News
How Apple plans to make iOS 14 more stable on release
You could argue that iOS 13 wasn't ready for primetime on its release. Things have stabilized now, and it appears Apple is wanting to make some changes in how they test going forward. What can we learn from this for our own development? I think the best takeaway is not to cram too much into each release. Add a feature or two, fix some bugs, release, and go from there.
testers would go days without a livable build, so they wouldn’t really have a handle on what’s working and not working
Inside Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut by Mark Gurman
There's a new dev app from Apple
Apple has released a new developer app. What was formally the WWDC app is now called the Apple Developer app. You can keep up to date with the latest dev news, see WWDC resources, and even enroll in the dev program directly from the app.
Introducing the Apple Developer App from Apple
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Swift
A Swift cheat sheet you'll want to print off
Check out this 4-page cheat sheet for Swift 5.1. It's a really handy pdf to print off as you get used to new syntax.
Off to the Data Races
If you have some bugs that are difficult to track down, this could be the tool for you. Antoine shows us how he uses TSan to examine Data Races. These happen when the same memory is accessed from different threads with at least one thread writing to the memory.
The Thread Sanitizer, also known as TSan, is an LLVM based tool to audit threading issues in your Swift and C language written code
Thread Sanitizer explained: Data Races in Swift by Antoine van der Lee
How To Build UI and Transitions Programmatically Without SwiftUI
With storyboards seemingly on the way out, you may be torn between waiting for SwiftUI to mature and sticking with them. Another option is to build your UI and transitions programmatically without SwiftUI. Plenty of devs do this, especially those on teams, and Yalcin is here to show you how to switch over.
How To Build UI and Transitions Programmatically Without SwiftUI by Yalcin Ozdemir
Design
What to tell a designer about dark mode
Have you ever had a designer give you something that is difficult to implement in code? It can be a lose/lose situation. Try as you might, it could be nearly impossible to match up with what the designer created and you know they are going to want it to look exactly like what they designed. Dark mode is another layer on this problem and this post takes a look at how to help designers understand how dark mode works, lessening the potential of difficult to implement designs.
What a Designer Need to Know about iOS Dark Mode When Working with a Developer by Lee Kah Seng
Career
When you get locked out of your dev account
This isn't a fun story to read. My primary income is from selling books on Amazon. Amazon is notorious for suspending a seller, not being entirely clear why they are suspending them, and being unresponsive or unhelpful as the seller scrambles to figure out what happened. It's maddening for sellers to be suspended. I bring this up because I've never had an experience with Apple like that and it surprised me to see a developer having such a difficult time. I sure hope Apple isn't getting more like Amazon! Hard to say what's going on here on Apple's end, but let's hope Guilherme gets some answers.
Apple has locked me out of my developer account by Guilherme Rambo
Beginners
Nav bar shouldn't be this hard...
I've found the Navigation Bar to be pretty finicky. Between transparency and figuring out what you're doing wrong that's causing some views to look different than others can be maddening, especially as you're starting out. In this post, Dmitrii gives us the basics of customizing the nav bar, how to use UIAppearance, and just generally how to try to navigate all the pitfalls.
Welcome! I hope everyone's had a good week. I've been working hard to get business stuff in order for the Thanksgiving holiday and am looking forward to some time off. iOS news tends to slow down quite a bit in November and December and I am taking two weeks off for Thanksgiving this year. I will be back on the 12th of December. Thanks for reading and see ya soon. On to the links!
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