Issue 543

28^th January 2022

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

I enjoyed the surprise push notification from Apple this week that my watch had a new face available. That’s new!

Khaos Tian dug in, discovered that watchOS can now load watch faces dynamically from a bundle, and asked for an official watch face SDK.

I’ve wanted a watch face API ever since I started wearing it every day. I’ve struggled to see the value in watch apps, but I have a super clear vision for the watch face that I’d like to use, and I’d love to build it.

It’s easy to speculate that this is a sign of a beta test for something new that could arrive in this summer’s watchOS beta. Is Apple dogfooding the technology before rolling it out for developers? I’d say no for a couple of reasons.

First, this is a cool distribution technology, but if 3rd party watch faces ever become a thing, they won’t roll out like this. We already have a watchOS App Store.

Yes, as far as I know, this is the first we’ve heard of this “Argon” framework, but it’s no surprise that Apple has a framework for writing watch faces. They make many!

Second, Apple love to surprise developers at WWDC, and we’re only a few months (yes, five, but we’re closer to this year’s than last year’s!) from this year’s conference. If they were going to release a watch face SDK this year, it seems unlikely they’d spoil the surprise like this.

With all of that said, I’d love a watch face SDK, so I can build one that’s perfect for me. I’d dearly love for Apple to prove these words wrong come June. 🙏

Dave Verwer

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News

Alright, Apple, did you deliberately wait until after I published this to announce that you were delaying the new account deletion App Store rule? 😅

I can see why requirements like this get delayed as they take serious effort for developers to implement. However, it’s becoming predictable that they never go through on their original schedule. Do developers intentionally ignore these requirements as they know they’re likely to be delayed? It’s possible.

I’m delighted to see Apple bring new features to the App Store Connect API. I could have imagined a situation where it got released and never updated, but that’s certainly not happening. This latest round of enhancements cover custom product pages, in-app events, and more.

What a lovely new site from Kishikawa Katsumi this is. You’re not likely to need this every day, but when you (or your translators) need it, you’ll be glad it exists.

Tools

Marco Eidinger took a small tool that Sven Schmidt has been working on recently and turned it into a GitHub action. It checks for updates in your SPM dependencies and opens a pull request containing links to the release notes for every updated package. Don’t you love it when something like this comes together? 😍

I’ve been waiting for support for external build tools to land in Swift Package Manager for a while now as we will really benefit from it with the Swift Package Index project. It’s coming in Swift 5.6, so I was excited to see that Pol Piella has taken a look at the beta version.

Code

Are enums in Swift overused? Is it possible that having such a flexible, rich enum type available to us has pushed us too far when thinking about implementing something? In this post, Sven Weidauer discusses it and proposes an alternative.

I heard you like optionals, so I put an optional in your optional. 😂 Tom Harrington talks about Core Data optional properties and how they interact with Swift optionals and shows you some of the pitfalls you need to keep your eye on. I also liked this follow up post from Jesse Squires. You should read both if you work with Core Data.

It’s this kind of issue that has everyone thinking/hoping for a “Swifty” Core Data enhancement/replacement at some point.

I think it’s fair to say that SharePlay has had a slow start since launching. You can attribute part of that to the work needed to implement it, but is it also being held back by needing to already be on a FaceTime call before initiating a SharePlay action? This tweet thread from Ryan Williams (who works on the SharePlay team) shows what the new APIs allow.

What an interesting idea from Joel Spolsky. As much as I love Markdown (and I do!), many apps that create content need more than it can provide. I’m linking this article here as I’d love for this to become a standard on mobile as well as web. I hope this interesting conversation on Twitter turns into something along those lines.

Business and Marketing

This post from Matt Ronge is worth a read. I’d love to see some examples of how non-gaming apps could implement consumables, but there’s some wisdom in the up-front vs subscription comparison here.

Jobs

iOS Developer (m/w/d) @ QuickBird Studios – Based in Munich, you would work on health & medical apps having a direct impact on the lives of millions of patients. At the same time, you’d work in a team that highly values great engineering: check out our GitHub page or Mobile Dev Blog with more than 130k readers to feel a bit of the vibe :-) – On-site (Germany) with some remote work (Anywhere)

iOS Engineer @ sengaro GmbH – We offer an exciting position in the heart of the Alps (Innsbruck) with technical responsibility and conceptual refinements of our long-term products. They are used in the medical field by paramedics and doctors to help saving lives every day. Become part of it and support people in emergencies! – On-site (Austria) with some remote work (within European timezones)

Mobile Software Engineer @ PrayerMate – PrayerMate helps 30,000 people each month be more consistent in their prayer lives. Join us to use your coding skills to make a difference for eternity. We’re particularly looking for a software engineer with experience with Core Data and Firebase Real-Time Database and/or Firestore. – Remote (Anywhere)

iOS Engineer @ Scandit – You will play a critical role in making our core computer vision technology available on the iOS platform. You will be in charge of our App Store apps as well as our SDK, helping to create engaging user experiences around barcode and object recognition scanning with AR technologies. – Remote (within European timezones)

iOS Developer @ WillowTree Digital – WillowTree is North America’s largest privately-held digital product agency. We partner with many of the world’s most iconic brands to develop elegant, highly-functional mobile & web applications used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. We offer remote & hybrid-flexible & incredible culture – Remote (within US timezones) with some on-site work (United States in NC, OH, or VA)

iOS Engineer @ Bending Spoons – We leverage advanced native iOS technologies and break new ground with our own powerful libraries that make architecting and developing the highest-quality iOS apps as smooth and efficient as it gets. We’re looking for passionate iOS engineers (mobile+platform) to bring our apps to the next level. – Remote (within European timezones) or on-site (Italy)

Don’t forget there are many more jobs available over at the main iOS Dev Jobs site! Did you know there are native apps available now, too? Now you do.

And finally...

i won 😂