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Create gorgeous App Store screenshots in seconds (no design skills needed)
LaunchKit's Screenshot Builder makes it easy to quickly design gorgeous images for your App Store page and export them in every resolution Apple requires. You can beautifully frame your iPhone and iPad screenshots with descriptive text above or below, all with customizable colors and backgrounds. Over 1,000,000 screenshots have been created so far. LaunchKit also offers tools to create app websites, track app reviews, and much more.
launchkit.io
News
Common Proposals for Swift
Got an idea that you're thinking about turning into a proposal for Swift? The team have put together a handy document with ideas that have been frequently suggested and rejected, along with a brief description of why. This is a great idea to reduce noise on the Swift Evolution list.
github.com
Becoming an Apple News Publisher
The launch of Apple News has been a bit underwhelming. It's still only available in three regions and the richer Apple News JSON format is still being restricted to selected partners. It could have been much more than it is by now. However, if your blog is publishing an RSS or Atom feed, you can still get it listed, and you should. Tim Oliver has written up a guide on how to do it, and includes some tips for making it look good.
realm.io
Tools
Little things that can make your life easier in 2016
Let's start 2016 with a collection of small tips that are going to make your year that bit easier. Krzysztof Zabłocki has put together a collection of Xcode plugins, tips and hidden user preferences that'll take Xcode to 11. 🚀
merowing.info
Secondary Views in Interface Builder's Storyboards
Curtis Herbert writes about a slightly hidden feature of Interface Builder, the ability to "attach" views to a view controller without them being in the view hierarchy. I must admit I don't really use this, and either fallback to a XIB, or make a new view controller and present it in the current context but this can be a useful technique for smaller views.
curtisherbert.com
Filterpedia
This Core Image browser lists all available filters along with sliders to adjust their parameters. If you're looking for that perfect Core Image effect, this is going to save you loads of time.
github.com
Code
Unregistering from Notifications in iOS 9
Ben Sandofsky noticed this in the release notes for iOS 9. I'd also completely missed this important change and by the number of retweets, so did plenty of others. Never worry about unregistering for notifications again.
apple.com
PMKVObserver
While we're on the subject about not worrying about deallocated objects, this framework from Kevin Ballard gives a safer and more elegant syntax for KVO in both Swift and Objective-C. It has automatic unregistering and is thread safe. It's early days, but looks like it's worth checking out.
github.com
Swifty Target/Action
How would you make Target/Action feel more at home in Swift? Mike Ash has had a go. I wonder if we'll ever see a layer on top of UIKit from Apple which adds these kind of conveniences.
mikeash.com
Why Swift guard Should Be Avoided
There's been plenty written about guard since it was added to Swift, but in this article Alexei Kzznetsov argues that if your functions are small enough, it shouldn't be needed at all. He takes some example code from the Apple Swift book and refactors it, removing the need for the guard statements along the way.
medium.com
Business and Marketing
How to Get Your App Indexed in Google
Jeremiah Gage with a guide to making sure you're doing everything right to get your apps showing up as best they can in search results.
possiblemobile.com
Videos
pomo.tv
New site dedicated to indexing conference talks and other videos from around the iOS and OS X development community. There's already ~500 videos there, and you can contribute more to help build it into something even better.
pomo.tv
Sponsored Jobs
Lead iOS Engineer @ JibJab Bros. Studios - Marina Del Rey, CA
Making billions of people happy.
jibjab.com
iOS Developer - Sky UK, Leeds, UK
Be part of Sky's new tech hub in the heart of Yorkshire. Sky - Believe in Better.
sky.com
iOS Developer, Composed, London
Seeking an iOS developer for a classical music streaming service.
recruiterbox.com
Happy New Year! 🎉
2015 has been a big year for iOS development. We've seen the release of two brand new platforms, watchOS and tvOS, as well as a really solid release in iOS 9. Swift continues to mature, and now that it's open source we're also going to benefit from community contributions, both with committed code but also in terms of helping to guide the direction of the language. It's a good time to be an iOS developer!
I wonder what 2016 will bring. I can't imagine we'll see any brand new classes of device this year, but I do think the iPad Pro will be something to keep a close eye on. The hardware, and pen accessory are fantastic and while the OS could suit it better, some of the iOS 9 features were clearly developed with the Pro in mind. I'd bet we'll see much more focus on the Pro in iOS 10.
Dave Verwer