they have been getting clients on board with a more agile charging structure. I am sure not all clients will go for this, but it's going to be a less stressful relationship for everyone if they do.
reigndesign.com
Videos
SkipCasts
A new YouTube channel from Skip Wilson full of Swift tutorials. He started with a basic guide to Swift but has now moved on to tutorials around building games and SceneKit, all with Swift. They are much better quality than your average YouTube tutorial as well. Worth checking out.
youtube.com
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Coursera iOS Software Engineer - Mountain View, CA
Coursera makes the best university courses available for free for everyone. We're looking for experienced iOS developers to help us make education a basic human right. Work in Swift on our new mobile core architecture to bring learning to millions of students around the world.
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Leading mobile banking app Numbrs seeks talented iOS engineers
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centralway.com
Apple and IBM sitting in a tree! That's a surprise. What next? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria? In all seriousness though this is a bold move from Apple, and one that could have long lasting, positive ramifications for the iOS platform. I liked this serious post by John Moltz and this fine piece of sarcasm by Russell Ivanovic about the announcement.
Dave Verwer