iOS Developer @ Doximity – Doximity, medical network used by over 80% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (remote). You'll be part of an amazing product team and work on an app that is constantly evolving. Use your skills (Swift, MVVM, FRP) to be an integral part of our newly launched telemedicine feature. – Remote (within US timezones)
iOS Lead @ mobile.dev – Mobile.dev is leading the charge on the shift-left in mobile engineering. We're an ambitious team looking for a world-class iOS engineer who is passionate about building novel tooling for mobile teams. Join us and help shape the future of iOS development! – Remote (Anywhere)
Mobile Full Stack Engineer @ Expensify – Join our passionate team of top-notch engineers to solve a real-world problem, and help people spend less time managing expenses and more time pursuing their real goals. Being part of the Expensify team means building the easiest, fastest, and most efficient expense-related platform. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (Australia, United Kingdom, or United States in CA, MI, NY, or OR)
Lead Engineer, Apple Platform @ Hudl – Be part of our mission to empower sports teams to make every moment count by joining one of our cross-functional product teams in the UK to create and drive strategy for our native Apple apps (i.e. Hudl Sportscode) used by elite teams around the world (e.g. Premier League, Bundesliga, NBA). – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)
Senior iOS Developer @ Shape Games – We deliver award winning sports betting products used all over the world. As a developer at Shape you can pride yourself with building products used by millions of people and have fun while doing it. – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (Denmark)
Software Engineer · iOS (all levels) @ Playground – Come join Playground on our mission to make intelligent products shapeable. We build foundational tools that allow anyone to customise data-driven experiences. You'll collaborate with a team of designers, engineers and data-scientists, on building the next generation of intelligent products. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)
Senior iOS Developer @ Grailed – Grailed is one of the largest peer-to-peer clothing marketplaces. We use RxSwift, functional programming, and agile practices and we also get to interface directly with users to build and develop features for the app. We are committed to clean code, supporting work-life balance, and enjoying life! – Remote (within US timezones)
Senior iOS Engineer @ Circle – We're a cross-platform community product built for web and mobile, and we're looking for a Senior iOS Engineer to help take our iOS app to the next level. Our iOS team is small and lean, so you'll get a ton of responsibility in building critical features for our iOS app. – Remote (within US or European timezones)
Senior iOS Engineer @ Marshmallow – Marshmallow is building a world where insurance benefits everyone. We’re looking for iOS Engineers to join our mobile team at Marshmallow to help us rebuild insurance – for good! You'll have the opportunity to help shape the roadmap, impacting both what we build and how we build it 🚀 – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)
Last year was the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone, and this year it's been 10 years since our world as developers changed with the release of the iPhone SDK. I'm sure you've read Craig Hockenberry's article by now as it's been widely shared, but it's a great look back at the really early days of development on the iPhone. It also seemed to trigger something and quickly Twitter was filled with great stories of everyone reminiscing on those days, so let me go next with that. 😀
I clearly remember the announcement of the SDK, I was working on a Mac app at the time and it took everything I had not to immediately abandon it and get started on an iOS app. I managed to resist, but as soon as it was done I immediately dived right in and shipped my first app to the store a few months after the launch and I was hooked.
In the years following, I wrote (and helped to write) apps both for my own company and for others. I also trained hundreds of developers on Objective-C and iOS development. I spoke at conferences everywhere from the USA, to Russia and all over Europe. I also started a newsletter! 😀I can honestly say that in my whole career I have never been so passionate for so long about any technology as I continue to be with iOS. It really did change my life.
The last few years have taken me away from primarily doing iOS work, and while I had an amazing time working on Curated, and other email related things this anniversary couldn't come at a better time because I have a little announcement to make. As of this week, I am now again an independent developer working for myself and so, iOS is back to being 100% of what I do! 🎉🎉🎉
So what are my exact plans? I don't want to make too many firm promises as I'd rather let things happen naturally and be able to say yes to things as they appear, which is something I haven't been able to do in quite a while. However, I do have some plans in progress, and there will even be a (very) small announcement of something right here, next week, so keep an eye out for that!
As part of this change, I'll also be going back to being the sole author of iOS Dev Weekly. I'd really like to say a huge thank you to both Evan and Vicc. They have been an enormous help over this last year and both brought fresh new perspectives on the iOS world. Thank you both, it's been wonderful working with you.
Sorry this turned out to be so long! Let's get on with the important stuff... The links!
Terrible news yesterday if you're using Parse for your app's back end. They have announced that the service will be shutting down next year, and I must admit I'm a bit surprised. There's no explicit reason given for the closure but if Facebook couldn't make a service like this work, that's not a great sign for the other companies with similar offerings.
It's always a tricky balance between using a BaaS platform like Parse, or building everything yourself. We're all aware that any service we rely on could potentially go away at any time but there is none more disruptive than your entire back end! On the other side of the argument, you could spend years building everything you need from scratch and completely custom, then have the app not gain any popularity and have it all wasted. It's a tricky problem and there's no right answer.
The only good news here is that the closure period is generous. You've got a year to get your app migrated to something else. There's also a migration tool to MongoDB and even an open source implementation of the Parse server. It's missing features like the dashboard, but once you've got over the bad news at least there's a plan to be made.
So, alternatives? There's CloudKit of course and there's a list of other alternatives also being put together. Or, maybe it's time to build that custom back end?
Obviously for successful apps, they will start this migration straight away and get over to some other solution. That's a much harder decision for a small/less popular apps. Migration of any kind will take significant work and I'd imagine this will kill off quite a few apps when it happens.
Full disclosure: Parse have previously been a sponsor of iOS Dev Weekly on multiple occasions. As far as I know, it wasn't that which caused them to shut down though! 😃
Such a fantastic event this week. As predicted by all of the rumours, we got everything at once including the new iPad which was a little surprising. It was such a great keynote though, even the 3rd party demos felt slightly more bearable this time.
The biggest announcement for me was the TV and tvOS, finally! I've been speculating and wishing for a TV based platform for years and it didn't disappoint. From a first look, it's everything I was hoping for. It's also great news that it's not a huge departure from "standard" UIKit and I'm sure we'll see some fantastic apps moving across fairly quickly.
There are some interesting limitations of the platform though which were at least partially responsible for some of the features of iOS 9 announced at WWDC. For example, apps on the TV have no local storage and binaries are limited to 200Mb which makes technologies like App Thinning and On Demand Resources essential. There's also plenty of APIs missing from tvOS, including no support for WebKit which is really quite surprising.
Possibly the best announcement from the event was that Apple are going to be allowing developers to order and receive Apple TV hardware before the general public. 🎉 I'm sure you've already done so but if you haven't, you can register for a chance at a device here. I wonder if this is going to follow for more hardware launches in the future?
There's lots to learn of course and I'm sure there'll be plenty of links over the next weeks and months. But for now, as always, the best place to get started is the Apple tvOS Documentation. Off you go!
Senior iOS Developer @ Komoot – We love Tech. We love Nature. We work hard to make it easy for everyone to explore the world’s most beautiful places. Today, millions of people explore nature with our apps. Their experiences are what drive us and make us smile every day. – Remote (within European timezones)
iOS Engineer @ Fjorden – We are a small team and you would be our first iOS engineer, next to Florian our CTO. Together we will build & ship our camera app (around 60% done today), and design an SDK other camera apps can integrate to take full advantage of the Fjorden grip. – Remote (within European timezones)
iOS Engineer @ Branch – Branch is on a mission to help working Americans grow financially. We do this by helping companies accelerate payments and empower working Americans with accessible, fee-free financial services. We’re committed to building and delivering more inclusive and transparent financial products. – Remote (within US timezones)
Senior iOS Engineer @ onX – Are you an iOS developer who loves the outdoors? Join onX! If you’re passionate about writing great software, love playing outside, and believe in protecting access to public lands – then join our team, where we empower millions of outdoor enthusiasts to explore the unknown! – Remote (within US timezones)
Mobile Full Stack Engineer @ Expensify – Join our passionate team of top-notch engineers to solve a real-world problem, and help people spend less time managing expenses and more time pursuing their real goals. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (Australia, United Kingdom, or United States in CA, MI, NY, or OR)
Lead Swift Engineer @ Vital – Vital is an API that empowers health companies to provide preventative healthcare using a combination of continuous monitoring & lab tests. We've just raised $3mil backed by Y Combinator and a number of other amazing investors! We're looking for Swift Engineer to lead our health-kit integrations. – Remote (within US, European, or Asia-Pacific timezones)
Let’s wrap this week up with a few stats from the last 500 issues. I’ll resume the usual “And finally…” service next week!
First, the obvious one. How many links? 6,989 “main” links, with an additional 5,249 in my comment or the summary text under each link. Surprisingly, in the first 100 issues, I only included 23 links in comments/summaries. In contrast, in the last 100 issues, there have been 2,560. 😱
How many words have I written? I’ll admit I was slightly disappointed when I counted the total across all issues, and it was a relatively meagre 428,582. I felt a little better when I saw the reading time as a solid 35 hours and 42 minutes. Who wants to read through from the start? You’ll finish before the end of Saturday! Enjoy! 😂
What about top domains? The top of the list is predictable, with github.com
taking the top spot with 703 links, followed by twitter.com
with 326, apple.com
with 265 and medium.com
with 262, and github.io
finishing the top 5 with 88. The list has a very long tail, though, with 65% of links being to domains I’ve never linked to before.
How about links in my comments and summaries? Again, predictable. Starting with 1,579 links to twitter.com
(that’s 30% of all links in summaries!), then github.com
with 466, apple.com
with 397, medium.com
with 72, youtube.com
with 62, and swift.org
coming in at 49.
But, I know what statistic you’ve all been anticipating most. Which emoji has been most popular over the 500 issues, and to answer that, I’ll sign off with…
😂👍🎉😀😬🚀😍😎
This week saw Apple announce a few more details about the in-person portion of this year’s WWDC.
Even though these words make no appearance on the page, I love how the URL to the page ends in “special-day”, and I’m sure it will be exactly that for those that attend. The circumstances mean that it will almost certainly be a unique event.
I won’t be applying for a ticket or travelling the 6,000 miles it’d take for me to set foot inside Apple Park, but I’m still glad there’s an in-person aspect to the conference this year. Meeting in-person can never be as equitable as an online-only conference. However, I still hope that thousands of developers gathering in California once a year becomes a regular part of the calendar again.
If you live a little closer to Cupertino or are willing to travel, Apple will allocate the (presumably free) tickets via a lottery on Monday or Tuesday. Apple will then distribute the tickets on Wednesday, so it’s all going to happen fast!
As for the mention of the “Developer Centre” everyone is talking about, I’m not even going to speculate. It could be anything from a temporary marquee next to the Apple Park rainbow to a secret underground lair where Apple executives cater to your every need as a developer. 😂 We’ll have to wait and see! I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the underground lair.
Oh, and the organisers over at WWDC Community event have announced they’ll again be hosting an online-only event and are looking for volunteers if you want to help out!
I didn’t think I’d ever get to see anything I had worked on in a WWDC session presentation. That’s a privilege even if you work inside Apple. It’s pretty much unheard of if you don’t.
And yet, this week, it happened. 🤯
It began when I started receiving messages and DMs from people saying, “Did you just see the mention of a package index on that slide?” during the Platforms State of the Union. I hadn’t even seen it, but a quick screenshot proved it! I did wonder for a few seconds whether we might be about to be Sherlocked, but something far more exciting was on the table.
It came in the “What’s new in Swift” session on Tuesday. 2m45s into the session, Nicole Jacque begins talking about Swift Packages, and suddenly, there’s a screenshot of the package index! Right there in a WWDC session! I couldn’t quite believe it.
I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who was involved in making this happen. I have to think this decision wasn’t taken lightly, and it’s so lovely to see that people inside Apple think what we’re working on is important enough to include alongside their own work. The Swift Package Index remains the most exciting part of my work every week, and I can’t wait to see where we take it over the next year.
So, that was my highlight of this week, but that was far from the only exciting thing that happened! As usual, I’m not going to try and cover every announcement or new API today. We have several months for that!
I hope you all had a great WWDC week, and enjoy the collection of links below, as always!
I don't remember when I first became aware of Steve Jobs. It happened gradually.
I had been aware of Apple since I used my school's single Mac Classic (yes, just one for the whole school) in 1990 when I was sixteen. The teachers kept it locked away in the cupboard, but I managed to find excuses to use it. I certainly didn't know much about the company's history at that age, though, and there was certainly no internet in any form I had access to back then if I had wanted to research it!
I think the first time I was properly aware of Steve was during one of the iPod announcements. I was fully immersed in a Microsoft focused part of my career at the time, and I remember comparing it to much cheaper (and so much worse) alternatives. I wasn't too impressed, but I wasn't paying proper attention.
I finally opened my eyes to Apple when I bought my first Mac in 2006. As soon as I focused on the company, it was instantly apparent what an incredible job Steve had done bringing it back from the brink of failure.
I was lucky enough to be in the same room as Steve a few times during WWDC keynotes. It was quite an experience, even as a member of the audience. People used to refer to it as his "reality distortion field", and I certainly felt it. He changed the way I thought about products and was instrumental in changing the path of my career. I've missed him over the last ten years and will continue to miss him for the next ten.
But, rather than reading the thoughts of someone who didn't know Steve, I'd recommend you spend some time this weekend reading this article in the WSJ from Jony Ive, one of his closest friends. It's beautiful.
iOS Developer (f/m/x) @ COBI.Bike GmbH – We offer you a great team, great e-bikes you can try out, a beautiful office, newest apple hardware so you can make the magic and happen and the chance to develop your skills further. We're amazing! Join us! – Frankfurt, Germany
Swift Engineer @ WillowTree – At WillowTree, Swift Engineers have the freedom to create products people love. You’ll collaborate with a cross-disciplinary team to build large-scale products for well-known brands. We look for team members who advocate for software engineering best practices and inspire their team to continuously learn and improve. – Charlottesville, VA
Senior iOS Developer @ Albus – Join us to work on modern apps (Swift and iOS 12 minimum) used by thousands of medical professionals everyday. Our management is composed of mobile experts whose product's vision takes the technical aspects in consideration. Your voice will be heard at every step (technical, UX, design...). Get the best of both worlds by working in a small modern team inside a stable and growing company. – Nantes, France
Lead Application Engineer @ LiveSurface – Build the next generation of LiveSurface products with a focus on SwiftUI, Combine and the newest Apple frameworks. LiveSurface is an industry leader in visualization and image creation tools for creatives. We blend clean UX, proprietary rendering technology and hand-curated content to provide realtime photorealistic visualization to our users. – Remote
Senior iOS Engineer @ Fi – Fi is reinventing the relationship between dogs and their humans by providing dogs more freedom and their owners peace of mind through the Fi Smart Dog Collar. We're working hard to push pet tech forward by building amazing hardware and software, all in a dog friendly office. Come join our veteran team that hails from Nest, Square, Google, MakerBot, FourSquare, and Canary. – New York, NY