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News
Release Roadmap & History for iOS and macOS Developers
So, when will we see the release versions of iOS 13, macOS 10.15, and all of their friends? Based on machine learning educated guesses, here's some predictions from Adrian Thomas.
Tools
Captain AHAP - Custom Haptics designer
Core Haptics allows you to create completely custom haptic patterns for use in your app. There's even an AHAP file format so for easily playing back complex haptics. This tool from Andrea Mazzini lets you design your haptics graphically, test them out, and export them to AHAP files. 👍
Code
Swift Property Wrappers
Mattt with a truly wonderful article on property wrappers. As you may be aware by now, they are at the core of the language enhancements that make SwiftUI and Combine possible. Understanding them is important, but you'll also see how to implement your own in this article.
While I'm on the subject. I also came across, and liked ValidatedPropertyKit from Sven Tiigi and Burritos (which has the very best name!) from Guillermo Muntaner. 👍
nshipster.com
Build an app with SwiftUI
I've been keeping a close eye on the Design+Code YouTube channel over the last couple of weeks while Meng To has been putting together his SwiftUI course. Yesterday saw the release of it, and it's great. I've always liked his focus on technologies from a design perspective, and this course is no different. 👍
This is not a sponsored link but for full disclosure, I asked for a review copy of the course and was provided with one.
designcode.io
SwiftUI vs AppKit/CoreAnimation Performance
When I saw this tweet I did wonder whether we were going to find that the true cost of a great API was runtime performance, but NO. SwiftUI performs incredibly well in this test from Matt Gallagher, and even better with a drawingGroup(). It's also good at drawing some things you wouldn't necessarily think it would be like this, or this.
twitter.com
Using Combine
When I looked at the URL of this site, I figured it might be a few scribbled notes about SwiftUI. When I looked at the title of the page, I figured it might be a few notes on Combine. What I didn't expect was what I found… It's a very well written (but still work in progress) full book on Combine from Joseph Heck. Amazing.
github.io
GRDBCombine
I only found out about GRDB from Gwendal Roué a few weeks ago. He's been busy since WWDC though as there's already a set of Combine extensions for the library! There's also a great example app if you want an illustration of how this might work end to end.
github.com
Design
New UIVisualEffectView styles
Blur everything… Thanks to Simeon for putting together this demo app and recording it. 👓 It's good to see that these are all public APIs too.
twitter.com
Videos
Appdevcon 2019 Videos
Videos from this year's Appdevcon conference which was held in Amsterdam back in March. There's also a very personal talk from me hidden in there, which has nothing to do with iOS development. 😬
vimeo.com
And finally...
ARKit + Lots of particles
A very cool recreation of this in ARKit. It makes me kinda glad that AR glasses aren't a thing yet. 😱
To make a serious point from this "And Finally…" (I know, I know… that's not why you're here!) I have wondered for a while if AR glasses might actually lead to an increase in diagnosis rates of various types of psychosis and other mental health issues. If we start seeing things that aren't real all the time, how does that affect the brain? I must admit, it worries me a bit.
twitter.com
I've been catching up with a few podcast episodes from WWDC this week and found myself listening to Rob Elkin and Mike Lee on the MacVoices podcast being interviewed by Chuck Joiner.
Today it's completely accepted that you can be in San Jose during WWDC and expect to have just as fulfilling an experience as the people inside the McEnery Convention Center. That was certainly not the case back in San Francisco when AltConf (or AltWWDC as it was called at the time) started.
I remember really questioning whether it would be worth travelling all the way to California (it's 6,000 miles for me!) when I first linked to it back in 2012. I bought a ticket to the main conference that year as back then you still had almost 2 hours to make a decision after tickets went on sale. I was (and still am) privileged to be able to afford, and get value from a full conference ticket, but so many other people are not in that situation. I definitely didn't have had the vision that Rob and the folks at Appsterdam had back then.
It took them many years of organising events, with all sorts of "hiccups" along the way but the team persevered. Once it was accepted that you could have a worthwhile time at WWDC without a ticket, the floodgates really opened. Other conferences started popping up and it's now seen as 100% normal to be in the city that week without a ticket. That's incredible. It's also almost entirely because of the creation, and consistency of AltConf.
So go and listen to the podcast, or watch it on YouTube. Get the background on how it all started from two of the people behind it. When you're done, maybe even consider sending the team a quick tweet thanking them for what they do every year. I'd like to say my thank you here. You're all amazing and you've forever changed the face of WWDC week for the better. 😍
Dave Verwer