Issue 171

Comment

With six hours of iTunes Connect maintenance on Sunday (yes Apple, I got all 24 emails you sent to make sure I knew about it! 😄), it seems likely that we'll be getting our hands on iTunes Connect Analytics. We have never had access to this kind of data before (app store page views, conversion rates, etc...) and I can't wait to take a look. If you want a reminder of what is likely to be delivered in the update then skip on to 15:38 in "The New iTunes Connect" session video for a recap.

Update: All of those emails from Apple about the maintenance time and I still didn't read them properly. As Jeff Hunter points out on Twitter the maintenance is next Sunday, not this Sunday... Thanks Jeff!

News

Expectations for WatchKit

We should get a look at the first bits of WatchKit SDK later this month. In September Apple outlined that WatchKit would be a staged rollout with "glances" and notifications first, and fully native apps coming later in 2015. David Smith has all the details.

Web Apps

It's been a long time since I heard any serious discussion on the topic of mobile "web apps" vs "native apps" but I really enjoyed this article by Lukas Mathis which takes another look at the current situation.

Tools

Deliver

Felix Krause with a tool which can completely manage the submission process for your app delivery to iTunes Connect, including uploading metadata, release notes, screenshots, keywords, localisations and everything else. It turns a potentially tedious task into a one command job. Really interesting.

Continuous Integration With Xcode Server

Keith Harrison with an in depth article on setting up Xcode bots with OS X server. We're just about to start a project which is going to need continuous delivery of builds to be shipped to another system and so learning this is on my list of tasks and I'll be coming back to this article. Simon Wolf also recently wrote about adding Developer ID signing to automated builds if you're using this to build OS X apps.

Code

Malicious iOS Apps

I missed this when it was published back in September but it's definitely worth a read. Andreas Kurtz covers the differences in security and sandboxing between iOS 8 and earlier versions. His article on the security of Touch ID is also worth a read.

ImageScout

Reda Lemeden with an implementation of fastimage which downloads only enough of an image to determine the size and format information, then stops. This could save you a lot of bandwidth in your apps.

Core Graphics: In the Beginning

Mark Dalrymple with a history lesson on Core Graphics. I'd known that Core Graphics was based on the PostScript/PDF standard for a long time but I didn't know all the details. Now I do! This seems to be part 1 of a series and I'm already looking forward to reading the rest.

Functional Swift Snippets

Fancy a snippet of functional Swift dropped into your inbox every week or so? I've been really enjoying this series of emails/posts from the team behind Functional Programming in Swift.

Design

The Dark Sky Today Widget

Dark Sky is the only third party Today widget that has survived more than a couple of days in my notification centre. If you're designing an extension for your app, I'd certainly take note of the design recommendations here.

And finally...

Why Gandhi Is Such An Asshole In Civilization

What a great bug. I also love that they kept it as a little easter egg in later versions.

Issue 171 November 7th 2014