Category: Education

Apple highlights Live Activities to developers. These questions include user experience, technical challenges, implementation details.

Apple Developer: 10 questions with the Live Activities team

It's middle of March, summer is closer and closer. We've got eleventh pack of great articles for this year.

• Developer guide on machine learning for iOS with Core ML by Natascha Fadeeva gives great start on how to add machine learning capabilities to your app;
  
  
• Interesting trick by Magnus Jensen – Blendmode trick: SwiftUI reverse mask;
  
  
• Keith Harrison continues his series of articles on various SwiftUI elements – Context Menus for Tables;
  
  
• Keep your CoreData store small by vacuuming by Marco Eidinger shows usually unseen side of keeping data in local database;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng talks about making widgets interactive – How to Handle Tap Gestures on Widgets?;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov shows how to use XCTest framework to do performance testing – Performance testing in Swift using the XCTest framework;
  
  
• SwiftUI Toolbar: Everything You Need to Know by Leonardo Maia Pugliese is a great guide on toolbars from SwiftUI perspective;
  
  
• Peter Meinertzhagen discusses importance of localization in the apps – Why localization has been so important for kids app, Pok Pok;
  
  
• Donny Wals goes through structured concurrency in Swift – The basics of structured concurrency in Swift explained.

And that is it for today. Have a great spring weekend!

It's rainy here in California (which is unusual...) and our weekend is perfect to spend some time reading technical articles. Let's go.

• Paul Hudson makes great review of Swift 5.8 new features – What's new in Swift 5.8;
  
  
• Pimp My DocC Documentation by Marco Eidinger is a nice review of DocC customizations available in Swift 5.8;
  
  
• Quick tip by Natascha Fadeeva on simplifying test for nil in tests – Quick tip on how to unit test Swift optionals with XCTUnwrap;
  
  
• SwiftUI Tables Quick Guide by Keith Harrison covers work with tables in SwiftUI by macOS;
  
  
• Equatable in Swift could be implemented manually or synthesized automatically, go into details with article by Antoine van der Lee – Equatable conformance in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• Slightly less technical article, but still very important for engineers – How to avoid burnout as a software engineer? by Krzysztof Zabłocki;
  
  
• SwiftUI app lifecycle does not come with launch storyboard, how to deal with that – How to add Launch Screen in SwiftUI by Sarun W.;
  
  
• Sarah Reichelt shares open source project for a real life – To-Day;
  
  
• Supporting multiple iOS versions is hard, Leonardo Maia Pugliese proves that – How to Change the Background Color of Navigation Bars in all iOS versions?;
  
  
• Non-nominal types workaround for domain modeling by Alejandro Martinez is great exploratory article on working with types in Swift.

And one more thing. Apple Treats podcast is back with new episode. Our guest is Natalia Panferova whose articles you've already read.

Spring is coming, and we're continuing our tradition of weekend reads. Let's see what we've got for this week.

• Matej Bukovinski goes through SDK development with Swift – Swift's Approach to SPI;
  
  
• Couple of great articles from David Smith – some trigonometry in Learning from my Mistakes, review of apps and tools for developers – Indispensable Tools and approach to accessibility – Accessibility: Try, then Listen;
  
  
• Automate debugging SwiftUI and UIKit with dataTile by Marin Todorov explains view debugging techniques with new dataTile tool;
  
  
• Sarun W. covers new approach to manage subscriptions – Allow users to manage In-App Subscription in SwiftUI;
  
  
• New passkeys are explained in Developer guide on passkeys for iOS by Natascha Fadeeva;
  
  
• John Sundell helps to distinguish views and view modifiers in SwiftUI – SwiftUI views versus modifiers;
  
  
• Interestingly, similar topic is covered in View Composition using ViewModifiers in SwiftUI by Antoine van der Lee;
  
  
• Improve code documentation with The visual reference guide for documenting your Swift code by Marco Eidinger;
  
  
• Good hint on error pattern matching by Ole Begemann – Pattern matching on error codes;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues series on charts in SwiftUI with accessibility – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Accessibility.;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng dives into configurable widgets in How to Create Configurable Widgets With Dynamic Options?;
  
  
• Setting Up Different Environments in SwiftUI: Command Line Arguments and Build Configurations by Leonardo Maia Pugliese explains work with various build and execution options in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Michael Tsai comments on new way to wire outlets – NSViewController.ViewLoading.

And that is it for today. Have some rest and get back next week.

Weekend is here, and so are good reads for Apple developers. Let's go!

• Keith Harrison shares great productivity tips on multi-cursor editing in Xcode – Xcode Multi-Cursor Editing;
  
  
• Article by Marco Eidinger explains some aspects of string case – Transforming the Case of Strings in Swift;
  
  
• Automate your CI/CD pipelines with fastlane – Quick guide on fastlane for iOS development by Natascha Fadeeva;
  
  
• Using User Defaults to store preferences in Swift by Antoine van der Lee goes into one of the persistence option in Swift;
  
  
• Okay, ChatGPT is everywhere, let's build an app for that – Creating a SwiftUI App to interact with the OpenAI ChatGPT API by Moritz Philip Recke;
  
  
• Lee Kah Seng covers widget configuration – How to Create Configurable Widgets With Static Options?;
  
  
• And Krzysztof Zabłocki continues his series on widgets too – Widget Architecture - Part 3;
  
  
• Swift Regex Tutorial: Getting Started by Ehab Yosry Amer goes through modern approach to regular expressions in Swift;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov continues his series on charts – Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Customizations.;
  
  
• DocC is getting more attention lately – How we migrated our SDK docs to DocC at RevenueCat by RevenueCat provides interesting insights on actual migration to it;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese covers animations in SwiftUI – The Art of Sequential Animations in SwiftUI: Tips, Tricks, and Examples;
  
  
• Styling in SwiftUI is covered in Composable Styles in SwiftUI by Kasper Lahti;
  
  
• One important hint by Christian Tietze if you're dealing with files in your apps – PSA: FileManager.trashItem (Maybe) Uses NSFileCoordinator Under the Hood Automatically, So You Shouldn't to Prevent Deadlocks;
  
  
• Reading keyboard modifiers on iPad in SwiftUI by Natalia Panferova helps to make your iPad app more keyboard-friendly.

And that is it for today. See you next week with another pack of great articles!

The White House just released a report on the state of mobile app ecosystems.
It is very developer-friendly conclusion and a call for more interoperability between platforms.

You can find it here

This weekend brings another digest of interesting articles for Apple developers.

• Starting with great Swift cheatsheet – Swift Cookbook by team Kodeco;
  
  
• Chris Eidhof shares two articles: on SwiftUI environment – SwiftUI Environment Tips and use of colors and styles in SwiftUI – Semantic Colors and Styles;
  
  
• Leonardo Maia Pugliese continues topic of SwiftUI components styling – A Beginner’s Guide to Styling Components in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Design notes from David Smith – DND 22: Calculating Offline Map Tiles and DND 23: Scaling UI Sizes with Dynamic Type;
  
  
• Applying Gestalt Principles in UI/UX App Design by Emanuele Agosta is a great read on UI/UX which will help all of us to improve our own "sense of beauty";
  
  
• Antoine van der Lee dives deep into Swift concurrency – Detached Tasks in Swift explained with code examples;
  
  
• Jailbreak and its detection is covered in iOS Jailbreak Detection in 2023 by Marco Eidinger;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva covers API version checks with How to use the @available attribute in Swift;
  
  
• Mastering charts in SwiftUI. Interactions. by Majid Jabrayilov guides developers on how to make charts interactive;
  
  
• iPad now has hover gestures, Natalia Panferova explains how to use those in Tracking hover location in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Keith Harrison covers iPad app toolbar customizations – iPad Customizable Toolbars.

And this is it for today. Have a great weekend and come back for the more interesting articles next week!

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.