Issue 725

5^th September 2025

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Are you ready for Apple to tempt you with new purchases on Tuesday? More importantly, are you ready to redesign all your apps for potential new form factors or curved edges?

It’s been a big year for Apple platform development. Liquid Glass has meant that we’ve all had to reconsider our app designs. iPadOS windowing makes it even more important to be size-agnostic in your UI design. Finally, and maybe most importantly, will the Approachable Concurrency changes in Swift 6.2 save us all from race conditions without breaking our brains?

Anyway, enjoy the event, and brace yourself for any changes you might need to make, caused by all the shiny new devices! 😬

– Dave Verwer

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Tools

I don’t know how I missed this app hitting v1.0, as I thought I had been following its development. 😬 Anyway, back in May, Marcin Krzyżanowski released this Swift (and now Python) library-based code editor that can execute scripts much more quickly than Playgrounds can. It’ll run scripts and even macOS/iOS apps (with the Simulator hosted inside the app). What a great little app! 👍

For full disclosure, Marcin sent me a promo code for the app.

Code

WeZZard:

My journey into the internals of Xcode 26’s new AI assistant began not with a bug, but with a feature so persistent it felt like a personality.

This article is a fascinating look behind the scenes at the Xcode 26 coding assistant, including extracted prompts and some of the tools it uses.

Darren Ford:

I like AppKit.

IMHO you’re better off moving to SwiftUI nowadays for your Mac app, but if you need to support back earlier than macOS 11 you’re kinda stuck.

I love that Darren didn’t pitch this as a replacement or even as a peer to SwiftUI. If you need to support pre-SwiftUI versions of macOS, this is worth a look. 👍

Design

Even if David Smith’s latest post didn’t focus on Liquid Glass, it’d still be worth watching the embedded video. I’d love to see other developers do UI-focused side-by-side walkthroughs of app redesigns or updates.

As with Liquid Glass, it’s not yet clear how concentricity will settle in over the next year. To give yourself the best shot at controlling it and getting it right, you should read Matteo Altobello’s latest article. 👍

Jobs

Founding Senior Mobile Engineer @ Neon – Lead mobile innovation at Neon, a fast-growing startup building a privacy-first app that lets users earn from their phone calls. Shape products with real-world impact in a creative, mission-driven environment. – On-site (United States in NY) with some remote work (within US timezones)

And finally...

… ba shi ma nah … 🎸