Issue 172

14^th November 2014

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Yes, even after 24 emails I didn’t manage to read a single one of them properly. The iTunes Connect maintenance window is this Sunday (I triple checked!), not last Sunday 😧. Oops! Anyone for analytics this weekend?

Dave Verwer

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News

Ash Furrow with the story of trying to build a new app in Swift over the last few months. This was an ambitious project with a tight deadline, written primarily with the Swift betas and using ReactiveCocoa just in case everything else wasn’t cutting edge enough. Great post, worth a read. Also, the app is open source so you can see the finished (and ongoing) result.

You might ask what this article is doing in iOS Dev Weekly but I think this is big news. There are an enormous amount of .NET developers out there and the next version of Visual Studio will have built in support for downloading Xamarin to enable “native” iOS development out of the box. Also, as part of the same announcement it was interesting to see Microsoft open source the .NET framework, including taking contributions. Truly, times have changed.

Tools

Hans Petter Eikemo with a great looking little library for overlaying visuals to indicate touch interaction while you’re using your app. Now that we all need to record app preview videos, this could come in very handy.

I’m a fan of just plain, unadorned screenshots in App Store listings but if you prefer to add a device frame around around your UI you should take a look at this tool from Felix Krause. This week also saw the release of a similar tool for Sketch by Brenden Mulligan which is also worth checking out.

Code

Do your animations run at 60fps? Are you sure? Now you can find out for sure as Kevin Conner has put together this library which will make your app click like a geiger counter every time it drops a frame. There is also a visual indicator but I like the audible cue best. This is a really clever idea.

Alexei Baboulevitch with a comprehensive list of issues with writing a 3rd party keyboard for iOS 8. If you’re thinking of attempting to write one, you will certainly want to be aware of some of these problems. If you’re not, you should read it to see what you’re missing out on 😎.

Design

One of the most important design lessons I ever learned was from a designer friend of mine. I used to feel the need to put boxes and additional clutter around everything, my programmer brain thought I needed it. Lukas Mathis has some great advice on using space effectively.

This is a fantastic idea that I haven’t seen anyone else do before. Great work from MyFitnessPal.

Business and Marketing

I’ve no doubt that everyone is aware of the Monument Valley drama this week and obviously the situation is ridiculous. But, while it shouldn’t be necessary there are some things which could have mitigated some of the flood of ★☆☆☆☆ reviews such as releasing as a separate app rather than an IAP. The new levels are incredible though, truly the best iOS game ever released in my opinion.

Talking of business models, this article by Dan Provost talks about how they are trying the approach of a free app to promote a physical product that his company also produce.

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