Issue 650

1^st March 2024

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

People often ask me about a new app idea they want to build, and one thing I always try to think about is, “Is this app boring enough?”

Obviously, “boring” is subjective, but the number of success stories I have heard over the years where the problem isn’t glamorous and the solution doesn’t leverage the latest trends is striking. Marketing your app becomes easier as there’s less competition on keywords, and users love your app because it solves a problem they don’t enjoy dealing with.

If you want to make an app for fun or as a hobby or side project, that’s a whole different thing, and you should go for whatever that idea is, even if it includes every buzzword on the front page of TechCrunch. But if you want to increase your chances of building a successful business out of your app, you might find more success in a quiet corner of the App Store creating something that most developers never think about.

You’ll never rub shoulders with the startups building with the latest AI technology or get written about by top news sites. In fact, one reason I’ve not mentioned specific success stories here is that some people who have found success with this kind of app seek out a quieter time with their successful businesses. Drawing attention to how successful their apps are would only draw their attention away from running those successful apps!

So next time you pitch an app idea to someone, watch for that vacant look that happens when someone completely loses interest in what you’re saying. If you see that, your idea may just be dull enough to make millions! 😂

Dave Verwer

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News

This is a big one, and it’s coming soon. Apple has published a reminder that you need to have your privacy manifest ducks in a row. There are details of what you need to do and more information about the required reason API. Joe Heck also wrote a fantastic post on what you need to do if you write a framework, and the troubles you may hit.

This year’s Swift-related GSoC projects include everything from features that might one day end up in Xcode through integrating swift-distributed-tracing into async-http-client, into working on the Visual Studio Code extension. It’s a fantastic chance to get mentoring from people at the heart of the Swift project, and discussions of proposals are open in the Swift forums.

Code

If you’ve been meaning to learn more about @MainActor, and about the isolation feature of Swift concurrency, Matt Massicotte’s article is for you. The good news is:

You probably do understand a lot about how isolation works, you just don’t realize it yet.

But even if you understand the concepts, I’m confident that Matt will still be able to teach you plenty of new things in this post.

I love blog posts like this one from Tiago Lopes, where I can feel the sweat (and potentially the tears) in his writing that came directly from his experience implementing these APIs. I don’t know for certain that that is the case, but I suspect it is. 😂

I enjoyed this article from Adam Overholtzer on what he learned about making a window in visionOS that isn’t just the plain “frosted glass rectangle”. He has tips on making transparent and custom-shaped windows, and much more, all gathered while writing his app, Clocks. 🕒

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And finally...

This isn’t triggered by anything that happened this week, other than when I found myself staring at my Mac’s screen and thinking, “Isn’t it amazing that macOS still uses a gloved Mickey Mouse hand to click every link” 😂

(and long may that continue!)