Swift
View Controller Lifecycle Behaviors
Interesting post about the possibilities of reusable behaviors with the view controller lifecycle. As Bryan points out, this could help with things like analytics logging.
Diving Directly Into Swift With A Complex App
Instead of dipping his toes in Swift, Canis dove in head first with a fairly complex app, Ferrite Recording Studio. In this post, he summarizes what he learned, why he didn't regret it, and how he believes it saved him tons of time over an Objective-C equivalent.
Stupid Swift Tricks #4 - Writing A Big App In It by Canis at Wooji Juice
Design
An Excellent iOS 9.3 GUI For Sketch And Illustrator
It's getting competitive in the iOS GUI space. Here's an excellent iOS 9 GUI collection in both Sketch and Illustrator. Based on 9.3, Rusty claims this is the best GUI you will find. I'll let you be the judge, but I can say it's up there with the great ones from Design+Code and Facebook.
Marketing
Getting Attention Is All About The Story
Generally, the press is going to be more interested in the story of your app than the functionality. Curtis recommends using this knowledge to get attention and to give the press a 'why will the readers care' angle. I promise you that thinking to yourself 'why will the readers care' whenever you are writing any kind of copy will greatly improve your writing skills.
Kirk McElhearn, who writes for Macworld, followed this post up with a short post of his own you should also check out.
Do You Need More App Reviews?
Don't take the easy way and try to get reviews through a review community. The potential for problems is enormous, up to having your Apple account suspended. Instead, Gabriel lays out five great ways to get reviews. The first is my favorite and I implement a form of it in my apps. I also ask anyone who requests support to review my app, assuming they aren't too upset. Talking with them through support humanizes you and they will be more likely to follow through if you ask them for a 'nice' review.
How to get Reviews in the App Store in the Right Way by Gabriel Machuret
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Monetization
Making Freemium Work For Your App
Gurinder dives into the numbers of how you can make the freemium model work for your app. There's a reason that all the big games have endless content, ya know.
Do You Know The Churn?
Whether you are looking to sell, grow, or update your app, you need to understand the metrics behind it. Analytic tools such as Crashlytics can help you keep track of metrics like daily or monthly average users, but those numbers don't tell the whole story. This post will help you pull out the other numbers of importance.
10 Essential Mobile App Metrics (and How To Use Them) by Mary Kearl
Frameworks
Spotify's Persistent Cache Library
Spotify just released the library they use for persistent cache. If anyone would know about persistent cache, I would guess it would be Spotify.
"This is a library that allows people to cache NSData with time to live (TTL) values and semantics for disk management."
Career
Surviving As An Indie Developer
This article had a lot of traction in the indie development world this week. Rene Ritchie is a well respected and liked Mac journalist. His words carry weight. My tips for surviving in the App Store? First, you must keep your knowledge of trends and how apps are evolving up to date. Know what's going on. Second, keep your options open regarding how you earn income. Your apps will probably not be enough to sustain the income you need.
What no indie developer wants to hear about the App Store by Rene Ritchie
The Biggest Myths About App Development That Hold You Back
Don't let these myths hold back your career. I recently chatted with a Facebook recruiter. She told me that there was very little focus on traditional computer science during the interview process. I don't have a degree in computer science, but Facebook was interested enough in me to reach out. The point is that you don't have to have a degree to be a successful programmer. It helps, but it isn't a hard and fast requirement.
7 Myths of App Development (and The Elephant In The App Store) by Lawrence MacFadyen
Hi. Hope everyone has had a productive week. Some great tips today on getting reviews for your app and pitching your app to the press. Also an awesome story about jumping into Swift for the first time with a complex app. Don't forget to get involved with our Slack group for iOS developers. Almost 400 members now! Sign up here
On to the links! - @cdbeshore