Issue 318

15^th September 2017

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

The notch is real, and we’re being asked to embrace it. 🤗

Of course, my views on the notch will settle when I’m using the phone every day (yes, of course I’m going to get one) but from first impressions, I think everything is going to be just fine and I’d even go as far as to say I quite like the “ears” in portrait mode! Landscape is a different story and in my opinion is a UI disaster with all kinds of compromises like weird padding and … this 🤣, but who uses their phone in landscape? Pretty much the only time I ever rotate mine it’s to watch video or play a game which will both be completely fine with a notch shaped hole on the side.

Xcode 9 GM also appeared after the keynote, and naturally it includes a simulator for the new devices as well as the ability to submit iOS 11 apps. Don’t delay your releases because of the new phone though, with a November shipping date you’ve plenty of time to make those adjustments.

What adjustments, you ask? Read on…

Dave Verwer

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News

Here’s the rest of WWDC that they couldn’t show us back in June! 🎉 Watch all of these, but pay especially close attention to Designing for iPhone X and Building Apps for iPhone X as they contain the key information about the changes needed for the X.

Of course, a new release of iOS is usually accompanied by changes to the App Store review guidelines. Apple didn’t spill the beans on what had changed when they announced it , but Paul Hudson has dug out diff and has a brief summary for us.

Tools

I wrote about Sourcery back in Issue 281 and it has been gaining quite a bit of traction since being released. Let’s revisit it with this article from Soroush Khanlou walking through a real world example of using it to build a model layer.

If you’re not a fan of the new ⌘+Click functionality in Xcode 9, Chris Wagner has found an option that you’ll find useful.

Code

Swift 4 is done and while the compiler developers have already moved their focus to 5, we now get to ship our apps using all the new goodies in 4. Mike Ash gives us a rundown of the best of the new version, and while you’ve probably read about (or used!) the features here already, this is a nice recap.

Adam King with a fantastic article on creating a very cool custom Core ML learning model that’ll recognise rough symbols drawn with your finger. Of course, this is more about the mechanism of implementing Core ML and TensorFlow but it’s a much better article for working with an understandable, real world example. You probably want to check out part 1 as well.

John Sundell on assertions, and how they work. It’s also probably worth a re-read of his older article on picking the right way of failing while we’re on the subject.

Design

Every significant new device is accompanied by significant updates to the HIG and the iPhone X is no exception. However, I can sum this up concisely by simply asking if you paid good attention to the safe area changes earlier this year? If you did, you’re most of the way there.

David Smith digs into the changes to watch apps which will be possible with the addition of LTE in the series 3 devices. I’m still very much of the opinion that the watch is always going to be a limited platform for apps, but having ubiquitous data certainly opens up a few new possibilities.

It’s been a while since we had any articles about hybrid iOS apps, so this article by Zach Waugh is a nice update of how Basecamp have continued to use this technique. It’s an in depth article, and for this kind of app it makes a lot of sense.

Business and Marketing

Mike Piontek has more evidence that the in-app review prompts are working really, really well for people. Great news!

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And finally...

In the interest of promoting harmonious Human - Machine relations… 🤣