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News
Swift in 2018
There are some interesting stats on Swift adoption in this survey from JetBrains. I wasn't surprised to see that the very modern versions of Swift completely dominate, thanks to Apple's aggressive removal of old versions from Xcode. 😂 The statistic that did surprise me was that 36% of Swift developers and 60% (!) of Objective-C developers have C++ libraries in their apps, which is much higher than I would have predicted.
jetbrains.com
PublicBetas
Hot on the heels of last week's announcement of public TestFlight invites comes this new site from Zach Baron. If you're looking for beta testers for your app, this looks like a pretty simple way to get them from outside your immediate network. There's also some really big, mainstream apps like Snapchat and Telegram that are already posted there.
publicbetas.com
Tools
NativeConnect
This native iTunes Connect client for macOS from Vadim Shpakovski is interesting. We all love a native app over working with a web page, and the collaboration features here look great. However, the power of this app will be in handling multiple iTunes Connect accounts. It's a common scenario for a lot of freelancers, and it's a real pain right now.
One thought I had looking at the site is that the pricing is quite bold at $60/$100 per year. If I had to give some advice, I'd probably suggest a tiered approach could work really well. For managing apps on one iTunes Connect account, charge something like $20 a year with the $60/$100 (or even more!) price being reserved for using it with two or more accounts. That way users get into the habit of using it, and spreading the word about it. But the real time savings from the app are going to come from managing multiple apps across multiple accounts, so charge the proper money for that. Anyway, these are just some random thoughts, the app looks promising either way!
nativeconnect.app
Xcode Environment Specific Configuration
I talk to people all the time about .xcconfig files. They are well known enough that most people are aware of them, but they are also a little tricky to get started with and so many people haven't bothered. That's where this article from Ben Scheirman comes in.
benscheirman.com
Deleting Search Results in Xcode
Who would ever have thought that this feature that Jason Pepas found would exist? I'm half expecting an engineer on the Xcode team to see this and for it to be "fixed" in Xcode 10.future! 😂
twitter.com
Code
macOS Dynamic Desktop
I really love the dynamic desktop feature of Mojave but there is no easy way to create the files right now. That's not going to stop us though, is it? Mattt digs into some Core Graphics to figure out what's happening, and let us create some new desktops. Great post.
nshipster.com
Handling the Next button automatically
As a user, I really appreciate when an app takes the time to add a keyboard accessory to form filling UI to make it easy to move between fields, but it doesn't come for free. Roland Leth takes us through what it might take to automate it in this post. It strikes me that nextKeyView could be useful on iOS after all.
rolandleth.com
CSProgress
It's ironic that using NSProgress to report on your long running task might actually make it slower. If you're using it, maybe you should consider this library instead which claims incredible performance advantages and a nice API as well.
github.com
Implement Push Notification easily using CloudKit
A good reminder from Axel Kee that you don't always need to rush to a 3rd party service to do something like sending a push notification.
fluffy.es
Design
Icon design considerations for modern iPhones
Really interesting article from Jonathan Winger-Lang on the animation from icon into running app that happens on the iPhone X and friends. You've probably seen that something is happening during that animation, but not focused on it. How can you design your icon to take advantage of it?
jontelang.com
Business and Marketing
This App Store rule really needs to be tweaked...
Save yourself from the internet by not reading too far down the replies to this tweet, but the original point by DHH is well made. I do understand why Apple have the rule, but it only ever makes apps worse and it's consistently over enforced. It's bad for the App Store. 😞
twitter.com
How to choose what app to make next
Yes, I switched a word in the title of this post from Jake Birkett but even though the article is talking about independent game development, the article is just as relevant for apps. Just replace every instance of "game" with "app" and you're set.
greyaliengames.com
Videos
Videos from NSSpain 2018
Independent conference season continues. Next up, it's this set of fantastic videos from NSSpain.
vimeo.com
Videos from SwiftConf 2018
Swiftly (pun intended) followed by more, this time from Swiftconf. I hope you've got plenty of time for conference videos this weekend! 👍
youtube.com
And finally...
Auto Rotation is (still) hard...
This thread started in 2017 with iOS 10 but has continued with iOS 11 and just last week this tweet about iOS 12. Also, this is amazing! 😂
twitter.com
I want to start this week talking about this post by Becky Hansmeyer. It's an outstanding example of a well done marketing post for her independently run app, Snapthread.
If you've ever heard me talk about marketing for smaller/independent developers, or if you caught my recent conference talk on product management, you'll have heard me say that marketing is all about telling stories. Becky's post is a perfect example of beautiful storytelling in product marketing. It's so totally authentic, and also clearly explains what the app does for you by telling the story of recovering potentially lost memories. She also uses the almost too perfect example of those memories being about the first few weeks of a newborn child. 😂
Ironically, I didn't end up buying the app (Oh no, Dave! Don't ruin this!) but only because I don't take Live Photos (although the post also made me think I should!). Even so, it still worked. First of all I'm talking about it here, which means some of you will certainly buy it. But I'll also have this story in my mind when I'm talking to friends and family about taking photos on their phones and will probably recommend it several times after reading this post. Even though it didn't directly result in a sale from me, it still had huge value.
Every time I speak to independent developers trying to make an app profitable, they all acknowledge that they need to be doing more marketing. Unfortunately, the fact that they don't think they will be good at it quite often translates into not even really trying. This is proof that if you put the work in on telling great stories on your marketing, your efforts can pay off. Tell people why you built your app and make them as passionate about it as you are! Of course, you need to start with a good app, but on its own that's just not enough.
Dave Verwer