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News
The iOS App Store is No Longer Listing All In-App Purchases
Twitter lit up a bit this week with the news that IAP information is no longer available on the App Store page for an app. I actually quite like this change though! Many apps on the store have all sorts of combinations of circumstances that change the price of IAPs and a generic list of all of them on the App Store page was often misleading. Now, you get to feature just the IAPs you want to highlight. You get to tell the story.
Update: Apparently this was a bug, and has already been fixed! Oops! I still think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if this is how it worked though 😂
tekrevue.com
New Apple Pencil APIs
How about a new set of APIs to go with our glossy new pencils? Here they are. What's potentially more interesting than the API is the guidance around how to use the double taps on the new button, and it's not just that we should do whatever we want with them. See this new section of the HIG and this new tech talk video for details.
apple.com
Tools
So you want to automate iOS biometrics?
Kane Cheshire with an interesting article on how to automate testing of biometric authentication on the iOS Simulator. It's simctl to the rescue! Find out how.
Code
How iPad Apps Adapt to the New 11" and 12.9" iPads Pro
Geoff Hackworth is quickly becoming the authority on dealing with new device sizes and UI size changes and this post about the new iPad models is right on time with all the details you need.
medium.com
Introducing AloeStackView for iOS
When UIStackView isn't quite enough and UITableView feels unwieldy for managing disparate collections of controls, where do you go? Why not start with this library from Airbnb engineering. What I love about libraries like this is that they are battle tested. It's used in over 200 screens in the Airbnb app and has been in use for two years. It should work well! 👍
Sneaky date formatters exposing more than you think
The topic of slow date formatters comes up so often that you'd think we would have all had it completely figured out by now, but no! William Boles goes over the common issue of speed, but then dives into why using a shared formatter can also backfire and finishes up with the ultimate date formatting helper?
williamboles.me
Variable Width Strings
What happens when a button title some other text that you designed on your shiny new iPhone XS Max in landscape mode doesn't fit on an iPhone SE in portrait mode? Do you compromise and shorten the text on both devices? Not necessarily. Keith Harrison explains.
useyourloaf.com
Design
iPad Pro 2018 Frames
Need the shiny new iPad Pro frames to wrap your screenshots in? As always, the Apply Pixels folks have us covered almost immediately with their vector mockups of the new devices.
applypixels.com
Business and Marketing
Q3 2018 Was the Most Lucrative Quarter Yet for the App Stores
As we moved into the second half of 2018, hyper-casual games topped downloads charts, video content fueled growth for downloads and consumer spend.
Yes, it's depressing that people are spending all of their money on virtual currency. But, increased spending on mobile devices is good for us all in the long run. This platform needs to be somewhere people are comfortable spending money.
appannie.com
Sponsored Jobs
iOS Engineer at Stripe! (Remote or San Francisco, CA)
Come build SDKs for online payments or Stripe Terminal, or build mobile apps for merchants to manage their business online.
stripe.com
And finally...
Apple Event Invite StickerPack
Did you also love all of the logos from Tuesday's event? Well here they all are as a sticker pack. I think there are some beautiful, inspiring designs in here.
github.com
For me, Tuesday's most interesting announcement was the change of iPad connector from Lightning to USB-C. Not because of the connector itself, but because of where it shows where some of Apple's attention for the iPad is being focused.
External display support via USB-C was explicitly mentioned and I think that's really important to how we might start to think about apps on the iPad.
As always, the clues have been there all along too. As Jordan Morgan noticed, WWDC session 233 mentioned external display support APIs 5 words into the presentation. These APIs aren't new, but new hardware changes the potential of them.
Imagine a world where some kinds of apps were designed to be used with an external monitor and keyboard, with maybe the main iPad display flat on the desk showing a secondary screen for interaction. It certainly gives the iPad a different feel and opens up plenty of opportunity for "desktop" style apps.
It's going to be interesting to see what we all do with it!
Dave Verwer