Issue 191

27^th March 2015

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Happy Friday everyone. More releases this week with beta 4 of iOS 8.3 and Xcode 6.3 making an appearance. It feels to me like this is getting quite close to a final release which means that it won’t be long until we’re able to use Swift 1.2 which is something to look forward to!

It’s a bumper issue this week so I’ll keep this short, let’s get to the links! 🍸

Dave Verwer

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News

Nope, you didn’t miss the announcement to submit your apps but it looks like Apple are testing the waters with some selected developers by pushing a few Watch apps live. There’s certainly some of the usual suspects here but also some smaller companies too. Hopefully this will open up for everyone soon.

You should read the article for the full details but given how prevalent AFNetworking usage is this is something you should certainly pay attention to. Just a few hours ago version 2.5.2 was released which includes a fix for this so you’ll want to get your apps updated.

Tools

Naturally there are a large number of choices we all have for testing iOS apps these days. Giovanni Lodi has put together a round up of all of the tools which are available (including some CI tools at the bottom of the post). On the same subject, Jon Reid also released his Xcode Coverage tool this week which looks great.

Chris Hale with a post containing everything you’ve ever wanted to know about crash reports. I would imagine most of us are using some kind of service like Hockey or Crashlytics which can do this automatically but it’s still good to understand the details.

Obviously everyone who has published an iOS app has successfully navigated the provisioning and submission process but I’m sure we could all do with a refresher from time to time. With that in mind, Alberto De Bortoli has put together this article which goes through all the basics, is up to date and is clearly explained.

Felix Krause has added documentation for all of the iTunes Connect “APIs” to his Fastlane project. These APIs have been around for a while now and while I’m sure they are not officially supported (and may break without warning) they should be fairly stable. Use at your own risk though!

Code

Big news from Facebook this week as React Native is now available publicly. Colin Eberhardt had early access to the beta and has put together an overview of what it’s like to use React Native and as well as a tutorial if you want to get started with it.

More news from Facebook as they announce another UI framework. ComponentKit looks interesting to me as it takes the methodologies of React but uses native code rather than Javascript to define you user interface. If you are trying to decide between the two, the React Native link above has an overview of the benefits and trade offs of each.

Instant Cocoa from Soroush Khanlou is a framework made up of a collection of components and seems to take the Rails stance of convention over configuration with the aim to reduce the amount of boilerplate code we have to write. One of the components, Instant Router, certainly looks like it could simplify dealing with complex URL schemes.

AAWindow from Aaron Abentheuer has a clever way of detecting when the user is opening Control Center. I can see this being very useful for apps that use AirPlay, for example, as the user opens Control Center you could change the UI to show some useful information.

Design

Love them or hate them icons are everywhere. This post by Thomas Byttebier discusses some of the downsides to relying on icons in your UI. Completely unrelated to this, I also removed all of the category icons on iOS Dev Weekly with the tweaked design that rolled out a couple of weeks ago. They really didn’t add anything and the colours are still there to signify that a category has changed.

Not related to iOS development but if you have any interest in design you’ll want to read Cliff Kuang’s fascinating article on the design and rollout of Disney’s RFID wristband.

Business and Marketing

Even though I don’t work alone keeping a positive mindset is one of the biggest challenges I have with my business. Shane Crawford discusses the challenges of working alone and staying positive in this inspiring article.

You really can’t have missed the launch of Fantastical 2 this week, it’s been everywhere. Joe Cieplinski discusses how the team at Flexibits made it happen. Spoiler: There’s no silver bullet!

Scenery takes beautiful product photography and will layer on an iOS, Android or Mac screenshot at the perfect size on them. No more trying to find a royalty free photo and then trying to align every corner of your screenshot with the perspective of the photograph. Free app with IAPs for the photography. It’s also 100% Swift.

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