Issue 189

Comment

Before we get started this week, I have a small announcement! I mentioned last year that the software that we built to help me create iOS Dev Weekly every week was looking for some early access customers. Well, early access has been and gone and we're now launched and available to everyone! If you've got an idea for something in a similar style to iOS Dev Weekly, I'd love it if you were to give it a go.

In iOS related news, the Watch event came and went and dropped the release of Xcode 6.2 and WatchKit on us. Unfortunately it looks like Apple are not yet ready (see the note at the bottom of the page) to accept WatchKit extensions. You've just been given a few more days to put the finishing touches on your apps!

Looks like the animated 3D emoji on the watch survived though as I spotted them a couple of times in the keynote 😡.

News

ResearchKit

The biggest news of the March 9th event for me was ResearchKit (see the Technical Overview). I didn't expect any mention of SDKs at all at the event, let alone new ones! It's planned to be open source as well and is even listed on the Apple open source page already, right next to FaceTime 😆.

Xcode Compromised

This seems almost beyond belief, security researchers at the CIA claim they have developed a compromised version of Xcode which could inject their libraries into anything which it builds as well as a compromised OS X updater. There's no evidence yet that this is out in the wild but Craig Hockenberry gives us an idea of the scale of this kind of problem that should keep us awake at night. You should also read the original article that broke the news and this section of the leaked document too.

Tools

App Store Review Guidelines History

I've been waiting for someone to do this since the guidelines peeked their head from behind the NDA (I even had half an idea to do it myself). Good job I waited though as Ole Gammelgaard has put together a fantastic site which diffs the guidelines and can even email you when they update. Great resource.

Skala Color 2

This week saw a new release of Skala Color and Khoi Vinh gives some of the details of the update in this article. My favourite feature? If you have a colour in your clipboard (even a NS/UIColor) then a new button will appear in the picker allowing you to easily select, and adjust it. I'd still love to see this as a standalone app like Sip but I guess we'll need to wait for Skala for that 😄.

Code

Nullability and Objective-C

It's nice to see Apple making it even simpler to use Objective-C code in Swift. Adding these nullability flags to your source doesn't only help the interoperability between the two languages but also provides some nice compile time checks in your Objective-C code. I think this is a good sign that Apple don't see Objective-C going anywhere for a long time.

Scaling Square Register

The whole issue is great (as always) but I especially enjoyed this article from Kyle Van Essen. It's basically a description of the processes they use to get their software shipped and keep quality high as they've developed Square Register from simple beginnings into a full point of sale app.

Hyper Form

Form from Hyper provides a way to build a form on iOS using JSON and this week 1.0 was released. This project looks to be very active and they have accomplished a huge amount with it. Worth checking out if you're building any kind of data collection app.

Prototyping UIView Animations in a Swift Playground

Taylor Case gives an easy to follow article on how to prototype UIView animations with Playgrounds. This really is powerful and time saving when it comes down to the final tweaks that make a beautiful animation. In the past to get that animation exactly right took me probably hundreds of runs on the simulator.

macOS Development

Force Touch APIs

Looks like there will be some specific Force Touch APIs coming to OS X 10.10.3. I wonder if we'll see this technology with the iPhone 6s (or maybe 7)?

Design

Creating Icons for the Apple Watch

Michael Flarup with a great article with some details of Watch icon design that you'll do well to keep in your mind while designing that tiny circle to catch the eyes of your users. There's also a handy icon template for the watch as well.

False Dichotomies

Great article from Lukas Mathis on the subtleties of design decisions and our temptation to settle into absolutes in discussions about them.

And finally...

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lock Screen

Building a game using only notifications? Fun. 🙈

Issue 189 March 13th 2015