Sometimes I sit down to write my comment for this newsletter, and there are so many things I want to write about, it’s tough to pick one. Sometimes I sit here, and no matter how hard I try, nothing that I’d be happy to publish comes out.
I could force myself to sit here for another few hours and squeeze out a few words on some topic or other, but it wouldn’t be worth reading. I just can’t do it today.
So, I’ll get straight into the links instead. Have a great week, and hopefully, I’ll feel more like writing next week. 🤞
You'll all know Realm from the almost weekly links we post here to the amazing work they do capturing, transcribing and publishing videos from all sorts of conferences across the iOS community. They've been doing this for years now and I'm extremely grateful to them for taking on that responsibility. So I was really happy to see this week that they've taken this to the next level and organised all of that amazing content, and more into a new education site called Realm Academy. All for free too. Bravo!
Happy Friday!
You've probably grown tired of hearing about the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities by now and you'll have been told a thousand times that any device with a modern processor including ARM-based and Intel CPUs are all vulnerable. All except one... the Apple Watch. 😳
So next time someone tells you you wasted your money on an Apple Watch, you can look them dead in the eye, walk away, and know that at least your wrist is secure. 😏
Oh, and before I forget, we've also added a new section to the newsletter called Up to Speed. More on that below! Enjoy!
iOS Engineer @ Karbon – Join our dedicated, all-remote agency and help us build amazing iOS apps for amazing clients. We've spent the past 10 years helping companies ship apps to millions of users—join us as we focus on the next 10 years. – Remote, or Portland OR
Senior iOS Engineer @ onX – Are you an iOS developer who loves the outdoors? Bring your iOS skills to onX, where we bring our devotion to the outdoors to work daily with a singular, powerful goal; to inspire others to find their own adventures off the pavement. – Remote, or Montana, USA
So here they are, the ten "And Finally…" links that entertained me the most this year:
Thank you to everyone who made me smile this year, you're all amazing.
I always like to start the year by linking to a round-up of planned iOS conferences, and this year I've picked Alex Curylo's excellent round-up of events and their CFP links. There's a huge number of events planned, it's remarkable.
Also linked from the post, I really enjoyed Vadim Drobinin's post on submitting proposals to speak at conferences last year. Maybe 2020 will be the year of your first conference talk?
Talking of conferences, I'm off to iOSConf Singapore next week, which I'm very excited about! I hope to see some of you there!
Or, if you're in the mood for something that might suit sitting on the sofa and taking your mind off the troubles of the world, Jake Schumacher has also very kindly made rentals of his documentary free for the next few days. You should treat yourself to a slice of App Store history and spend an hour watching it.
Go to the store page, click to rent the movie, and apply this promo code during checkout. If you have any issues caused by being outside the US, drop Jake a DM.
Let's take a field trip to Chicago next Tuesday? The timing isn't so strange as there have been March events many times before (the last one was only 2 years ago in 2016) but the location is slightly unusual given they just built a dedicated theatre on their new campus. Will we see a new framework introduced? There's definitely a chance!
Oh and thanks so much for the amazing response to the iOS Dev Directory, 60 pull requests already merged and it now has content in four languages. Keep the submissions coming. 🎉
Last week, Jesse Squires' announced that he would be sunsetting the Swift Weekly Brief for good (unless someone was willing to take over). Sadly, it seems another great Swift newsletter has also come to an end. A few days ago, Natasha announced that This Week in Swift would be no more. 😔
So, for those of you wondering if iOS Dev Weekly is next? Rest assured that we're not going anywhere. In fact, we're more excited than ever to try new things as we continue to grow and improve our newsletter.
I wasn’t aware these were happening, but Apple is running some online developer workshops. Covering topics like widgets, app performance, and making UIKit and SwiftUI work well. They’re live, code-along events and run for the next month or so in UK/European time zones.
Note: I noticed that if you’re not logged in to the developer site already, the link will lose the search term for these events once you log in. So either click the link, then log in and click the link again or search for “Apple Online Developer Workshop“ after getting to the events page. I wish this link didn’t need a tutorial! 😂