Issue 214

4^th September 2015

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Still no sign of full iOS 9 TestFlight support, or any news about when submissions will be accepted so it’s possible we won’t see the final release of iOS 9 at the launch next week. However, at the very least I’d expect to get the GM by the 9th, with a possible final release a week or so later?

Dave Verwer

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News

Even though it was announced at WWDC, I’d completely missed the fact that supporting IPv6 will be a requirement come the beginning of next year. Luckily, it’s probably not going to be a huge deal for most apps. The short version is to make sure you’re using NSURLSession and friends instead of the older APIs, and don’t hardcode any IPv4 addresses. There’s more information, including details on how to easily test with an IPv6 network, in the first half of this WWDC video.

With the release of Swift 2.0 over the next couple of weeks, Allen Pike gives us a quick history of the language and his views on the pros and cons of moving across.

Tools

As you may know, to better support iOS 9 Spotlight Apple are crawling web pages to find deep app links and other information that will allow your apps to appear more readily in the search suggestions. Want to see how your site does in terms of what they are looking for? This tool will give you a good idea on where you might need to improve.

Code

David Smith with a look at how the iOS SDK has grown over the years. When you graph it like this, it’s surprising to see how big some of the individual releases were (I’m looking at you, iOS 8). Luckily, you can still approach iOS development fairly slowly and ship an app without needing to know every corner of the SDK, but it’s definitely a little daunting if you’re just getting started.

Matthew Palmer with some more thoughts on Protocol Oriented Programming after giving it a go in his Locksmith project.

Ole Begemann with some clarification on the recommended way to set up and modify constraints in code using Auto Layout. The advice comes mainly from the two WWDC sessions on Auto Layout from this year’s conference which are both excellent - Part 1 & Part 2.

When I flippantly said “Not entirely sure how useful this is going to be” last week, I did have a feeling I might regret it. Sure enough, Simon Gladman has followed up on his previous post showing how the phone could be used as a controller for another device.

Design

At the point of needing to show an error message, user experience is really important as you’re dealing with a potentially annoyed user. Yet it’s not often that I see error messages (especially their wording) in design mockups. Luckily, Thomas Fuchs has plenty of advice on getting better at them.

Useful tip from Mark Forscher. Works for iOS apps as well as OS X.

Business and Marketing

There’s some great tips in this article by Claire McGregor but there was one that really stood out to me. It’s the suggestion that you could actually hide, or at least de-emphasise IAPs for infrequent users of your app. I’d love to read about anyone who’s tried something like that and seen results.

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And finally...

You might need to be British for this to be funny. 😃