Issue 166

3^rd October 2014

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Were you looking forward to a well deserved break after iOS 8 shipped? Tough luck… No rest for the wicked, in the last week we have been invited to Submit our OS X Yosemite apps, start testing with iOS 8.1, catch up with the latest changes to Swift 1.1 and dig into the details of how Pay really works. Things are certainly moving fast at the moment. 🚀

Dave Verwer

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News

Nick Arnott on the changes to Location Services that went live with iOS 8. I’ve noticed several apps asking for background location access and as a user I found them pretty confusing. If you’re still using the iOS 7 APIs for location services you’re probably going to see a significant decrease in permissions granted due to these changes. Time to update!

Jason Brennan with his take on the question that’s on everyone’s mind. Should I be coding in Swift or Objective-C right now? I must admit I’m still very much on the “not yet” side of the fence but Jason makes some good points here. Jason talks mainly about experienced iOS developers in this article but I believe it’s a whole different argument for those who are just getting started. My advice to those people, start with Objective-C as there’s enough to learn without wondering whether every issue is a lack of general iOS knowledge or a language problem.

Tools

If you’ve been struggling with the new sandbox layout in the iOS simulator then you’ll certainly want to install the new version of SimPholders. It’s in alpha right now but it’s working well from what I’ve seen. If this wasn’t an essential tool before iOS 8, it certainly is now.

Code

It’s possible you’re not aware that UIAlertView has been deprecated in iOS 8 as Xcode is not even flagging it as a warning. If you’re in that situation, you may have put off learning about UIAlertController which serves as a replacement for both UIAlertView and UIActionSheet. Mattt Thompson has all the details, as always!

There have been some significant enhancements to both the tools, and the technology behind Auto Layout in iOS 8. This is great news as Adaptive Layout really did sound the death knell for Springs and Struts. Sam Davies digs into the new layout margins properties as part of his excellent iOS 8 Day by Day series.

New (ish) blog by Warren Moore who used to work at Apple on the camera/photos iOS apps. It’s a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of Metal. The blog is going to be turned into a book at some point but this is a good chance to get a sneak preview of some of that content.

Design

Laura Franz digs into the science of how font size and line length affect readability on smaller screens. This fascinating article is talking about mobile web design but is just as relevant for native as it’s purely concerned with rendering text on small screens.

Business and Marketing

Hugh Kimura on how the App Store search results showing in Spotlight is working out. The bad news? It looks like it’s not searching on keyword at all, just app title. I remember wondering whether a feature like this would ever come to iOS back in January this year and even though the search results could use a little work, I think it’s a great step forward for app discoverability.

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