Issue 357

Comment

This week saw the release of Beta 2 of macOS, iOS and all their friends. This isn't a big release in terms of API changes but there are a few diffs to scan over if you must. Make sure you don't miss these UIKit changes for example... Scandalous! 😂

There's nothing weird here though, beta 2 follows beta 1 very quickly every year and is always a minor update. It's sensible to plan for a quick beta 2, just in case any disastrous bugs slip through in that first release. From all reports it looks like everything is pretty stable this year but a plan is still a plan! I'm still not letting any of the betas touch daily phone or Mac yet though, despite how tempting it is!

News

React Native at Airbnb

You've almost certainly seen these posts flying around Twitter and other social networks this week, but did you read them? Or did you just scan the title and think "Oh I knew React Native wasn't a good idea!" 😀

I'm not a huge fan of React Native myself, and obviously this isn't good news for the technology, but Airbnb's decision is more subtle than you might first think. I'd suggest reading all five parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

"iPhone Only" apps on the iPad

I agree with Ben Dodson that it's ridiculous that iPhone apps must run on the iPad in phone mode. There's a minor, but significant improvement to the situation coming with iOS 12 though. 🎉

Code

iPad Navigation Bar and Toolbar Height Changes in iOS 12

Repeat after me, "I will never hard code the height of a navigation bar, tab bar or the status bar in my iOS apps". Then go and read Geoff Hackworth's article on some changes you may not have noticed. 😀

StyledTextKit

This new text styling library from Ryan Nystrom looks good. It not only assists with a flexible, concise way of building attributed strings but also provides a bitmap renderer (and an associated StyledTextView to allow those bitmaps to easily end up in a view hierarchy). If you're struggling with performance when rendering lots of attributed text in a table or collection view then you'll want to check this out.

On Apple's Love Affair With Swift

I loved this response to last week's post by Stefan Lesser. It reminds us of the Chris Lattner interview on ATP and goes through the discussion points one by one. 👍

MessengerKit

No, this isn't anything to do with iOS 12! It's just a good looking framework from Stephen Radford for building a Messages style conversation view. It looks good by default, but is also customisable (just don't make it look like this!) 😂

Design

How Apple can fix 3D Touch

Was the reason that 3D Touch was never adopted by developers because users didn't know it was there? Or did a luke warm reception from users prevent developers from putting in the time with it? This post by Eliz Kılıç suggests that it was because there was no obvious UI showing that 3D Touch was possible. I really like this idea.

Business and Marketing

App Store Review Guidelines – Changes from WWDC 2018

The guidelines changed a couple of weeks ago now, but the App Store Review Guidelines History hadn't been updated until this week. There's the diff, of course, but I really enjoy the bulleted list of interpretation of it too.

Videos

Advanced Debugging with Xcode and LLDB

This video is my WWDC pick of the week. It's a great session on the enhancements to reliability when using LLDB to interact with Swift.

And finally...

Let's have a competition 👹

In days where it's no longer acceptable to simply write "Bug fixes and minor updates", who can write the longest and most intricate version release notes without saying anything of substance? You have your mission, GO...

Issue 357 June 22nd 2018