Issue 358

29^th June 2018

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Let’s talk a little about Marzipan.

Naturally the last few weeks have been full of speculation about what it means for future versions of both iOS and macOS. Is this the start of a transition to ARM based Macs or touch screen “laptop” style devices? I’d say both of those are quite possible in the next few years. Is this the beginning of the end for AppKit? Maybe, eventually? Could AppKit eventually host UIKit views rather than being completely separate? Possibly! Will UIKit be extended to include more laptop and desktop exclusive controls? I’d say this is very likely.

Then, what about that rumour from the end of April of a new declarative UI framework? If Apple is putting all of this effort into UIKit on macOS is that rumour automatically false? Absolutely not. I’d say that even if there is a completely new, declarative framework in development somewhere inside Apple that it’s quite likely that the things it produces will still be made out of UIViews. If anything, Marzipan is a really good sign that macOS might be able to join in with the declarative party, if the declarative party ever actually happens.

I also think that the work that people like Steve Troughton-Smith, Guilherme Rambo and many others are doing to uncover what Marzipan is as of today is fantastic. I’m also really glad they are doing it, but just remember that everything we have right now is based on a ten minute announcement on stage and some bits that are in early beta.

I’m personally just trying to keep in mind that we are more than a year away from version 1 of what might partially resemble what we are seeing as a result of spelunking these betas. I’m excited by what’s coming, but I’m also not going to spend a huge amount of time thinking too hard about what s being dug up today. It’s just too early. ⏳

Dave Verwer

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Tools

Talking of spelunking, Jamie Wong has been diving deep into the Instruments file format. This is a fantastic article on how he reverse engineered the .trace file format for his open source speedscope app.

Code

Ole Begemann on the new @dynamicMemberLookup feature of Swift 4.2. It’s interesting to see the TensorFlow team driving features like this towards Swift. The feature itself is probably not going to be one that you should go crazy with (please!), but it in certain cases it’ll definitely be a benefit.

First they come for your nil values with Optional, then they come for your empty collections with NonEmpty. Where will it end? 😂

Described as a precise, type-safe representation of a monetary amount in a given currency, this library is extracted from Mattt Thompson’s latest book on numerical data types. I find the idea of including the currency itself along with the value interesting, especially when it can then be used to prevent things like equality checks for values where the currencies differ.

This is a really nice idea from Guilherme Rambo. It’s also a great excuse to check out a class that you may not be familiar with, NSDataAsset.

Design

Adding some well placed artwork to your app can make all the difference to what people feel when they use it. There obvious case for using artwork to fill out an “empty state” screen in your app, but where else should you be looking to add some tactically placed illustrations? Nick Babich has some suggestions.

And finally...

😂