Tag: Swift

Swift team releases Swift 5.10 for Apple platforms, Linux and Windows.

Swift 5.10 is an important milestone before Swift 6 and focuses on data race safety with data isolation.

Swift Blog: Swift 5.10 Released

First day March brings us a lot of great reads.

• Bruno Rocha gives an overview of passkeys – What the hell are passkeys?;
  
  
• How to delay an animation in SwiftUI by Natascha Fadeeva guides on simple animation tricks in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov explores contents of Swift async algorithms package – Discovering Swift Async Algorithms package;
  
  
• Point-Free Pointers are announcing new feature in Composable Architecture – Sharing state in the Composable Architecture;
  
  
• A brief introduction to type memory layout in Swift by Wade Tregaskis will help you better understand how Swift stores your data, and another one – Beware of specifying isolation requirements for whole protocols covers specifics of using actors with protocols;
  
  
• Super-Resolution iPhone Panoramas for Vision Pro by David Smith explores details of panorama shots and provides a case for using high resolution panoramas;
  
  
  
• Noah Martin goes into internals of SwiftUI in How to use VariadicView, SwiftUI's private View API;
  
  
• Tiago Gomes Pereira explores visionOS UI – Changing a button shape in visionOS, and teaches us how to use Charts in SwiftUI – Using Swift Charts on a SwiftUI app;
  
  
• Working with dates and Codable in Swift by Donny Wals covers lack of standard in JSON encoding for dates;
  
  
• Ole Begemann uncovers one of the mysteries of Swift compiler with two concurrency models – How the Swift compiler knows that DispatchQueue.main implies @MainActor;
  
  
• Mastering Model3D View by Pasquale Vittoriosi goes through simple view for 3D objects in visionOS;
  
  
• WebKit team guides through a way of having familiar switch control in web app – An HTML Switch Control;
  
  
• Saagar Jha shares Making Friends with AttributeGraph with details on how DynamicProperty works in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Michael Tsai has a collection of good takes on couple of topics – Slow Swift Macro Compilation, Where View.task Gets Its Main-actor Isolation From.

And there is a good talk on optimization for size – SwiftConf 2023 – Bruno Rocha: Keeping Swift Apps Small: Why and How.

And now – that is it for today. Come back next Friday for more great articles.

Weekend is here and we've got a lot to go through this time.

• Vision Accessibility on Apple Vision Pro by zmknox is a great first-person guide on accessibility in Vision Pro;
  
  
• Janon Snell's Apple in 2023: The Six Colors report card is a long read on Apple platforms and services in 2023, it is accompanied by A graphical 2023 Report Card breakdown by Kieran Healy, Six Colors’ ‘Apple in 2023’ Report Card by Federico Viticci and 2023 Six Colors Apple Report Card by Michael Tsai;
  
  
• Natalia Panferova shares User-friendly descriptions and recovery suggestions for custom errors in Swift on how to make Swift errors ready to be shown to users;
  
  
• How to define one-to-many relationships in SwiftData by Natascha Fadeeva will help to start designing data models in code with SwiftData;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov explores new Swift collections in Discovering Swift Collections package;
  
  
• Alex Ozun covers type-safe coding practices in Fundamentals of type-driven code, Type-safe validation and Witness pattern — type-safe access control;
  
  
• Splitting Large Tasks is not a Mathematical Process by Christian Tietze is a good take on estimation process;
  
  
• Get the biometric authentication prompt for protected keychain items in the iOS simulator by Marco Eidinger is guiding on biometric authentication use for Keychain items;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee goes through Swift extension mechanism in Extensions in Swift: How and when to use them;
  
  
• Using Attachments in a RealityView by Pasquale Vittoriosi uncovers the way of using SwiftUI in RealityKit environment in visionOS;
  
  
• Danijela Vrzan explains typical uses of LabeledContent in SwiftUI – LabeledContent in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Using the New Observation Framework to Network Monitoring in SwiftUI by Leonardo Maia Pugliese shows use of Observation framework to monitor network reachability;
  
  
• Donny Wals shows how to use new upcoming Swift feature – typed throws – Designing APIs with typed throws in Swift;
  
  
• Using an image as the texture of a material on a 3D object by Tiago Gomes Pereira is exploring use of textures in RealityKit objects.

And with that, have a great weekend and come back next Friday with even more interesting reads!

Swift team announced that it joins Google Summer of Code 2024.

If you are eligible, and would like to contribute to Swift during this year’s GSoC, these are the steps to take:

1. Check out the existing project ideas page.
2. If a project excites you, proceed to the GSoC category on the Swift forums to discuss the project.
3. Once you are confident in your understanding of the project and how to approach it, write an official proposal and submit it to the GSoC website.

Swift Blog

Swift Blog: Swift joins Google Summer of Code 2024

Swift team announces MLX Swift – framework that brings MLX capabilities to Swift.

MLX has several important features for machine learning research that few if any existing Swift libraries support. These include:

• Native support for hardware acceleration. MLX can run compute intensive operations on the CPU or GPU.
• Automatic differentiation for training neural networks and the gradient-based machine learning models

The documentation contains a few more complete examples to help you get started with MLX Swift:

• Text generation with an LLM: A complete LLM text generation example with Mistral 7B. The example will generate text using any Mistral or Llama-style model including pre-quantized MLX models, many of which are available on Hugging Face.
• Training an MLP on MNIST: The example trains a simple multi-layer perceptron to classify MNIST digits using the MLX Swift neural network and optimizers packages.

Swift Blog

GitHub: mlx-swift

Swift Blog: On-device ML research with MLX and Swift

Reference: Apple Silicon gets massive AI training speed boost with this new project

Swift team goes through Summer of Code 2023 achievements. There were three streams:

• Swift Memcache Library
• Incremental Parsing in SwiftParser
• Key Path Inference and Diagnostic Improvements

Blog post goes through results on each of these streams and participants' impressions.

Google Summer of Code

Swift Blog: Swift Summer of Code 2023 Summary

Yet another great installment of good reads for Apple developers. With quite a lot of really interesting articles.

• Anton Begehr shares hints on how to test schema migrations in SwiftData – Testing SwiftData Migrations;
  
  
• Getting started with Apollo iOS for GraphQL with Swift by Natascha Fadeeva goes through basics of GraphQL in iOS apps;
  
  
• Keith Harrison covers use of system unified logging support in Xcode – Xcode Console and Unified Logging;
  
  
• Wade Tregaskis explores controversial design choice in macOS – Proactive Peek & Reveal on Edge Hover and covers various ways of hiding views in SwiftUI – Hiding SwiftUI views;
  
  
• Discovering Swift Algorithms package by Majid Jabrayilov is dedicated to Swift package for collection algorithms;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee provides great guide on making your images respecting Dynamic Type scaling – How to use @ScaledMetric in SwiftUI for Dynamic Type support;
  
  
• Giovanni Monaco goes through window management in visionOS – Configuring default window and volume size in visionOS;
  
  
• Understanding Once and For All SwiftUI Alignment Guides by Leonardo Maia Pugliese is a comprehensive review of layout techniques in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Christian Tietze shares his impressions on web site created by Chris Eidhof and the team –  SwiftUI Field Guide;
  
  
• How to determine where tasks and async functions run in Swift? by Donny Wals helps to navigate developers on actual threads running async functions;
  
  
• Chip Loder guides through String Catalogs in Xcode – How to use Xcode String catalogs to localize your app;
  
  
• How to use Media Source Extensions with AirPlay by WebKit team provides hints on how to implement efficient media streaming on the web;
  
  
• Michael Tsai shares several interesting tips and tricks in Swift – Swift Tricks;
  
  
• If you play with Quartz in macOS, you might want to check your settings as per Wade Tregaskis – Secret Sonoma design lead: Barbie;
  
  
• Garrett Barker creates quick overview on new Observation framework – Understanding Observation in Swift: Simplifying SwiftUI Development.

And that's it for this week. See you next Friday with another great pack of interesting articles!

Students now could apply for Swift Student Challenge at the dedicated site. Applications are open til February 25.

To be eligible for the Challenge, at the time you submit your app playground you must:

• Be 13 years of age or older in the United States, or the equivalent minimum age in the relevant jurisdiction (for example, 16 years of age in the European Union);*
• Be registered for free with Apple as an Apple developer or be a member of the Apple Developer Program; and
• Fulfill one of the following requirements:
  • Be enrolled in an accredited academic institution or official homeschool equivalent;
  • Be enrolled in a STEM organization’s educational curriculum;
  • Be enrolled in an Apple Developer Academy; or
  • Have graduated from high school or equivalent within the past 6 months and be awaiting acceptance or have received acceptance to an accredited academic institution.

You can receive a Swift Student Challenge award up to four times.

Apple Developer

Apple Developer: Apply for the Swift Student Challenge now through February 25

It's Friday and that means that we have some great reads for this weekend.

• Wade Tregaskis shares interesting article – SwiftUI drag & drop does not support file promises on SwiftUI implementation of drag and drop;
  
  
• Disabling Core Data CloudKit Logging by Keith Harrison is a great hint on clearing out your debug console;
  
  
• Mark Szymczyk shares guides on how to start macOS development with SwiftUI – How to Learn SwiftUI to Develop Mac Apps;
  
  
• Two interesting articles by Tiago Gomes Pereira – Extra Large Title text styles in visionOS on content sizing in visionOS and Create an animated transition with Matched Geometry Effect in SwiftUI on animations in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Donny Wals does great job comparing ObservableObject protocol with new @Observable macro – Comparing @Observable to ObservableObjects;
  
  
• What is @testable Annotation in Swift? by Leonardo Maia Pugliese is uncovering keyword simplifying test creation;
  
  
• Jordan Morgan goes through tricks with SwiftUI layout engine – Fun Alignment Guide Tricks;
  
  
• Emanuele Agosta goes through design considerations on visionOS user interface – Ensuring interface legibility and contrast in visionOS.

And while we're here... Our podcast Apple Treats is starting new season on February 15 at 10am PT. We'll talk on how to become better developer with some help from Apple.

See you on the podcast and then – next Friday for more good reads.

It's VP-day... Apple Vision Pro joins other Apple ecosystem devices. So, we'll need to bring our apps to a new platform. Let's see – what could we read over the weekend to improve our development skills.

• Chip Loder gives a quick tour on FileMerge tool in Xcode – How to use Xcode's FileMerge tool to compare files;
  
  
• Use cases for self, Self and Self.self in Swift by Natalia Panferova is a self-explanatory article;
  
  
• Keith Harrison provides great guide on App Intents in modern apps – Getting Started With App Intents;
  
  
• Mastering App Intents: Querying Made Easy by Ashli Rankin explores same topic with focus on data;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov goes through visionOS design language – visionOS ornaments in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Apple’s Vision of Our Digital Future by Matej Bukovinski is a good take on how we could adjust to new computing paradigms;
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee provides a good tool to make iOS Simulator screenshots with proper status bar – Status bar overrides in the iOS Simulator;
  
  
• Giovanni Monaco goes through debug techniques for visionOS – Debug for visionOS using Xcode simulator visualizations;
  
  
• Apple’s response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act: What app developers need to know by Charlie Chapman goes through interesting details of Apple's approach to DMA compliance;
  
  
• Wade Tregaskis shares couple of interesting articles on file management – Creating files safely in Mac apps, Bad API example: FileManager’s url(for:in:appropriateFor:create:);
  
  
• Automating SwiftUI Accessibility Audits in Xcode 15 by Leonardo Maia Pugliese will help you go through accessibility checks quicker;
  
  
• Francesco Perchiazzi talks about infinite canvas in Vision Pro – Embracing Spatial Computing: the Speculative Spatial Design Canvas.

And that is it for today. Let's play with Vision Pro and read great stuff. See you next week!