So, what comes next?
I do have something new to announce today! The newsletter will continue as usual, but you can also become an iOS Dev Weekly Insider.
Over the years, people have occasionally emailed asking if there was any way to pay for the newsletter. My reply has always been to say that just subscribing and reading is enough! That remains true, but if you asked me the same question today, I’d reply that becoming a Supporter would be for you.
But I wanted to offer more, so I’m trying something new. Become an Insider if you want a closer connection to the newsletter. I’ll be hosting weekly live audio discussions that take a more candid look at what’s happening in iOS development. We’ll typically start on the topic from my latest comment, but there will also be a chance to talk about the articles I linked to and the industry in general. I want these sessions to be live as I’m hoping they will be genuine discussions rather than a monologue, and I’d love to get to know the Insiders personally. The first chat will be early next week (scheduled via Patreon), and we’ll start by talking about the first story in this week’s news section around the App Store review process.
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All that said, I want to reiterate that I don’t want anyone to feel pressure to subscribe to any of these Patreon tiers. The newsletter remains free, and I have no plans to change that. However, if you would like to get an inside look or just say thank you for 500 issues, sign up to become an iOS Dev Weekly Insider today.
I always find the stories about how apps come into existence fascinating and this one from Alexander Griekspoor about Agenda is no different. I also love to see in-development screenshots and videos, and there's some of those here too. It's worth a read!
Great idea from Craig Hockenberry. I suspect that many of us have suffered from the situation of trying to ship a bug fix and receiving a rejection for something completely unrelated (I know I have!). I guess it's very slightly open to abuse, but I'm not sure it would be a big issue as your app would need to take care of the problem for its next release. As usual, I won't be holding my breath though.
Handling the Next button automatically
As a user, I really appreciate when an app takes the time to add a keyboard accessory to form filling UI to make it easy to move between fields, but it doesn't come for free. Roland Leth takes us through what it might take to automate it in this post. It strikes me that nextKeyView could be useful on iOS after all.
Nobody is using App Transport Security; what’s next?
Chris Dzombak has done a bit of analysis on which popular apps have actually shipped with ATS switched on. It's very early days, and I'm not surprised by this at all. I think this year will be our chance to opt in voluntarily before it becomes mandatory with a future version of iOS. I'd expect there always to be a whitelist available, but maybe no way to switch it off entirely. We'll see.
Zyngapocalypse Now (And What Comes Next?)
Despite it being published on TechCrunch, this post by Tadhg Kelly is a well written look at the current state of casual and F2P games and the problems facing games on platforms like iOS and Facebook.