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News
What's new in SwiftWasm?
As you might remember, I’m not someone who particularly wants a homogeneous developer life. I think we become better developers, and write better products if we embrace and learn from other technologies. That’s not to say that the work going on with the SwiftWasm project isn’t interesting though, they’re even implementing async/await already! Here’s a round-up of what’s going on in the project from Max Desiatov and Yuta Saito.
While we’re on the subject, Helge Heß also published a post on running SwiftWasm inside a Swift app this week. Why? Don’t you find reasons why are so overrated? 😂
swiftwasm.org
SwiftUI Jam
I don’t know about you, but I enjoy learning much more when I’m learning alongside other people, so bring your app ideas and enthusiasm to this virtual event brought to you by the SwiftTO Conference and NSCoderTO organisers.
swiftuijam.com
Tools
SceneShot
I’ve linked to several apps that’ll create good looking screenshots for your marketing materials in the past, but I really liked the flexibility in 3D lighting effects that this tool from Romain Derrien can produce. Import your screenshots, pick a device, rotate it in 3D, pick your lighting, and export either a screenshot or animation for your marketing materials. Good stuff. 👍
For full disclosure, Romain sent me over a promo code for this app.
apple.com
Emerge
This new app from Noah Martin and Josh Cohen looks interesting. It’ll analyse your app and show you two things: First, a visualisation of what’s taking up all the space in your app bundle. Then, a set of recommendations on how you could save space. Please run this for all our sakes. You get your first report for free, so why not? 👍 There’s also a blog post with some examples if you want to check that out.
emergetools.com
Code
What type is self in this closure?
Here’s a fun article to start this week’s code related links. Jesse Squires wants to take you on a voyage of discoveries with types inside closures…
jessesquires.com
Avoiding SwiftUI’s AnyView
Do you find yourself using AnyView in your SwiftUI code? Here’s John Sundell with a great guide on why you might want to avoid it, and the techniques you’ll need to keep everything working.
The Diminishing Utility of MFMailComposeViewController
This article from Stuart Breckenridge immediately piqued my interest with the title. Why would MFMailComposeViewController be less useful these days? Of course, it’s because iOS 14 allows users to customise their default mail app. What should you do about it? Read on.
macOS Development
A guide to distributing macOS apps outside of the App Store
If you want to distribute an app on iOS, your choices are … limited. 😅 That’s not the case on macOS though. I loved this summary of modern options for both selling and distributing your shiny new Mac app. As with anything written by Gui Rambo, it’s worth a read.
rambo.codes
Business and Marketing
Overviewer Week 1
This is such a well written and grounded review of an app launch from Charlie Chapman. I enjoyed every word of it, and it’s a great reminder that you shouldn’t just look at a single metric when measuring success. Congratulations on the great launch!
charliemchapman.com
Jobs
iOS Engineer @ Karbon – Join our dedicated, all-remote agency and help us build amazing iOS apps for amazing clients. We've spent the past 10 years helping companies ship apps to millions of users—join us as we focus on the next 10 years. – Remote within the US
Senior iOS Engineer @ SumUp – Help evolve our mobile Point-of-Sale solution, an integral part of SumUp, used by hundreds of thousands of people. Collaborate with other engineers, designers and product managers in your team and across other teams to develop simple and delightful solutions for our merchants. Work with a diverse, distributed team located throughout Warsaw, Copenhagen, London and Berlin! – Remote
iOS Engineer @ WillowTree – As an iOS Software Engineer at WillowTree, you’ll influence project outcomes and collaborate with teammates to build amazing products people love. In response to the pandemic, our team members have the option to work remotely. Once it is safe to return, this role will be based in our Columbus, OH office. Non-local candidates are encouraged to apply as we provide relocation assistance. – Remote for now, then Columbus OH
Senior iOS Engineer @ WillowTree – As a Senior iOS Engineer at WillowTree, you’ll have the opportunity to impact teammates throughout various stages of their careers. In response to the pandemic, our team members have the option to work remotely. Once it is safe to return, this role will be based in our Durham, NC office. Non-local candidates are encouraged to apply as we provide relocation assistance. – Remote for now, then Durham NC
Engineering Director @ WillowTree – As an Engineering Director, you’ll mentor a team of all levels to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. Your partnership and coaching skills will impact our teams, clients, and company! You’ll have clear oversight of how engineering runs day-to-day and you’ll influence project outcomes and team happiness. – Remote for now, then Charlottesville VA
Senior iOS Software Engineer @ Doximity and iOS Software Engineer @ Doximity – Doximity, the medical network used by over 70% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (remote-friendly!). You'll get to be part of an amazing product team and work on an app that is constantly evolving. Use your skills (Swift, MVVM, FRP) to be an integral part of our newly launched telemedicine feature. Apply today! – Remote within the US
Senior iOS Developer @ Atomic Robot – Atomic Robot works with some of the most exciting companies and brands to help them bring their innovative projects to life! We have a highly collaborative team that is focused on high quality engineering and continuous learning. – Remote, or Cincinnati OH
Senior iOS Engineer @ DuckDuckGo and Senior macOS Engineer @ DuckDuckGo – Rather than rely on interviews, we base our hiring decisions on demonstrable work performance. We achieve that through asking our candidates to complete paid projects, which largely resemble the type of challenges they would be solving at DuckDuckGo every day. – Remote
Mobile Full Stack Engineer @ Expensify – Join our passionate team of top-notch engineers to solve a real-world problem, and help people spend less time managing expenses and more time pursuing their real goals. As we revolutionize the way people manage their expenses, being part of the Expensify team means building the easiest, fastest, and most efficient platform to automate everything expense-related. – Remote, San Francisco CA, New York NY, Portland OR, or London UK
Are you hiring? You can get your job listed here by posting it as a featured listing over on iOS Dev Jobs. So what are you waiting for? 🚀
Everyone was a little confused by Apple’s pre-announcement of a “not a product” announcement earlier this week. I didn’t think it would particularly be related to iOS development, but it turned out that it was! 🚀
They announced major new Racial Equity and Justice Initiative projects to challenge systemic racism. The main parts of this initiative are a new Developer Academy and venture fund specifically for Black and Brown entrepreneurs, but there are also new scholarship programmes and more. It’s US-only, but I’m so happy to see Apple laying down much more than words to work towards fixing inequality.
I’m sure we’ll hear more on this as the year plays out. 👍
While I’m here, I wanted to add an extra little note on this. Whenever I link to something on this subject, I receive critical emails and a much larger than normal number of people unsubscribing. I was even directly called a racist for linking to Diversity in Swift a couple of weeks ago. 🤷♂️ It’s easy to think that racism isn’t a problem in this little corner of this small and relatively progressive industry. In fact, that’s what some of the email responses I get are about. People think the problem is overblown, and limited to other, more obvious areas. Every time I talk about it, the response lets me know that it is very much not the case. Please consider that before dismissing this initiative from Apple.
Dave Verwer