Issue 554

Comment

If you read one thing this week, read this post by Rich Mogul on security and the App Store. In my opinion, it’s an excellent article, and he makes a good case for why both side loading and alternate stores would hurt the security of iOS.

Tim Cook also spoke publicly at the IAPP Summit this week about privacy, the iOS platform, and the App Store. If you didn’t catch it, you won’t be surprised to hear that he is also very much in favour of keeping things the way they are now, with the App Store being the only¹ way to install apps.

I’m also against forcing Apple to add side loading and alternate stores, but my primary concern is always related to the general public’s trust in this computing platform. I’ve written about this several times, but if you’d like a summary, I’m pretty happy with how I put it in the last two paragraphs of my comment in Issue 471.

These arguments all overlap in some ways, but they all also ignore the other side of the argument. Money.

Apple has shown that it will resist changes to the platform due to the multitude of legal challenges it faces, but also that they see the money side of things as unrelated. The companies bringing these legal challenges may say they care about customer choice and other things, but I suspect it’s much more about money in many cases.

I just hope the platform (and by association, us third-party app developers) doesn’t lose too much in these battles.

¹ Yes, it’s not the only way, but it’s the only way that matters for most people who own an iPhone.

Tools

Web Inspector on iOS devices and Simulators

If you’ve ever done any web development, you’ll be intimately familiar with the Safari web inspector. It’s an essential part of building anything for the web. Of course, the web browser is also often used inside native apps, so it’s a terrible shame that you can’t also take advantage of that web inspector there.

What’s that, Ben Dodson? You can? Of course you can! 🚀

Code

General findings about NSPersistentCloudKitContainer

It’s so easy to implement something like CloudKit, learn all its tricks and quirks, and then move on with your life once you have it working. That makes posts like this from Quentin Zervaas so valuable as he took the time to write up his experiences. Thanks, Quentin!

SwiftUI performance tips

I really enjoyed this post from Martin Mitrevski on SwiftUI performance. It covers using the Animation Hitches tool in Instruments and has a variety of tips for helping keep things running smoothly.

Dismissing SwiftUI Views

I had missed that iOS 15 included a much more pleasant way than maintaining an isPresented type variable for dismissing presented views in SwiftUI. Keith Harrison hadn’t missed it, though, and now he’s written a blog post about it. 👍

The Golden Rules of weak self

Following up on last week's post about weak self, here’s a slightly different take on it from Chris Downie.

Business and Marketing

Building Ramps, not Walls

How much impact can re-designing your paywall screens have? I’ll spoil the conclusion to Curtis Herbert’s latest post:

Before all the changes, trends were showing a 50-60% growth YoY. Now after all these changes we’re sitting on a 90% growth year (which would have been a 130%+ growth year had everything been in place since the beginning).

He starts by looking around at what’s working for other people and goes from there. It’s a transparent look at real-world examples and data from a successful app. There’s nothing better.

Books

macOS by Tutorials

I still have the first book on Mac programming that I ever read sitting on the bookshelf next to me. It’s hard to describe how much has changed since then. AppKit has had too many improvements to count, and that’s before we even consider Swift and SwiftUI!

This new book from Sarah Reichelt will help you get to grips with Mac development, and you’ll build four apps while you read it using a combination of SwiftUI and AppKit. That should get you up to speed!

For full disclosure, I received access to this book for free.

Jobs

iOS Developer @ Maple Media – Maple Media is an innovative mobile media company that acquires and operates category-leading apps that entertain, empower productivity, and enrich everyday life. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (United States in CA)

iOS Developer @ Doximity – Doximity, the medical network used by over 80% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (remote). You'll 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 growing telemedicine feature. – Remote (within US timezones)

Senior iOS Engineer @ Doximity – Doximity, the medical network used by over 80% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (fully remote!). Come be part of an amazing product team + work on an app that is constantly evolving. Use your skills (Swift, MVVM, FRP) to be an integral part of our newly launched telemed feature. – Remote (within US timezones)

iOS Developer @ MFB Technologies, Inc. – We are a two-year-old startup in legal tech. We pride ourselves on correctness over speed in development. Our iOS app uses SwiftUI and the Composable architecture—modern and clean. No grind: our developers have dedicated time to develop their coding skills and think about architecture. – Remote (within US timezones)

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. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (Australia, United Kingdom, or United States in CA, MI, NY, or OR)

Senior iOS Developer @ Chariot Solutions – Chariot Solutions is a Philly based consulting company that strives to create a product company culture. We work hard to win exciting projects with some of the top companies in the world, while helping our employees maintain a great work life balance. – Remote (within US timezones)

Are you itching for a new challenge? There are plenty more opportunities than those listed above at iOS Dev Jobs. You should check them out.

Or, if your company is hiring, you can post jobs for free and get them in front of thousands of Swift developers who are looking for work. Get started here.

And finally...

Your engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think about whether they should. 😅

Issue 554 April 15th 2022