Issue 600

10^th March 2023

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

If you told me I had to sit at my desk and push a button 600 times, you’d need to have a very good reason before I’d listen to you. 😂 Is publishing this newsletter a good reason? I have no idea, but I will push it for the 600th time right … now! 🫣

The reality of looking back at newsletter issues is that many links are dead¹, but as a fun little exercise, I went back into the archives and picked out a couple of links from every hundredth issue:

In Issue 100, I was still recovering from WWDC 2013, where Apple had unveiled the new design of iOS 7. My favourite link of the issue is Brent Simmons’ DB5 framework, and the And finally…, which was the retirement of Three20!

Issue 200 is still the only issue ever to include an image! You should take a second look at Victor Baro’s recreation of Apple’s rubber band and Samantha Marshall’s unofficial guide to xcconfig files. The And finally… was Moscone related!

I was quite ill when Issue 300 got published, but at the time, a couple of other authors were working with me, so we still got an issue out! Thank you again for writing this issue, Evan. He linked to LicensePlist (which is still maintained today) and Nick Babich talking about when to use Google-style floating action buttons. The And finally… related to bug fixes and improvements.

Issue 400 included an NSHipster article by Mattt, which is a publication I still miss. The And finally… was a tweet that has been deleted, unfortunately, but it must have made me laugh at the time!

It has been less than two years since Issue 500, so the links are less interesting for nostalgia purposes, but you might enjoy the stats roundup from 500 issues.

I’m so grateful you all still want to read my writing here. Thanks so much for subscribing, and to all the sponsors for their support, too. ❤️

¹ It’s funny. The most likely indicator of whether an article link is dead or not is whether it’s on a personal blog/domain. People maintain their blogs well, whereas services and news sites come and go.

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News

If you’ve downloaded the Xcode 14.3 beta, you may have noticed some new deprecations or warnings in your code. That’s because it includes Swift 5.8, and just in time, here’s Paul Hudson to fill us in on the changes. It’s a smaller release than usual, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new!

Talking of new Swift versions, I think this is the first mention of a Swift 5.9 release that I’ve seen, and with a release freeze date in just ten days, it seems likely to debut in a new version of Xcode at WWDC in a couple of months! Mishal Shah outlines the usual process for a Swift release in this forum post.

It’s been a couple of months since Apple announced what is almost freeform pricing, and they’re expanding it to all purchase types. The great thing about these changes is that they are all reflected in the API, which makes things like this possible! 🚀

Tools

I don’t know how often I’ve seen the “All Output” dropdown in Xcode’s Debug Area and not clicked it. So I’m happy to see Jesse Squires unveil the mystery behind it this week!

Code

At first glance, this post from Sarah Reichelt might look like a launch announcement for a new app. Which it is. However, if you look a little deeper, it’s also a wonderful walkthrough of how she built it, and you’ll also get to browse the code because it’s open-source.

Task groups in Swift’s async/await support are a fantastic tool, but what happens if something goes wrong in one of the tasks? Toomas Vahter has just the post for you with an excellent, real-world example.

Talking of tasks, Alexander Weiß digs into what’s possible with the task modifier in SwiftUI and why you’d want to consider it over something like onAppear.

Books

A new Daniel Steinberg book is always a treat, and as it is set in a cafe, will we get baking tips along with our Swift concurrency education? Surprisingly, no! But you will get a comprehensive look at async/await.

For full disclosure, Daniel sent me a review copy of the book.

Jobs

Tech Lead @ Learn Chess with Dr. Wolf / Chess.com – Millions of students have learned chess from the kind and patient Dr. Wolf. “Learn Chess with Dr. Wolf” started as an indie labor of love. With your creativity, dedication and attention, we can bring the joy of chess and learning to many more people. – Remote (within US or European timezones)

There are more jobs available over at the iOS Dev Jobs site. Or, if you’re hiring you can post your job for free!

And finally...

What would a ChatGPT powered documentation search look like? 😍