Issue 471

28^th August 2020

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

One thing a few people noticed in my piece about the current App Store issues, was that I didn’t even mention the option of Apple allowing other store apps or side-loading (which would lead to a proliferation of other store apps).

I’ve said this many times before, and my opinion on it remains unchanged. I hope that Apple doesn’t choose or get forced to allow other app stores or side-loading features to iOS. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be short term positive effects from doing this; it would even solve many of the current App Store problems. Epic would get their way and be able to launch their game store on iOS, and many other huge companies would also launch their stores. I can already read the hundreds of headlines that would claim “this is the way it should always have been” from both inside and outside the tech industry.

But in this new world of “just install this new App Store, then install our app”, how long will it be until the vultures descend? How long until people are getting tricked into installing a store app that’s full of malware, masquerading as an update to the Flash player. How long until stores appear that ship spyware alongside a pirated version of a popular app? Yes, apps installed from other sources would still be subject to the sandbox restrictions, but they’d have free reign while their apps are running.

iOS is a mainstream platform in a way that macOS will never be. Even Windows, which is as ubiquitous as it gets on the desktop, isn’t mainstream in the same way as smartphone operating systems are. What percentage of people regularly install a new app on their desktop computer? I hope you’ll agree that it’s a fraction of the number of people who regularly install a new app on iOS.

The centralised, trusted (whether that trust is warranted is a different conversation, but it is trusted) model for store + distribution is a massive benefit for iOS as a platform. Once that can is open, and the worms are everywhere, it’s going to be very difficult to put them back. I believe it will inevitably lead to the erosion of some of that trust, and that negatively affects all app developers.

Dave Verwer

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Tools

I have to say that over these last few weeks of using the new tab system in Xcode 12, I love it. It has a few quirks, but if you’re used to the tabbing system in VS Code, or Atom, you probably feel right at home. Junda Ong looks at how to make the most of this feature with keyboard shortcuts, and at the rules that determine when opening a file will result in a new or reused tab.

Code

I know Peter Steinberger has been looking at and rejecting os_log for years now. So when he blogs about it, it’s worth reading. Is OSLogStore, introduced in iOS 14 enough of a change to make logs more easily accessible? The post is a balanced look at all the issues around writing and accessing log data.

This kind of post is my catnip. 😍 Here’s Bryce Pauken with a look at how iOS 13’s view hierarchy inspection works when taking screenshots. He also goes through several methods for customising where iOS will snap to. I’m not sure you should ever go as far as writing code (or swizzling) to affect this, but it’s always interesting to know how this stuff works.

I think the first time I saw a tip about using print with SwiftUI was this tweet from Paul Hudson. In this post, John Sundell comes up with a very similar solution but takes it a little further than a tweet allows, and shows us some useful techniques for debugging SwiftUI.

The sandwiches app demoed in several of this year’s WWDC sessions made for a great example, but Apple has not yet made it available as sample code. Until that happens, here’s James Dempsey with a rebuilt version of the same sample that you can follow along with.

Here’s José Rossi with a look at the new features of the vision framework in iOS 14. I especially liked how they tested the body pose tracking feature by running it past a fight scene of a movie. This is a really impressive framework.

Business and Marketing

I’m not saying that you should all agree with me on this, I know you won’t! But in my opinion, what Zachary Shakked was doing using the IDFA was perfectly reasonable, tracking the return on his advertising. Yes, the IDFA is effectively going away in iOS 14, and look at the frankly awful sign-up flow that is the alternative to how he was previously doing it. These changes come from a good place inside Apple, but wow I hope that this method of getting people to sign up and pay for an app doesn’t catch on. 😅

Jobs

Senior iOS Engineer @ WillowTree – As a Senior Software Engineer at WillowTree, you’ll have the opportunity to impact teammates throughout various stages of their careers. You’ll have clear oversight of how engineering runs day-to-day and will influence project outcomes. This is not a remote position and may require some travel. Currently, all team members are working from home until our offices reopen. – Charlottesville VA

Senior Software Developer @ Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian – The Senior Digital Software Developer will work on projects across the spectrum of digital health on API, Web and Mobile platforms. You will take part in the ownership of the product design, implementation, and feature development to build new and exciting experiences around Digital health care. Driving from traditional care models to defining/delivering products within digital health care. – Newport Beach CA

And finally...

This is going to be another one of those posts where I did something ridiculous and then show you how I got there, so let’s just get right to it.

My favourite type of post… 😍