Issue 223

6^th November 2015

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

The biggest news of this week is surely that in iOS 9.2, Safari View Controller natively supports edge swipes! That’s not the only enhancement either, it now also supports action extensions and press and hold on the refresh button. See the release notes for more details. Great news.

Dave Verwer

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News

Did you assume you were safe from Xcode Ghost because you checked your version of Xcode? Think again. Nick Arnott has a fascinating story from trying to submit an app recently. Luckily, it was caught as part of the automated validation checks as the app was uploaded, but it does show how vulnerable we are.

Do you use appledoc? No? Are you sure? Even if you don’t use it directly, you’ve almost certainly used it in one way or another. Tomaz Kragelj is looking for help to maintain and enhance the tool if you fancy helping with some open source.

Tools

I’ve been a big fan of SimPholders for a long time now and this new version is a huge step forward. It now supports watchOS and tvOS as well as a virtual file system to put all of the various containers within easy reach. It’s been free up until now but this is a major upgrade, and more than worthy of the price tag. Go buy it.

Want to develop for the Apple TV but your huge, wall mounted TV is in a different room, being watched by your family? Erica Sadun has some tips on setting up the Apple TV to run headless and using QuickTime to view the output. Not perfect, but much better than the simulator.

I really enjoyed this amusingly written story of Russ Bishop’s woes while tracking down a retain cycle with Instruments.

Code

Who could resist something named Hermite Spline Interpolation? Not me. Simon Gladman has put together an implementation which gives smooth lines from drawing on an iOS device screen, no matter how fast you drag your finger (or ✏️, on an iPad Pro). You see this problem all the time in iOS drawing apps and this looks like a great solution.

So last week I linked to an article on how replacing pages of scrollable instructions with a few coach marks might be a way to increase the success of getting users on boarded. This week, I happened to come across this library by Frédéric Maquin for easily adding exactly what was described last week. Just be careful not to go overboard with them!

A story of a project being rewritten in a new language that doesn’t end in disaster (spoiler, sorry!). That’s got to be worth a read.

Design

So by now I think we’ve all realised that typing (secure) passwords in to the Apple TV is a pain in the backside! Ben Scheirman details a technique for easily moving that process to a different device. Hopefully this will stop your users changing their passwords to “password1” just so they can use your service.

Anthony Tsung with a great article on how to choose between a table view or a collection view when designing a list of “stuff” to navigate.

Business and Marketing

Allyson Kazmucha with some great tips on how to pitch journalists on your app. How to pick the right publications, how to approach the authors, what to include in your initial email and how to use your beta to best effect. Good tips.

Videos

Gwendolyn Weston talks background downloads in this excellent talk.

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And finally...

Usually, the links in this section might give you a chuckle but you’re not coming here to find tools that are going to save you hours. This week is different, this is going to give you a laugh and save you time! 🎉