Issue 325

3^rd November 2017

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little jealous seeing iPhone X devices in hand today, but I am still very happy with my 8 Plus. For me, this week’s excitement is the release of iOS 11.1 and the long-awaited return of the 3D Touch app switcher, as promised. 🙏

As a developer, I’m also excited about the iOS 11 adoption spike that should come along with the 70 new emoji 🤯. iOS 11 adoption seems just a little behind iOS 10 last year but it’s already at ~64% which is still pretty good! It’s probably still a bit premature to drop support for iOS 10 right now though, but it’ll be time soon.

<p>Evan Dekhayser</p>

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News

Finally, we get more information about how Siri will work on HomePod! Requests from the HomePod are sent to the iOS app to be handled, which is not much of a surprise. It also doesn’t look like third-party developers have to change much if they already have SiriKit working on iOS 11 already.

On a different note, is it too much to hope for Apple to send out HomePod developer kits like they did with the Apple TV? 😝

Tools

By themselves, iPhone X screenshots look… awkwardly tall. This workflow will take these screenshots and frame them in an iPhone X, making them look so much better. Considering how strange iPhone X screenshots look, I wonder if iOS will ever have this framing built-in.

Code

Almost nobody reads app update information in the App Store anymore, so how do you let your users know about what’s new in the latest update? Patrick Balestra’s WhatsNew view controller lets you communicate these changes to your users with a look inspired by Pages and Keynote. 👍

It’s worth noting that you probably shouldn’t show this after every update. Ask yourself, is it that important for my users to know what’s changed? Apple presents these screens only on major releases with noteworthy features, and we should follow their example.

Unlike map, filter and reduce, forEach cannot be included in a sequence of method calls because it does not return anything. In this article, Ole Begemann discusses an implementation of forEach that can be chained and, more interestingly, how this can work with lazy sequences.

Changes to @objc in Swift 4 made converting old code a little frustrating, and even led to a few bugs in my projects. This article goes through what these changes entail, and how to quickly get your projects back up-and-running after the conversion.

Great article by Tom Harrington about how to use NSDataDetector in place of Regex to detect email addresses. Why add complicated Regex to your code when Apple already solved the problem for you? ✉️

Design

Halide’s newest update is the first app I’ve seen to really embrace the notch of the iPhone X. By moving two icons that normally overlay the image into the “ears,” the app looks better and is even more user-friendly on this new form-factor – Halide is the epitome of iPhone X app design. 📷

Ghost buttons (i.e. buttons with a thin border, text, and a transparent background) have emerged as one of the main button types in the age of flat design – I’ve used them in one of my apps as well. However, looking good does not mean functioning well. Bartholomew Fish discusses the ways that ghost buttons worsen user experience, referring to some compelling studies to back his claims.

Business and Marketing

Feature creep and other factors lead to a lack of focus in many apps – some mature, some new. Becky Hansmeyer’s proposed solution: create a mission statement to keep you on track.

This article by Luca Giacomel is based on simulations and assumptions about user behavior – not data from the App Store itself – but its findings are still valuable to developers looking to drive more downloads. The App Store has changed a lot in iOS 11, and the big question is: how does this affect our apps’ visibility?

Videos

I have not used fastlane for my own projects yet, but I don’t know why – it seems to make things better in so many ways. In this talk, Felix Krause and Josh Liebowitz discuss how to use fastlane to make releasing new app versions a breeze.

And finally...

👨‍🎤