Issue 701

28^th February 2025

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Sometimes coming up with an opening comment for this newsletter that’s worth reading can feel like I’m struggling through the day with a fever. This week I was faced with actually writing one with a fever of 40ºC (104°F) which I’ve had since Monday. 😬

I’m starting to feel a little better today, but I’ll still keep the opening commentary short, as I must admit I’m still having difficulty forming coherent thoughts, let alone interesting ones! Enjoy the links.

Dave Verwer

Sponsored Link

Discover why the web development model does not work for mobile app development and adopt winning strategies for success in the hyper-competitive mobile market. Read the blog post now.

News

Regardless of what I said last week, it’s great to see Apple expand where they are posting updates. The Swift language now has accounts on Bluesky and Mastodon and Apple Developer is now on WeChat, too.

Also, don’t forget that RSS still exists and is just as wonderful as ever. Most of the official Apple blogs and news sites support it and you can find links to the feeds for all of them, and many more, on the iOS Dev Directory.

I’m really happy to see this happen. Finally! 👍

Code

What’s new in Swift 6.1, which received its first public beta this week? Yep, you guessed it, more strict concurrency improvements! 🎉 Matt Massicotte has all the details, because of course he does! ❤️

Is there anything other than concurrency-related changes in this release? Yes! If you’re interested in “imported member visibility”, check out Donny Wals’ latest post.

It’s great to see Mattt publish at NSHipster again, with two articles since the start of this year. Welcome back! Here he discusses his new Swift package, Ollama, and why you shouldn’t wait for Apple APIs to include LLM functionality in your apps.

How easy is it to make a stack in SwiftUI tappable across its entire surface? Very easy, but maybe not immediately obvious. Let Keith Harrison stop you going down some dead ends by giving you the answer.

Videos

Here you go! You may have heard there was a sizeable contingent of Swift content at FOSDEM 2025, and here it is! I believe there are a couple of talks missing videos, but I’m sure you’ll find something to entertain and educate in the list.

And finally...

I missed this last year, but this is lovely coverage of a special milestone.