Issue 344

Comment

Let's take a field trip to Chicago next Tuesday? The timing isn't so strange as there have been March events many times before (the last one was only 2 years ago in 2016) but the location is slightly unusual given they just built a dedicated theatre on their new campus. Will we see a new framework introduced? There's definitely a chance!

Oh and thanks so much for the amazing response to the iOS Dev Directory, 60 pull requests already merged and it now has content in four languages. Keep the submissions coming. 🎉

News

Nope. You can't mine cryptocurrency as a form of payment...

Turns out it was too good to be true and Apple did pull the Calendar app that offered the option to mine cryptocurrency from the Mac App Store. The rule they cited in the rejection was 2.4.2 which seems fair enough:

2.4.2 Design your app to use power efficiently. Apps should not rapidly drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources.

Ah well! We move on...

Want to win a WWDC scholarship? Previous attendees give their advice

The WWDC scholarship programme is fantastic way to give new developers who may not have the resources available to get to WWDC the opportunity to be there, and long may it continue. But how do you stand a chance of winning a place on it? Paul Hudson has interviewed ten previous winners on what they submitted and what they learned from the event.

Tools

Peek 5.0

I've linked to this before but it's been a couple of years and there was a new version just released this week. It's really more beautiful than a developer tool has any right to be but it's also really useful so 🤷‍♂️.

NSDoubleLocalizedStrings

I have a feeling I have seen this tip before, but from a quick search of the archives it looks like I didn't tell you all about it, so here goes. What a useful tip from Jordan Morgan!

Code

Do you often forget [weak self]? Here’s a solution

I'm a little conflicted about this library from Oleg Dreyman. Part of me says that anything that makes retain cycles harder to accidentally slip up with is great thing, and part of me says that if you hide retain cycles behind something automated then developers on your project could potentially get by without really understanding what they are. Overall, this seems like a win though.

Layout

One of the (small) frustrations of writing about iOS development "news" from week to week is that I rarely get to link to projects after they have grown from small beginnings to be well maintained, well documented, mature libraries that have had significant effort after that first release. I'm going to work on fixing that problem in the newsletter, but this tweet made me go and check out Layout from Nick Lockwood again. If you're working with Auto Layout in code, this is a really comprehensive and well maintained library for keeping your code simple, or even for defining it with a readable XML format. Just like Android! 🤖

A helper for working with temporary files in Swift

Temporary files can be really useful, and while they're not incredibly difficult to create, I did like the look of this helper from Ole Begemann that will make filling your user's tmp folder with thousands of files even easier! 😂

Design

UI/UX case study for the New York Times app

Johny Vino with a fascinating exploration of a design idea inside the New York Times app. I love the idea that the experience of an app like this could be tailored to the amount of time you have available. I wonder if this could be taken even further with intelligent analytics taking note of when and how long you use an app to provide the right amount of content at the right times automatically. We are creatures of habit after all.

UI Toggles to turn you on 🙈

Oh my god, this one! Also, this is DEFINITELY the look and feel of iOS 12 based on the WWDC '18 artwork. 😂 Obviously none of these are going to make it into an actual app, but it's nice to step outside of the reality of implementation to get inspired occasionally.

Business and Marketing

Product Updates in a Subscription World

Marcus Fehn gives us a look at how Ulysses is structuring updates now that they are firmly on the path of subscription pricing. Obviously this article talks about the product, but the reason I'm linking it is because it also covers how the change in business model affected their strategy on updates. Well, that and the fact that I ❤️ the app. 😀

Notchy

Cool little app to make your screenshots look less weird when they're not actually viewed on an iPhone X device. Might be useful when preparing web site and other marketing materials.

Videos

Two Years of React Native

React Native was poised to make us all into JavaScript developers a couple of years ago and while the hype largely passed after a while, some teams did move over to it. One of those was the Artsy team and in this talk from iOSoho, Orta Therox goes through the ups and downs of their experiences.

And finally...

Developer Life

How is it 11pm already??? 😳

Issue 344 March 23rd 2018