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News
ASCIIwwdc 2018
Apple released transcripts of the 2018 WWDC talks this week and it reminded me that I hadn't linked to ASCIIwwdc yet this year! Of course, having transcripts in both places is great, but I must admit I prefer the unofficial site as it seems to have better search coverage.
asciiwwdc.com
Buggy code to appease the Chinese government
Did you see the "Taiwan" bug that was fixed in iOS 11.4.1 this week? More interesting than the bug was the reason it existed, and even more interesting than that, the incredibly detailed explanation that Patrick Wardle always provides.
This bug also reminded me of this Google Maps story from 2014. Politics really does affect all aspects of our lives, even our operating systems!
objective-see.com
Code
Swift GYB
NSHipster is back! 🎉 I always loved the idea of a blog which explored the outer reaches of the galaxy frameworks, so I'm really happy to see it return to a regular posting schedule.
I've previously used Sourcery to do something similar to this in the past, but GYB looks great too! Tony Arnold also had some good follow up on using Build Rules in Xcode to make integration easier.
nshipster.com
Subclass-free view controllers in Swift
This is an interesting idea from John Sundell and while I'm not 100% convinced, it's certainly one way to tackle the massive view controller problem. It's also always good to think in a completely different way every once in a while.
swiftbysundell.com
Debugging on iOS With Unified Logging System
Dejan Agostini with a good article on os_log which has been around for a couple of years now, but is an API that you may not be using the full power of. He also goes into detail on using the Console app to view your logs.
agostini.tech
Atomic Properties in Swift
Talking of throwbacks to the early days (yea, yea, I know we haven't had Swift for that long!) this article from Vadim Bulavin made me think about atomic properties for the first time in ages. It's a good piece on the locking APIs as well.
Design
The design evolution of the earliest apps
More 10 year anniversary content, this time from Michael Steeber with a look at how some of the earliest apps changed over the years. I especially liked the look back at Facebook here which shows just how much they experimented with various UI concepts before settling on their current design.
9to5mac.com
Watching bottom sheets take over Apple’s iOS apps
I see it too, and I like it. Navigation bars are still a bit of a problem but there's a definite trend southwards. I'd love to see some standardisation and guidance on this from Apple though.
twitter.com
Business and Marketing
How We Do Release Notes
Brent Simmons on the release note process from The Omni Group. It's an interesting article and you'll learn something from it, but the thing that stood out to me was that I didn't realise that Apple had a public style guide! You learn something new every day!
omnigroup.com
Videos
Apps for Every Size and Shape
I've been really bad at remembering to include my weekly WWDC video, but I ended up watching another one this week. Inspired by Keith Harrison's post on readable table view widths I ended up watching this WWDC video, and it was 💯💯💯!
apple.com
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I mentioned the ten year anniversary of the App Store last week but nothing could have prepared me for the explosion of tweets and articles this week with so many memories of the journey we've all been on.
Remembering right back to the beginning, Craig Hockenberry had an astute observation that the App Store immediately blew away our expectations of the types of apps that would be popular. It's really easy to forget just what a new frontier it was.
Looking back at the first apps that I bought it's been a little surprising to see that some of them, that I loved and were incredibly popular are still going strong. It really did change the world of selling software.
I also want to mention the amazing coverage of the anniversary that MacStories have been publishing all week. I'd recommend Alex Guyot's summary as well as the articles by Stephen Hackett on a timeline of changes and Ryan Cristoffel on the various controversies over the years.
Oh, and don't forget it's not only the App Store that launched ten years ago! 😱
Dave Verwer