Issue 675

23^rd August 2024

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know I rarely talk about rumours, but I’ll talk about one today. What makes it different? Unlike product leaks or rumours of developer changes, I likely won’t ever get to talk about this one if I wait. It’s about an internal change that will almost certainly never be announced publicly.

If you haven’t seen the rumour already, it’s that Apple will create two App Store teams. One team will be responsible for the current App Store and the other will deal with the “alternative app distribution”.

If this is true, I’ll be sad to see it happen. Once the DMA was revealed, I hoped that Apple might find a way to navigate the regulations and make some compromises on the core issues instead of continuing down this path to more and more complexity. That, over time, they might find common ground with regulators and their business interests to continue to make a global store work.

Currently, the boundary of the “alternative app distribution” store will be broadly along EU and non-EU lines. But as more regions pass regulations, how will that balance shift? The DMA regulation in the EU is not the end of this story.

As software developers, we have been lucky, or some people might even say spoiled, to get access to international sales platforms that have barely any administrative overhead for us. All we need to do is fill out a few tax forms, and we’re able to sell our apps in hundreds of countries.

If this rumour is true, it feels like Apple is giving up on finding that compromise. If there are two teams, how hard will it be for them to ever join back up?

Maybe my hope for common ground is unrealistic. Perhaps separate stores with separate rules are inevitable. But I’d like to think there’s a way to make it work with some compromises on both sides, and if this happens, it feels that will slip a little further away.

Dave Verwer

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Tools

Here’s Pol Piella talking about Xcode’s new support for editor configuration files. What a great step forward for anyone who works on multiple projects with different teams. 🎉

Maybe we can hope for auto-formatting in Xcode 17? It’s time to make my dream come true.

When I first read this tip from Neil Macy, I had to do a double-take as I use ⌘+\ (Create Breakpoint at Current Line) all the time. Turns out he’s talking about ⌃+, which was a new one to me, but an extremely useful shortcut!

Code

If you want to take a more DIY approach to letting an LLM translate your string catalogues than the website I mentioned last week, I came across Andrew Theis’ package this week. It’s not as slick of a UI, but the results will be very similar, if not the same.

I hadn’t taken a look at the implementation of typed throws in Swift until I read this post from Majid Jabrayilov. I seem to remember there was some back and forth on whether this was a good idea when it went through evolution, but I think the implementation turned out great from reading this example code.

In and amongst Sarah Reichelt’s round-up of this year’s SwiftUI changes on macOS there’s also a quick review of Xcode 16’s predictive code completion. So, if you don’t read it for the Mac SwiftUI tips, read it for that!

Design

If I’m honest, I don’t often think about watchOS development 🫣 so it was a nice change to read about it in Thomas Durand’s latest post. He uses his PadLok app as a base for a walkthrough of how to design a modern watchOS app. I have to say the end result looks great!

Jobs

Mobile Developer (iOS) @ Planning Center – Our Mobile Team works on both iOS and Android. While focuses are leveraged, there is a healthy bit of collaboration in the execution of how things are released. – Remote (within US timezones) with some on-site work (United States in CA)

Senior iOS Developer @ komoot – You’ll take over full responsibility for our iOS app. Your work will touch all parts of the app and make outdoor adventures easily accessible to our users. You’ll develop diverse navigation, routing, social interaction, and content visualization features that will make your work challenging and fun. – Remote (within European timezones)

iOS Engineer @ Pika Earth – We’re a high-growth, Sequoia backed climate tech company. iOS is our main user surface area, so you’ll be responsible for many high-impact features that touch our core users. There are a ton of interesting technical problems, from offline mode to AR/VR modeling, and we have a world-class team. – On-site (United States in CA or NY) with some remote work (within US timezones)

I don’t know how you wouldn’t know this as I say it every week, but don’t forget that you can post any open Swift or Apple platform jobs for free over at iOS Dev Jobs.

And finally...

Because, of course one survived!