Tag: Developers

Apple releases tvOS and HomePod software 16.3.1. This is purely bug fix release, nothing interesting is referenced in release notes.

It's already February... Well, we still have couple of interesting reads for you.

• Setup a 3D Chessboard With SwiftUI and RealityKit by Mark Lucking – nice intro into AR apps in modern era;
  
  
• Andrew Barba shares guide on Vercel, new solution allowing deployment of server-side Swift apps – Deploy server side Swift applications on Vercel;
  
  
• How to import Objective-C types as optionals or non-optionals into Swift by Natascha Fadeeva reminds developers on how to improve interoperability between Swift and Objective-C;
  
  
• Automatically run Swift code when your framework gets initialized by Marco Eidinger also finds good use of Objective-C in modern projects;
  
  
• John Sundell explains how to use scrollable views in SwiftUI – Observing the content offset of a SwiftUI ScrollView;
  
  
• Kasper Lahti covers styling in SwiftUI – Styling Components in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Xcode Simulator Directories Exploration by Antoine van der Lee is a great guide on iOS Simulator directory structure;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng provides hints on keeping widgets up to date – How to Fetch and Show Remote Data on a Widget?;
  
  
• Mastering Error Handling in SwiftUI: A Guide to Presenting Errors by Leonardo Maia Pugliese guides developers on ways to respond to errors in SwiftUI application;
  
  
• Did you ever wanted to print incoming JSON in nice formatted way – Jordan Morgan got you covered in Converting Data into a Formatted JSON Swift String;
  
  
• David Smith continues his design notes diary series – Reasons for a Staycation Greycation and DND 21: Byte Compression for Watch Connectivity;
  
  
• Peter Meinertzhagen provides great hints on monetization – What’s the Best Way to Monetize Kids Apps?;
  
  
• We all get and give feedbacks, good article on how to make those better – How to Write Impactful Peer Feedback by Michael Katz.

And, in case you missed it – couple of books are available for free, maybe you'll find something useful there. See you next week!

Mohammad Azam announced availability of his books in ePUB and PDF formats.

• UIKit with SwiftUI Recipes – ePUB, PDF
• Navigation API in SwiftUI – ePUB, PDF
• Surviving Coding Bootcamp – ePUB, PDF
• MVVM in SwiftUI – PDF and sources

More on author: AzamSharp.com

New year sets in. While we wait for Apple to announce WWDC23 dates and format there are several conferences which might be interesting for developers.

• Apprise Conf 2023
  When: March 23, 2023
  Where: Oslo Event Hub, Dronningens Gate 4, 0152 Oslo, Norway
  Prices: kr 990 (students), kr 2,400 (early bird), kr 3,000 (general admission)
  
  
• NY Swifty 2023
  When: April 18 – 19, 2023
  Where: The Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
  Prices: starting $499 (early bird)
  
  
• Deep Dish Swift 2023
  When: April 30 – May 2, 2023
  Where: Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, IL.
  Prices: starting $649 per person
  
  
• Swift Heroes 2023
  When: May 4 – 5, 2023
  Where: Museo dell’Automobile, Corso Unità d’Italia 40, Torino; also online
  Prices: €119 (+ 22% VAT) – in person, €29 (+ 22% VAT) – online
  
  
• plSwift 2023
  When: May 30 – 31, 2023
  Where: Copernicus Science Centre, Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie 20, 00-390 Warszawa, Poland
  Prices: €149 (early bird), €199 (general admission)
  
• Swift TO Conference 2023
  When: August 10 – 11, 2023
  Where: TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St W, Toronto, ON M5V 3X5, Canada
  Prices: CA$269.87 (early bird) to CA$528.23 (general admission)
  
  
• iOSDevUK 2023
  When: September 4 – 7, 2023
  Where: Aberystwyth University's main campus, Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3FL, United Kingdom
  Prices: £160 (early bird), £230 (general admission)

More conferences to be announced later this year. Some of these are accepting new speakers. Plan your attendance accordingly.

New video tech talks are published to Apple Developer portal. These videos cover Metal, SharePlay, App Intents, Apple Pay, enterprise apps and more.

Apple Developer: Level up your apps and games

Apple now no longer allows downgrade from iOS 16.3. This comes together with the news that previous iOS releases were subject to exploit allowing to get user's location if that permission was not given to the application.

Apple did not disclose details of this exploit.

Maps

Available for: iPhone 8 and later, iPad Pro (all models), iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 5th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later

Impact: An app may be able to bypass Privacy preferences

Description: A logic issue was addressed with improved state management.

CVE-2023-23503: an anonymous researcher

About the security content of iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3

Apple Support: About the security content of iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3

References:

• Apple Stops Signing iOS 16.2 Following iOS 16.3 Launch, Downgrading No Longer Possible
• Was a Popular Brazilian Food Delivery App Bypassing Apple’s Location Privacy Settings on iOS?
• Apple Maps privacy bug may have allowed apps to collect location data without permission
• Was this Brazilian major app bypassing Apple's location privacy on iOS?
• Bypassing iOS 16.2 Location Privacy

Weekend is coming with several great reads this time. Let's dive in!

• Point-Free Pointers finish their SwiftUI cycle – Modern SwiftUI: Parent-child communication, Modern SwiftUI: Identified arrays, Modern SwiftUI: State-driven navigation, Modern SwiftUI: Dependencies, Modern SwiftUI: Testing;
  
  
• Jaanus Kase covers aspects of iCloud encryption in CloudKit – What Advanced Data Protection for iCloud means for Tact and other apps that use CloudKit;
  
  
• David Smith is continuing his design series – DND 18: Creating Custom SF Symbols and DND 19: Designing for Smaller Dynamic Type Sizes;
  
  
• SwiftUI View's internals covered by Chris Eidhof – Variadic Views;
  
  
• Natalia Panferova covers ShareLink customizations in SwiftUI – Customize ShareLink appearance with view modifiers;
  
  
• Krzysztof Zabłocki continues his article on widget architecture – Widget Architecture - Part 2;
  
  
• A Less Evil NotificationCenter? by Jordan Morgan proposes an approach on better usage of NotificationCenter in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva provides good guide on keychain – Developer guide on keychain for iOS;
  
  
• How To Speed Up Swift By Ordering Conformances by Noah Martin explains how Swift protocol conformances impact app launch time;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues his series on charts – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Custom Marks.;
  
  
• Swift Package String Localization by Keith Harrison guides through details of providing localized resources in Swift packages;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese explains how to deal with nested ObservableObject's in SwiftUI – The Nested Observables Problem in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Iterating over web socket messages with async / await in Swift by Donny Wals guides through structured concurrency usage with sockets;
  
  
• Two great articles by Marco Eidinger: minimizing device backup size – Prevent your app's files from being included in iCloud Backup and money-saving advice for GitHub Actions – Save money when using GitHub Actions for iOS CI/CD;
  
  
• New Scanning and Text Capabilities with VisionKit by Warren Burton covers on-device image recognition tools in VisionKit framework;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee advices on how to simplify testing of push notifications – Testing push notifications on the iOS simulator;
  
  
• And finishing with two articles by Douglas Hill – NSPredicate: an old API with new surprises and Using JavaScript in a Swift app.

This is a lot for a weekend, so choose wisely. :)

OpenCore (previously OpenCore Legacy Patcher) tool allows running macOS on unsupported hardware by updating kernel to work with older hardware.

GitHub: OpenCore

Reference: ‘OpenCore’ tool that lets users run macOS Ventura on unsupported Macs is now available

Are we server yet? page launched with references to current uses of server-side Swift,list of tools and educational materials to get started.

Developers could contribute to this page with their projects or tools.

Website: Are we server yet? (GitHub)

Following the yesterday's updates to iOS and other platforms Apple now updates tvOS and HomePod software to 16.3.

Most notable feature would be enabling humidity and temperature sensors in HomePod mini.

HomePod software updates include: 

• Temperature and humidity sensing measures your indoor climate with HomePod (2nd generation) and HomePod mini
• Remastered ambient sounds are more immersive and can now be added to scenes, automations, and alarms in the Home app
• Find My on HomePod now enables you to ask Sir for the location of friends and family, if they have shared it with you
• Recurring Home automations can be set up using just your voice
• Siri confirmation tone will now play to indicate when smart home requests are completed for accessories that may not visibly show a change or are located in a different room
• Audio tuning optimizes spoken content such as podcasts for even greater clarity on HomePod (2nd generation) and HomePod (1st generation)
• Updated volume controls on HomePod (1st generation) give you more granular adjustments at lower volumes

References:

• HomePod software update 16.3 now rolling out, here’s everything new
• Apple Releases HomePod 16.3 Software With Humidity and Temperature Sensing, Find My Improvements, Audio Tuning, and More