Issue 316

1^st September 2017

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

So the date is set and the notch is coming! 🎉

We’ve also had beta 9 which could even be the GM release if past years have been anything to go by. It’s also likely that submissions for iOS 11 will start just before the event and just for good measure, here’s Will Hains’ beta charts showing how 11 stacks up against previous years.

Exciting times! Get your credit cards ready. 💳

Dave Verwer

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News

I think this was pretty well publicised at WWDC but just in case you missed it, here’s a reminder from Apple that you need to cope with the new possibility that IAPs can be purchased without your app being loaded, or even being downloaded! The reminder comes as this feature has not been available during beta, but you will need to cope with it at the release of iOS 11.

More from Apple with a new landing page for ARKit resources. With Google’s ARCore being announced yesterday it looks like we’re going to have an AR filled year! Oh and if you’re launching something which uses ARKit alongside iOS 11 you’ll want to have a crack at being featured. 🏆

Tools

Feels like it’s been a while since we saw much movement on Fastlane (I bet it’s been a tricky time with another acquisition) but I’m really glad to see them add compatibility with the multiple simulator support that’s coming along with Xcode 9. 📱📱📱

Xi Ge with details on the implementation of refactoring in Xcode and some information on how it can be extended. The biggest disadvantage with this is that you need to build a custom version of the Swift toolchain to get it implemented in your local Xcode. Maybe this is your chance to get started contributing to Swift though!

Code

Rob Huebner with a great story of how a small request for a typography change turned into a large engineering task and the incidental implementation of dynamic text across a whole app!

We should all be familiar with error handling in Swift by now, but do you know how it works? Do you want to? 😎 If so, let Mike Ash explain everything, as is his way! There’s also some great additional information in the comments too.

Design

Now that we have at least a few interesting ways (1, 2, 3) to get After Effects animations into Core Animation, how about getting design assets from Sketch into AE? Josh Fleetwood from Google Design introduces us to a new tool for doing exactly that.

Business and Marketing

What’s in a name? Ryan Nystrom goes through the whole process of coming up with a new name for his open source GitHub app, GitHawk.

This is amazing. I knew that being able to integrate rating prompts directly into an app would be more convenient for users, but I’d never have imagined such a drastic change. I still have a problem with the method of implementation that Clément Delangue talks about here by asking users to rate twice and only showing the real prompt to those users who would rate it 4⭐️ or above, but I do understand why people make that decision.

Videos

Talking of Lottie (in the Design category) this talk from Dave Counts is well worth watching. He makes some great points!

And finally...

That’s Numberwang!