Issue 249

6^th May 2016

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Looks like the App Store had some search problems yesterday. Was this the result of testing new code around paid placement that went wrong? Or was it completely unrelated and just a bug that snuck in? Hopefully it was the latter, I guess we’ll not know for sure until WWDC.

I also want to apologise for a mistake I made in last week’s issue. I misread the announcement about native Apple Watch apps and indicated it was going to take effect for existing apps as well. At this point, it’s only for new apps. Sorry for the panic!

Dave Verwer

News

Refunds and the App Store

This tweet from Dave Howell about a large refund of Air Display started a big conversation about refunds in general. I think it’s absolutely fair to have a 90 day “no questions asked” refund policy (and they do), but 18 months later is ridiculous. From the replies to the tweet and other comments, it seems like there are several other developers reporting the same thing so unfortunately this is not an isolated incident.

UPDATE: Just before I scheduled this issue for publishing I saw this update from Dave. I’m glad it’s sorted out but I do hope that the other developers experiencing this can also get it fixed.

Supporting IPv6-only Networks

This was announced last year but Apple published a quick reminder this week that all apps submitted after June 1st must support IPv6-only networks. As long as you’re using the standard NSURLSession APIs, you shouldn’t see any issues but it’s worth watching this WWDC video again, and of course giving your app a test.

Tools

A robust multi-environment build setup

Following up on the article I linked to last week about targeting multiple API environments, Sam Dods posted an alternative approach and a tool to help you manage it.

Code

Regarding Swift build time optimizations

There have been some posts recently on Swift compiler performance problems related to type inference. The issue was discovered by Matt Nedrich and followed up on by Nick O’Neill last week. That specific bug has been fixed but it’s a good reminder that it’s still early days for Swift and you should occasionally expect problems like this.

In the article I’m linking to here, Robert Gummesson has found some other performance hiccups (and workarounds) and also has a useful Xcode plugin for easily measuring compiler performance. If you’re experiencing slow build times on your project it might be a good idea to run this, then go file some bugs!

Interactive gesture-driven animations in your iOS app

Roy Marmelstein with a new animation library focused on interactive animations. Create objects describing interpolations between values and then just pass in a percentage as your gesture recogniser (or any other trigger) runs. Really simple.

Please Enter Your Password

Nick Forge with a great article on error handling and the dangers of throwing up password prompts as a catch-all way to handle networking errors.

When to drop iOS 8

With adoption of iOS 9 at ~85% and iOS 10 just around the corner, is it time to drop iOS 8 yet? Peter Lafferty has some recommendations.

Design

Git Sketch Plugin

This looks fantastic. Mathieu Dutour has put together a Git client inside a Sketch plugin with support for branching, committing and pretty much everything else you’d need to do working with Sketch files in a Git repository.

Business and Marketing

tvOS at 6 Months: Where Are the Apps?

Josh Centers with a detailed look at the state of the tvOS App Store. I was significantly more optimistic about the Apple TV as a platform than I was about the watch. However, it’s not been all roses for tvOS either and the first few months have been much slower than expected. In the article Josh looks at some high profile apps which haven’t yet appeared, and interviews several developers about their experiences and plans.

And finally...

Is the Tech Bubble Popping? Ping Pong Offers an Answer

The graph is fantastic. 🏓