It’s been a few weeks since they were published, but I’ve had two videos on my mind recently, both covering the Vision Pro headset demos from WWDC. First, just a couple of days after the conference ended, Paul Hudson posted a video covering his demo experience. Then a week or so later, Malin Sundberg and Jordi Bruin documented their experiences.
Like you, I’ve seen several first impression videos from YouTubers and members of the mainstream press, but these two videos are different. Paul, Malin, and Jordi¹ had the same 30-minute demo but also attended another session the day after the keynote, staffed with engineers.
There are common points between these videos and those targeting consumers, but I love how these videos reveal details about the operating systems that most people wouldn’t find interesting. If you’ve not watched them already, I recommend watching both. Many of the details are also covered in visionOS session videos, but it’s important to hear unofficial perspectives.
It’s impossible for every developer to have the chance to try on a headset before next year’s release, and only a small subset of Apple platform developers will be able to buy one at release, whether that be due to the cost or the fact it won’t be available outside the US! 🇺🇸 I’m happy to see Apple give some developers this chance, though, where hardware previews would usually only be for the press. I don’t think this is a policy change or anything we’ll see for new iPhones, iPads, or Macs, but because this is an entirely new platform. Whatever the reason, I’m glad it happened and that they were allowed to document their experiences.
It’s also worth a quick reminder here that there are upcoming visionOS labs that become “Available in July”, so you might want to set yourself a daily reminder to visit that page if you want to join the group of lucky developers who get to try an app out on real hardware before 2024. 🤞
I wrote these words exactly one year ago:
I’m going to try for more “blank” days in the next 12 months. Wish me luck!
My phone dinged earlier this week with a reminder - “Did you have more ‘blank days’”? It took me a second to remember my promise to myself, but as soon as it clicked, I knew I didn’t need to load my GitHub contributions graph to see the answer.
I did not. 😬
I managed to reduce my contributions by a whopping 2%, but the number of “blank days” is about the same. Does this make me a failure? No, it simply makes me terrible at planning.
I set myself a goal, but I didn’t make a plan. I scheduled the reminder after writing Issue 521, but that’s all I did. Yes, I occasionally thought, “Oh, I should plan some time off” during the year, but then got back to the task at hand and … didn’t.
If I approached writing software that way, I’d be in a mess! Can you imagine starting a year-long project and scheduling the date for the first progress meeting to be three days before the deadline? Ridiculous.
How would I tackle it if it were a work project? I’d track my progress and make a plan.
The statutory minimum time off in the UK is 28 days, and there are 8 national holidays, too. That’s 36 days a year. It’s probably not wise to set my goal to be 100% of that from where I am now, so I’ll try for 50%. Pro-rating that for the remainder of this year means I must take 6 days off work before 2023. That seems achievable.
I’ve set monthly reminders to check in and plan time off, and I’m tracking the number of days I have with a widget in my Mac’s notification area. Now all I need is a JIRA account… 😂
Apologies that this issue is a little late! I spent most of this week at the iOS Dev UK conference, and my week got compressed.
I wouldn’t change anything about this week, though. Being back at an in-person conference for the first time since the pandemic began was wonderful. I will admit that It felt a little odd being around so many people again at first, but it was so good to see old friends and meet plenty of new ones in beautiful (if a little rainy) west Wales. 🏴
Unfortunately, that's not the only conference news this week, with the sad announcement that this year’s 360 iDev would be the last. I never managed to attend a 360 iDev event, but I know they were well-loved by many. It’s also a tragedy that it left the organisers with a huge bill to pay. 😞
It’s also unbelievable that 360 iDev was the last community-run Swift conference in North America. The community thrives in many ways, but in-person events like conferences and local meetups are struggling. Organising a conference was challenging before the pandemic started, and it’s even harder now.
That said, it’s tough to recommend that everyone attend a conference right now. I decided that attending iOS Dev UK was worth the risk of getting ill, but everyone feels differently, and only you can make that choice.
It would be a tragedy to lose more conferences, though. So, if you feel comfortable being around people, I’d encourage you to check out upcoming Apple-platform conferences and consider a trip before the end of this year. I know the organisers will thank you.
The next one I’ll be attending is the Server-Side Swift Conference in December. Maybe I’ll see you there?
At the start of last year, the rumours of an Apple AR/VR/MR headset were so prevalent that I opened the first issue of 2022 with a comment about them. I guessed that no announcements were imminent.
It’s not just about correctly predicting whether Apple will or won’t announce something, though. I just re-read what I wrote, and I believe my reasoning still makes sense today. I don’t think VR/MR is any more compelling for Apple today than it was 15 months ago, mainly because of how people will perceive whatever is possible with today’s technology.
But if the rumbling was deafening at the start of 2022, it’s overwhelming now, and the tech press had nowhere to go other than to start talking about rumours as if they were facts. 🙄 I’m not fond of this practice, but it looks increasingly likely that there will be an announcement at WWDC. Even Tim Cook has been talking freely about the possibilities, and I can’t think of anyone who speaks as carefully as he does.
Naturally, we’ll have to sit through hundreds of “Apple is doomed” articles if people perceive whatever Apple announces to be too expensive, heavy, ugly, awkward to wear, or limited in functionality, just as we did after the slightly rocky launch of the Apple Watch, but if there’s one thing about Apple, they are outstanding at not letting the reception of a first-generation product get in the way of their long-term plans.
If Apple announces a device five weeks from now, it will be the next step in the line that started with this announcement in 2017, and whatever might be imminent certainly isn’t the final destination. They’ll refine the message and the device, and I’m sure in five more years, we’ll have those sleek, beautifully designed spectacles on our faces.
Either that, or I’ll write this comment again in May 2024! 😂
Well, they did it!
This is a calibration moment. Take yourself back to a year ago, before all the rumours of specific hardware. How many of you expected Apple’s first entry in this product category to look like a pair of spectacles? Maybe with a thicker frame and stems or some other clever way to hide the hardware, but a device that more closely resembled glasses than a headset. That made sense to me, too, but only if Apple had a few more years to work on it because that kind of miniaturisation doesn’t exist today.
Of course, I don’t need to tell any of you what Apple showed us in the keynote and all the visionOS sessions released this week. It’s the VR/MR headset hardware, exactly as rumoured, but with a fully thought-out software story that screams, “AR is still our end goal!” 👓
That’s where the “calibration moment” I mentioned above comes in. Before we had eyes on the Vision Pro hardware, we had no idea how far Apple was along the path to something that does everything this headset does in the form factor of a pair of spectacles. Now we know exactly how far along they are.
So am I disappointed they unveiled this version? Absolutely not. This is a tremendously exciting announcement, and now they can iterate. Even better, we can watch that iteration in the open! We’ll see the devices shrink and the software take leaps and bounds. It’ll be amazing, and I can’t wait to see (and participate in) what they do over the next few years¹!
¹ Please note that I am being very vague about how long a “few years” may be. 😂
It’s been a while since I wrote anything practical here, but Dominik Hauser’s recent tip on filtering the Issue Navigator inspired me to share a technique for navigating Xcode that saves me time.
There’s a wealth of genuinely helpful functionality in navigator-pane filter bars, and one I use all the time is in the Project Navigator filter field’s “Show only files with source-control status” feature.
I don’t use Xcode for source control tasks, but that button is still useful. It filters the Project Navigator tree to contain only modified and uncommitted files, which, by definition, are often the files you’re working with. I find that filtered view combined with “Open Quickly…” to open new tabs with unmodified files to be a powerful combination of always having the file you need within reach. I find having lots of open editor tabs confusing, so I close them reasonably often, and the filtered Project Navigator is an excellent summary of contextually important files.
Then, once I make a commit, I commonly modify the same files I have open in tabs as I continue on my branch, returning them to a modified state and bringing them back to the filtered Project Navigator.
This works exceptionally well if you like committing smaller changesets, but even if you prefer working with larger commits, you’ll still be looking at a much smaller set of files than an unfiltered tree!
Anyway, that’s my practical tip for today! I hope it’s helpful. Next, I need to learn to summarise this in two pictures, like Dominik does!
What a week! Anyone would think this was WWDC week, not the week before which is usually pretty quiet.
My plans have changed a little over the last few weeks and in the end I am going to be in San Francisco for WWDC this year! In fact, as this email is being sent I'm on my way. I hope to meet plenty of you out there, as usual. Please do say hi if you see me!
I'm not going to make a list of what we may or may not see announced next week, but I am going to make one prediction which is outside of the obvious things like new versions of iOS, OS X/macOS and Xcode. I think there's a good chance that we'll see Apple announce a Swift Playgrounds app for iOS which will ship alongside 3.0 later this year. This won't be a full blown Xcode by any stretch of the imagination, but it will be a step towards it.
There's several good reasons that Apple might do this, and why it might be this year:
It may not happen, but it feels like the time might be about right. So, maybe!
Whatever happens, and whether you're in San Francisco for the main conference, AltConf or Layers or at home, enjoy WWDC! I can't wait.
You’ve almost certainly seen the rumour this week about a potential cross-platform AppKit replacement code named Marzipan. It all started with this article by Mark Gurman and while he's had great success with predictions the past, let's just keep in mind that everything that is being written on this subject this week is based on one article which is nothing more than a rumour.
That said, the rumour does fit well with my thoughts on the future of macOS. I’ve talked several times here about how I believe we’ll eventually see iOS in some form on a device with a form factor more like a traditional laptop/desktop, and if true, this is a step towards that potential future.
If the default development environment for tomorrow's macOS uses iOS compatible frameworks, then it opens the doors to an eventual retiring of macOS without having to abandon all of the amazing software on the platform. What happens to AppKit if we get to that point? It’s probably going to go the same way as Carbon, but don’t worry too much about that because if that happens (and it’s still a huge if) it’ll be many, many years away. Will any transition be a lot of work for macOS developers? Absolutely. Will it be worth it? I'm not sure that can be answered yet but I think there's a very bright future for Mac software that becomes possible in a future where this happens.
My main disappointment this week though has been the hugely negative reaction to this on Twitter. Most complaints focus on sustainability of macOS software with fears of customers being conditioned by universal iPhone/iPad apps to then have an expectation of getting the macOS app bundled in with their $0.99 purchase. Sustainability for small software businesses is a huge issue, but when we have been bemoaning the lack of attention that the Mac has been getting for so long, to immediately treat something like this (which, if true, shows an unbelievable commitment to macOS software) so negatively seems crazy. Are we ever happy?
I'm personally excited about the possibility of this rumour being true and for the future of the Mac if it is.
As usual, iOS Dev Weekly will be taking its annual break next week for the holidays. I hope you all also manage to take some time away from your computers to spend some time with friends and family and I'd like to thank you all for continuing to read what we publish here every week! Happy Holidays and here's to a great 2018! 🎅
After last week’s issue, I received a couple of emails asking if I had seen the App Store Award winners. I had seen it and had linked to it but deleted it as I was doing a final read-through before pressing send.
It’s always a good indicator that a link isn’t a good fit for the newsletter if I’m unhappy with what I write about it when I read the draft. What I had written for that link was, “Here’s something to aim for! Congratulations to all the winners.” Hardly Shakespeare 😂
What would have made it a must-link article would have been some information on why the various apps won in their categories. What made DAZN the best Apple TV app, LumaFusion the best iPad app, or CARR…. Actually, scratch that last one. CARROT won because the judging team feared the consequences if it didn’t! 😂
I checked a few of the apps out over the weekend and found something new as I did. Some had App Store stories, and they started with phrases like:
Toca Life World is our 2021 iPhone App of the Year because…
and
EatOkra is one of our 2021 Trend of the Year winners because…
These stories are not easy to find, though. You need to scroll down, past the screenshots and description, and past the What’s New and privacy nutrition cards. Don’t stop when you get to platform compatibility either, or when you get to whether it supports Family Sharing or Game Center. Only after all that scrolling will you see the “Featured In” section where these wonderful articles are. 🤷♂️
If you’re interested in learning more about why these apps won, you should read the App Awards stories for Toca Life World, LumaFusion, MARVEL Future Revolution, Space Marshals 3, Fantasian, Among Us!, Canva, Peanut, Bumble, and EatOkra. They won’t tell you how to be next year’s App Award winner, but they do include pointers in the right direction and plenty of inspiration.
I don’t know why DAZN, CARROT Weather, Myst, Craft, and Wild Rift didn’t get stories, but they didn’t! 🤷♂️
UPDATE: Turns out all of the apps did get a story, it’s just that some App Store pages do link to the App Awards story, and some don’t. 😬 So, complete the set with the stories from DAZN, CARROT Weather, Myst, Craft, and Wild Rift.
Oh, and congratulations to all the winners, and thanks for giving us all something to aim for! 😍
iOS Developer (m/w/d) @ QuickBird Studios – Based in Munich, you would work on health & medical apps having a direct impact on the lives of millions of patients. At the same time, you'd work in a team that highly values great engineering: check out our GitHub page or Mobile Dev Blog with more than 130k readers to feel a bit of the vibe :-) – On-site (Germany) with some remote work (Anywhere)
iOS Engineer @ sengaro GmbH – We offer an exciting position in the heart of the Alps (Innsbruck) with technical responsibility and conceptual refinements of our long-term products. They are used in the medical field by paramedics and doctors to help saving lives every day. Become part of it and support people in emergencies! – On-site (Austria) with some remote work (within European timezones)
Mobile Software Engineer @ PrayerMate – PrayerMate helps 30,000 people each month be more consistent in their prayer lives. Join us to use your coding skills to make a difference for eternity. We're particularly looking for a software engineer with experience with Core Data and Firebase Real-Time Database and/or Firestore. – Remote (Anywhere)
iOS Engineer @ Scandit – You will play a critical role in making our core computer vision technology available on the iOS platform. You will be in charge of our App Store apps as well as our SDK, helping to create engaging user experiences around barcode and object recognition scanning with AR technologies. – Remote (within European timezones)
iOS Developer @ WillowTree Digital – WillowTree is North America's largest privately-held digital product agency. We partner with many of the world's most iconic brands to develop elegant, highly-functional mobile & web applications used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. We offer remote & hybrid-flexible & incredible culture – Remote (within US timezones) with some on-site work (United States in NC, OH, or VA)
iOS Engineer @ Bending Spoons – We leverage advanced native iOS technologies and break new ground with our own powerful libraries that make architecting and developing the highest-quality iOS apps as smooth and efficient as it gets. We’re looking for passionate iOS engineers (mobile+platform) to bring our apps to the next level. – Remote (within European timezones) or on-site (Italy)