Issue 510

4^th June 2021

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

It’s almost WWDC time! 🚀😍🎉

Looking around Twitter and the web this week, I see two very different narratives from the community about this year’s conference. On the one hand, I see the usual excitement, anticipation, and hope for Xcode to be better at understanding Swift. On the other, I see more unrest and frustration in the Apple developer community than I’ve ever seen before. This post from Marco Arment is a good summary of how many people feel.

I think some of you are hoping for an App Store focused announcement at the conference. Maybe all of this pressure from lawsuits, anti-trust investigations, and the community will force Apple’s hand, and they’ll relent on some aspect of the App Store?

I don’t think that’s going to happen. First, I don’t think now is the right time for Apple to make any drastic business changes to the App Store. The Apple/Epic trial may be over, but the verdict is still weeks or months away and making changes now would send all sorts of awkward messages.

It’s more than that, though. I don’t think this is fixed by “simply” making more changes to the App Store. This level of unrest doesn’t go away with another tweak to the percentages or by enabling side-loading. As Marco says in his article, this is much more about how Apple treats third party developers generally.

To be clear, I’m talking about Apple as an entity here, not about individual employees. In my experience, Apple employees are genuine, kind, empathetic individuals who care deeply about developers. Unfortunately, as a company, it can feel very different.

There’s no quick fix for this and no single announcement that makes it go away. If Apple wants their relationship with developers to improve, it’ll take consistent change over time, starting close to the top. It’s not just about the App Store terms and conditions.

It’s a shame because we’re in the midst of so much tremendously exciting technical work from the company, and it’s partly overshadowed. I’d much rather be talking about that!

Dave Verwer

WWDC

So what’s your plan for the conference? Over and above what we had from Apple last year, there’s also virtual lounges, but that’s only covering the official side of things. The community side is just as exciting!

WWDC.community is back and bigger than ever this year. There’s so much going on there, you really must check it out. There’s also WWDC Together, the AltConf Keynote stream, and the Ray Wenderlich WWDC Livecast for live streams and chat. There are also a few networking events throughout the week. Some organised by the Diversity in Swift team, try! Swift DUB DUB, and the NSScreencast Remote Happy Hour. Then, why not finish up the week in style at the iOS Dev Happy Hour? There should be something to fit every preference and every timezone!

But we’re all here to learn as well, right? So if you’re looking for notes, the WWDC notes site is back for 2021, as is the WWDC Community: Learning and sharing repository where you can contribute throughout the week.

Finally, and some might say most importantly, no WWDC would be complete without James Dempsey and the Breakpoints!

Have a great conference, everyone! I’ll be back with a round-up next Friday, as usual.

Tools

SimpleAnalytics

The ultimate way to know what’s happening to the analytics data from your app is to host it yourself, and SimpleAnalytics from Dennis Birch looks like a nice tool that’ll help you do exactly that. It’s a framework for your app, a ~160 line server-side PHP file, and a newly released macOS app for looking at the data.

Code

CodeEditorView

Maybe it’s because I’ve been involved with a few developer tools over the years, but I often find myself needing a quick code editor. It’s often not the entire point of an app you’re working on, but entering code into a plain text field always feels so wrong! Here’s Manuel Chakravarty to help with a code editor usable from both macOS and iOS (with slightly reduced functionality)! This looks great. 🚀

Why Should You Care about Manual Testing?

Oh my gosh, yes! 😍 I loved every word of this article by Tomáš Šurín. Automatic testing is hugely important, but it can make you feel overly safe and protected from errors that might be blindingly obvious when you (or someone else) runs your app.

NukeUI and LazyImage

I’ve linked to Nuke in the past, and now Alex Grebenyuk is following it up with a UI library. You might think that a control called LazyImage would be only about images, but it also supports videos! If you care about loading resources in a performant way, I’d check this out.

Real-Time Breath Tracking with AirPods

Let’s finish up this week’s code section with a fun piece from Philipp Gehrke on using breath sounds and CoreML to detect breathing. Clever! 🤯

Jobs

iOS Developer @ Citymapper – Our small team of iOS developers help to make cities usable. Cities are complicated. We use the power of open data, mobile, and payment tech to make transport sustainable and hassle free. Our award-winning transport app is built for the real world of commuters and adventurers across the globe. Come and work on an app that you and your friends use every day! – London UK or Remote

Senior iOS Software Engineer @ Doximity – Doximity, the medical network used by over 70% of US physicians, is hiring passionate Senior 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! – San Francisco CA or Remote within the US

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, New York City NY, Portland OR, Ironwood MI, San Francisco CA, London UK, or Melbourne Australia

Senior iOS Software Engineer @ GoodNotes – An Apple-featured top paid app that transforms your iPad into digital paper, with millions of happy users. GoodNotes has an engineer-first culture, even their founder has been involving day to day engineering work. Paid holidays, stock options, internal hackathon, work from home budget, gym subsidy! – London, Hong Kong, or Remote

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. – Columbus OH

Senior iOS Engineer @ onX – Are you an iOS developer who loves the outdoors? Join onX! If you’re passionate about writing great software, love playing outside, believe in protecting access to public lands, and want to dominate the off-pavement mobile GPS market – then join our team, where we empower millions of outdoor enthusiasts to explore the unknown! – Missoula MT, Bozeman MT, or Remote within the US

Technical Director of Engineering @ Stream – Stream is hiring for a Technical Director of Engineering managing our SDK teams for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and React. Our APIs for activity feeds and chats are used by over a billion end-users. We’re one of the fastest-growing startups in Europe, and recently announced our Series B of $38 mln. – Amsterdam or Remote

Senior Mobile Developer @ Six to Start – We make Zombies, Run!, the world’s most popular smartphone fitness game with over 10 million downloads. Help us make exercising fun for everyone! – Remote

Swift Developer @ Toggl Track – Help us build and improve our Toggl Track app for iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and macOS. You will be part of a 5 people team dedicated to build the apps for Apple devices. Our code has been built from scratch in the last year, we just released the iOS app and we are starting work on our macOS app. We do 100% Swift with some small doses of SwiftUI. The salary for this position is €50,000 annually. – Remote

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 @ ClassPass – Want to work on an app that helps people lead healthier, more fulfilling lives? Join the team at ClassPass, the world’s leading fitness and wellness aggregator. You’ll be defining our mobile strategy, collaborating with an incredible product team, and guiding us through a really exciting period of growth. – Missoula MT, Houston TX, or New York City NY

Is your company hiring? Talk to your hiring managers and get them to list your open positions over at iOS Dev Jobs. Standard listings are free, so there’s nothing to lose!

Insiders

Thanks so much to this week’s iOS Dev Weekly Insiders! Dave Teare, Jack Spargo, Rob Timpone, Troy Gaul, and Riley Testut. Thank you all so much. 🙏

This week’s insider’s call is immediately after the keynote on Monday, and we’ll naturally chat about all the announcements! Would you like to join us?

And finally...

ducking autocorrect 😂

I’ve meant to link to this account for weeks now. It’s so genuinely worth a follow. You won’t regret it.