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Mobile releases are a silent killer, but not with Runway
Bouncing back and forth between tools, chasing down marketing for copy and stakeholders for sign-offs, clicking around gingerly in App Store Connectā¦ productivity, happiness, and general sanity suffer. Learn what makes mobile releases a silent killer and how Runway can help.
runway.team
News
Building Under Regulation
It will take you more than an hour to fully read Steven Sinofsky's musings on the history of tech regulation and the DMA, but it's worth your time. He has been there and done it all during his time at Microsoft. It's impossible to summarise his 18,000-word article in one paragraph, but I found myself nodding along as he admires what Apple made in the App Store and how regulation hurts it. He echoes a lot of what I've written on the subject.
learningbyshipping.com
Nominations for the Swift.org Community Showcase Packages Page
I mentioned back in November that the Swift website now has a "Community Showcase" page full of community-written packages. The data comes from the Swift Package Index, but ideally, the nominations will come from the community and unfortunately, they have slowed already! I'd hate for this page to get abandoned, but it needs community input to be successful. The only restriction for nominating a package is that you need to nominate someone else's packages rather than your own, but that allows you an opportunity to make someone's day, and that can't be a bad thing, can it?
swift.org
visionOS App Roundup
Hereās what I wanted to focus on this week instead of App Store policy changes and regulations. Itās day one of the visionOS App Store, and Donovan Hutchinson has written a post with all the visionOS apps he can find. Is your app missing? Thereās a Google document with more than 230 apps listed. Apple also did some more app promotion this week with their feature on Blackbox coming to visionOS ā¤ļø and this round-up of their ādeveloper storyā posts.
vision.rodeo
Tools
Debug for visionOS using Xcode simulator visualizations
Did you know about the āDebug Visualizationsā menu in the visionOS simulator that can show you wireframes and markers for bounding boxes, surfaces, and objects your UI can collide with? I didnāt either, but Giovanni Monaco did, and he has written it all up here for us in this well-illustrated post.
createwithswift.com
Code
Case insensitive string comparison in Swift
We are terribly guilty of relying on lowercased in the Swift Package Index source code. We should learn from Natalia Panferova and use Swift's string comparison methods instead.
Badging Premium Features with Menu Badges
As I read this post, I had fond memories of the old QuickTime āProā badges in the old QuickTime 7 Player macOS menus. It was a good way to show what features would unlock with the paid upgrade, and this post from David Sorel shows you how to do something similar using a new API that came with macOS Sonoma. š
furnacecreek.org
Support Swift macros with CocoaPods
No matter how the adoption of SwiftPM continues, CocoaPods was so prevalent during its heyday that it'll be around in projects for a very long time. Does that mean you can't leverage Swift features like macros because they depend on SwiftPM features? It does not, as Soumya Mahunt explains here.
I'd be fascinated to hear if you still use CocoaPods or another dependency management solution, so I made a short survey.
medium.com
Business and Marketing
The Perks of a Wallflower Rule
Dance like no one is watching, sing like no one is listening, love like youāve never been hurt, and price your apps like an EU regulator isnāt watching every move you make. š Thanks to Jordan Morgan for writing this up. I think this applies to lots of you who might be reading this.
swiftjectivec.com
Jobs
Senior Mobile Software Engineer, iOS (Swift) @ Doximity ā We are looking for a talented iOS Software Engineer to join our growing team of developers. We have built and maintain a suite of fully-native iOS and Android apps that healthcare professionals use on a daily basis to increase productivity and provide better patient care. ā Remote (within US timezones)
iOS Developer @ KURZ Digital Solutions GmbH ā Join KURZ Digital Solutions! Take the lead in developing innovative apps as an iOS developer and explore modern technologies in a dynamic team. Experience a culture of learning and creativity that combines tradition with digital innovation. ā Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (Germany)
From John Gruberās excellent summary of last weekās DMA proposal:
At first glance, this sounds like the āre-thinkingā of the App Store I wished for back in Issue 544. Except it isnāt. š¬ The opt-in nature of Appleās proposed changes will mean none of those huge companies that distribute free apps would ever choose to sabotage themselves by choosing the new deal, effectively cementing that part of the original App Store structure forever. Iām not terribly surprised that what I was suggesting wasnāt possible, as applying a new mandatory fee structure on large companies that have been paying nothing would have been incredibly challenging, and also invited yet more scrutiny on Apple.
I didnāt see any speculation about a two-tier system before this announcement, but it makes sense for Apple, who is presumably happy with how it all worked before these changes and, I believe, would be happiest if everyone stuck with the original App Store financial structure.
Itās going to be hard for anyone except a small number of billion-dollar companies to adopt these terms, so I think Iām done talking about it. I didnāt expect it would be for smaller developers, but this is not a scheme for anyone reading this newsletter to get involved with. The risks of the CTF are too significant. We should leave the huge companies and governments alone to fight with each other over this.
I tried several times to write more on this subject this week, but it all feels a little pointless. Anything that you or I can say makes no difference at all. All Iāll say is that I donāt feel good about any of the involved parties right now. What a messy situation.
Dave Verwer