Issue 195

Comment

Did you get a ticket? I'm very happy to say that I was lucky enough to get one and I'll be in San Francisco again this June for the low down on what's next for the various platforms... Oh and for a ride in the new Car... 😏 Can't wait!

News

Apple rejecting apps with metadata mentioning Pebble?

I think there's two points to make here. Firstly, despite the title of this forum thread, supporting Pebble devices in your app is absolutely fine. This rejection was for mentioning Pebble in the metadata. Secondly, at this point it could be a case of a single decision by a reviewer rather than new instructions coming down from above (although there are comments in the thread suggesting other rejections are happening for this).

However, this rule has been in the guidelines for a long time and is completely unambiguous. Still, it feels like a bit of a disappointing move on day one of the watch.

Deprecating the Sync and Datastore APIs

Do you use the Dropbox API in your app? If you do then you need to read this. As Dropbox themselves say, uptake on their new API has been slow and while shutting down the old API is certainly one way to push developers into action, it's going to mean a chaotic October for those who inevitably ignore this! There's still plenty of time to get things updated though, don't leave it until it's too late.

Tools

Balance Delimiters

Xcode tip of the week goes to Chris Maddern. I've been aware of the "Balance Delimeters" menu item for a while but it's hidden away 3 menus deep and it's quicker to just select the text you need with the keyboard. Of course, as Chris points out, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it and it moves from being hidden away to being the best feature ever! 😀

Code

“My Biggest WatchKit Mistake”

The watch is a very different platform from the phone and so there are whole new categories of mistakes just waiting to be discovered! 😎 There are some great tips here.

A First Look at ReactiveCocoa 3.0

Colin Eberhardt with a peek into the future of ReactiveCocoa. While the core concepts are unchanged the big news in this release is the all new Swift API.

3 Nuances of Swift Extensions

There are some subtleties with Swift extensions that you might not be aware of. You will be once you read this piece by Andrew Bancroft though... What are you waiting for?

Lessons Learned in Software Development

Henrik Warne with a good set of tips for becoming a better developer. I'd imagine that you'll read through this and nod your head at every one of these, but it's nice to see them all written down in one place.

Design

Icons for Apple Watch - The Definitive Guide

Scott Lewis with a post on the plethora of different icon sizes needed for the watch. I had no idea there were so many (hint: significantly more than you'd think). I wonder how long it will be until we just make icons for every increment of pixel dimensions between 1px and 2048px 😧.

You Will Adapt Your User Interfaces to Service Us!

Ged Maheux on how much we should change our interfaces to cope with the larger sizes of iPhone.

Videos

Ruthlessly Simple Dependency Management

Justin Spahr-Summers on the history and reasons for building Carthage as well as how to use it and how it works. Great questions at the end too. If you've been holding back on taking a look at Carthage, this might prompt you to give it a go.

And finally...

Mythology

Soroush Khanlou on keeping an open mind...

Issue 195 April 24th 2015