Issue 343

Comment

I promised you an announcement last week, so here goes... I've just launched a small web site to catalogue all of the blogs & sites that cover iOS development. I've called it the iOS Dev Directory and I'd love it if you checked it out. 🎉

The idea started a few weeks ago when I tweeted asking for new voices in the community that I might have missed. I had some good responses to that but after a few conversations on email and Twitter it became clear that this data changes constantly, and that when organised properly that it would be a really useful resource for everyone. So I figured I was in a reasonable position to make that happen.

Naturally, there's OPML files for each category. I wish more RSS readers supported subscribing directly to OPML files but the only (online) one I know of is InoReader, which is what I now use because of exactly this feature. 🤩

It's completely open to contributions as well so with your help we can build a really comprehensive map of our blogging community. Please do contribute your own site if it's missing, or any blogs that you know of.

Oh and please try and ignore the fact that last week I announced I was going to be an independent iOS developer again, and then this week I go and launch a web site! 😂 There will be apps coming from me at some point but my first couple of projects are focused more around the community.

News

WWDC '18

Of course, it's a ticket lottery again so you have until next Thursday to decide if you want to try for it. You also won't be surprised to hear that it's in San Jose again, I think most people agreed it worked really well there last year and it certainly seems logical from Apple's perspective.

I've put my name in the hat... See you there? 🤞

Background Currency Mining as a Payment Method?

This isn't iOS related, but it's App Store related and it's a fascinating development in terms of business models in the modern world of app development. I personally have no problems with this. It's certainly not nefarious as they are being very clear what's happening and it's completely your choice whether to pay with your CPU/battery, or with your cold hard cash. What's more interesting/surprising is that Apple seem to be OK with it too!

Tools

Debugging Auto Layout feedback loops

Like Paul Hudson, I also saw this tweet by Tyler Fox this week and immediately added this video to my to do list so I could learn about it. Paul saved me the hassle though by writing this great summary. 👍

Code

Getting Started with Flutter

I came across Flutter a few weeks ago but hadn't had a chance to check it out. It's a cross platform (iOS & Android) development framework that uses Dart. I did check it out a bit this week though when I read this article by Joe Howard. I'm never a big fan of cross platform frameworks, but this is worth a look even if you're just curious.

ResearchKit Charts

It makes perfect sense that ResearchKit includes charting functionality given what the framework hopes to achieve, but I bet that most people don't know about this. I certainly didn't. Here's the documentation.

On the subject of charting, I also needed to draw some charts recently and had good success with Charts so if this doesn't do it for you, maybe that will.

Comprehensive List of Open-Source iOS Apps

I came across this via Peter Steinberger this week. It's a really comprehensive list of open source iOS apps. Maintained by dkhamsing, it contains over 750 apps from all the iOS platforms covering a huge number genres.

Design

Bringing Back Skeuomorphic Design

Don't hold your breath for iOS 12 to be all wood panelling and green felt again, but in terms of 3rd party app design I do feel like the needle is starting to move back from the totally flat. It probably won't go back to full on skeuomorphism but I like the phrase that Michael Flarup uses in this piece, "It’s prohibition and the ban has been lifted on fun".

In fact, Michael also tweeted about this icon and I think this is very much a direction I'd like to see iOS design move towards.

Designing Jank-Free Apps

Keyboards are the most common source of jank

No, not an article on the new MacBook Pro keyboard 😂 but a great piece on reducing the possibility of UI glitches as a designer by Nathan Gitter.

Business and Marketing

Apple Watch Adoption

David Smith with a really interesting set of stats from his apps on Apple watch looking at adoption of the various models and on the feasibility of dropping support for series 0 models. Just look at that crazy fast growth for the series 3 Apple Watch!

Has iOS 11 really affected star ratings?

Have the changes introduced with iOS 10.3 had any impact on average App Store star ratings? Christie Mouritz-Beckx from Appbot takes a look at the numbers from the last year of data from the top 50 free apps on the store.

Up to Speed

How to Submit An App to Apple

What better subject for this category than a "How to get your first app on the store" two part (Part 1, Part 2) series, and with perfect timing along comes Rony Rozen with a bang up to date version of exactly that. It goes right from the beginning of registering a developer account, through to the final step of seeing "Waiting for Review".

While we're on the subject, there's also some good advice on getting through review by Jacob Eiting.

And finally...

Here's to the crazy ones

I had seen this before, but I bet there's many of you that haven't!

This isn't the only example either. Keynote has a pie chart plotting (presumably) the distribution of Apple employees between the various office locations in Cupertino and some others too. Open up your Applications folder and have an explore. 😀

Issue 343 March 16th 2018