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essentialdeveloper.com
News
Contingent Pricing for Subscriptions
There are two things to note about this unexpected move from Apple relating to discounting subscription pricing for your apps. First, it’s not just limited to your apps, meaning you will be able to create cross-company promotional bundles. That’s not something I expected to see, but it’s quite exciting. Second, it’s not yet available, but the fact that they are asking people to sign up for a specific notification suggests to me that they might roll this out in stages. That’s pure speculation on my part, and I know nothing, but it would make sense.
So, grab yourself a partner and start thinking about the possibilities this kind of scheme could deliver.
apple.com
Tools
Code
How we built a Swift macOS app that uses our Rust library
First of all, what a useful tool Ockam is. I’ve used ngrok before for sharing access to local web/server projects, but the experience of trying this tool out easily beats it. Then, read this article from Mrinal Wadhwa for some fascinating information about how they bridged their Rust library to a Swift app through … you guessed it. C-89. It’s always C! 😂
github.com
AnyView’s impact on SwiftUI performance
If I had to sum up Martin Mitrevski’s latest article in one sentence, it would be that you should avoid AnyView where you can, but that it’s probably not the primary cause of any performance problems. You also shouldn’t ever read a one-sentence summary of a 1,500-word blog post, so you should read it yourself.
Can Swift Keep Its Compile-Safe Thread Management Promise?
Lucas van Dongen’s opening sentence should tell you something about what you’re about to read:
When writing a blog post, it’s easy to keep falling deeper into a rabbit hole when validating your writing.
He then goes on to put the Swift compiler through a threading torture test and writes up his results. I won’t pretend that I executed or validated these tests or even fully understand what they do. Still, if you’re interested in testing the boundaries of Swift 6’s strict concurrency mode, you’ll want to read this.
lucasvandongen.dev
Business and Marketing
Get new App Store screenshots with Picasso
What a good marketing idea this is. Everyone wins. Mark DiFranco gets lots of real-world test data for his new app. One lucky developer gets an App Store screenshot makeover every month, and it has a bit of virality to it when developers share the offer around. Like I’m doing now. I guess it worked, Mark!
picassoapp.ca
The More Features You Add...
I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone put this concept across as clearly as Luke Wroblewski does in this post. It’s worth reading before you make your development plans for this year.
lukew.com
Videos
SwiftData
What a treat from Stewart Lynch. A full course on SwiftData, from starting out with creating and updating data right through to storing binary data and synchronisation with CloudKit. There’s more than three hours of teaching here. Thanks Stewart!
youtube.com
Jobs
It's always slow at the start of the year for open positions, but I'm sure some companies are still hiring. Posting jobs on iOS Dev Jobs is still free, or pick a featured listing when you check out and your company might be the only one in this section next week.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are all feeling rested and enthusiastic for the year ahead. It might be a notable one, too, with the debut of you know what.
I don’t want to start the year thinking about shiny new products, though. I want to make an offer to the community around a subject I love: encouraging more blogging and technical writing about Swift.
I like to think I’ve helped with this a little already by linking mostly to community-written blog posts in this newsletter for more than twelve years and by building and maintaining the iOS Dev Directory for the last six. What started as an attempt to find new voices in this community has grown from my seed list of a few hundred blogs to more than a thousand today in eleven languages, contributed by hundreds of community members. Is your site missing? Please add it.
To continue this, I’d love to offer some free and one-to-one mentorship to members of this community interested in writing publicly about Swift, Apple platform development, app design, marketing, running an app business, or any other topics in this area. You can be brand new to blogging, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while but think you could benefit from some advice. We’ll organise a quick call and then go from there. I might be able to help you choose which topics might be interesting from a few that you may be considering, offer help structuring posts and making sure your point comes across clearly, or maybe someone to bounce ideas off who has some experience.
If this offer isn’t something for you, please consider sharing it publicly or passing it on to someone who might benefit. If it is something you’d be interested in, drop me an email (it’s dave at this domain, for those reading on the web or via RSS) with a quick introduction and then tell me a little about why you’d like to start blogging or expand what you’re already doing. Please also mention if you’re a member of an under-represented group in this community¹. You don’t need to write an essay. Just a paragraph or two is great!
The only thing I want to say explicitly is that this won’t make me any more or less likely to include links in this newsletter to posts from anyone I am talking to. I sometimes link to people new to blogging, and that won’t change. However, I’ll try and keep any bias I get from talking to people away from the choices I make, just as I always do.
This offer isn’t “first come, first served”, but I also probably can’t help everyone who might be interested. I’ll pick some people from everyone who emails before next Friday. 👍
Happy New Year again, and I look forward to encouraging more writing in this community in 2024! 🎊
¹ Please don’t feel you must give any details about why you consider yourself a part of an under-represented group in tech blogging. Just mention that you are. I won’t question any further.
Dave Verwer