Category: Apple

Apple soon to release iOS 16.4 and other platforms. Today Release Candidate is published. Xcode 14.3 RC is also available.

In addition to new platforms, Apple also publishes RC for iOS 15.7.4 including security fixes (no releases notes are available).

This update includes the following enhancements and bug fixes: 

- 21 new emoji including animals, hand gestures, and objects are now available in emoji keyboard 
- Notifications for web apps added to the Home Screen 
- Voice Isolation for cellular calls prioritizes your voice and blocks out ambient noise around you 
- Duplicates album in Photos expands support to detect duplicate photos and videos in an iCloud Shared Photo Library 
- VoiceOver support for maps in the Weather app 
- Accessibility setting to automatically dim video when flashes of light or strobe effects are detected 
- Fixes an issue where Ask to Buy requests from children may fail to appear on the parent’s device 
- Addresses issues where Matter-compatible thermostats could become unresponsive when paired to Apple Home 
- Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models

Apple

Also, corresponding RC firmware for Apple Studio Display is available.

Beta download: Operating Systems

Release notes:

• iOS & iPadOS 16.4 RC Release Notes
• macOS Ventura 13.3 RC Release Notes
• watchOS 9.4 RC Release Notes
• tvOS 16.4 RC Release Notes
• Xcode 14.3 RC Release Notes

References:

• Apple Seeds Release Candidate Versions of iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 to Developers
• Apple Seeds Studio Display 16.4 Firmware Release Candidate
• Here’s everything new for Apple Watch users with watchOS 9.4
• What’s new in iPadOS 16.4? Here are the full release notes
• iOS 16.4 Expands Duplicate Image Detection to iCloud Shared Photo Library
• iOS 16.4 Seemingly References New AirPods and AirPods Case
• iOS 16.4 Adds Voice Isolation for Cellular Phone Calls
• Xcode 14.3 RC 1

After couple of months of rumors and reports, Apple now appears to launch Apple Pay in South Korea reported by Twitter user @aaronp613.

As of now several cards are reported to working.

Currently, you can add Apple Pay-enabled Visa, MasterCard, and domestic-only credit and debit cards issued by the following card issuers in South Korea: Domestic-only cards can only be added in the card issuer’s app.

– Hyundai Card

Some card issuers do not support some card types. This list will also be updated when a card issuer is added. Please contact your card issuer for support for your card.

9to5Mac

References:

• Apple Pay appears to be live in South Korea ahead of iOS 16.4
• Apple Pay Launches in South Korea

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!

Apple now distributes app that tests various aspects of iPhone accessories. App is intended to help accessory developers to ensure that those accessories work properly with the iPhone and iPad.

App Store: Accessory Developer Assistant (unlisted)

Reference: Apple now distributing ‘Accessory Developer Assistant’ app through the App Store

Apple is now one step closer to releasing iOS 16.4 and other platforms. Beta 4 is available for iOS/iPadOS 16.4 , macOS 13.3, watchOS 9.4 and tvOS 16.4. Xcode 14.3 beta 4 is also published.

No significant features are announced in these beta versions.

Beta download: Operating Systems

Releases notes:

• iOS & iPadOS 16.4 Beta 4 Release Notes
• macOS Ventura 13.3 Beta 4 Release Notes
• watchOS 9.4 Beta 4 Release Notes
• tvOS 16.4 Beta 4 Release Notes
• Xcode 14.3 Beta 3 Release Notes

AppleVis published their annual Apple Vision Accessibility report.

Overall, platforms perform well on the report, however, macOS noticeably gets lower scores for VoiceOver and other accessibility features.

AppleVis: Apple Vision Accessibility: the AppleVis Report Card

Reference: 2022 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card

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.

Apple is continuously implementing pricing tier updates announced in December. Now these update are applicable to app prices, all in-app purchase types.

On May 9, 2023, pricing for existing apps and one‑time in‑app purchases will be updated across all 175 App Store storefronts to take advantage of new enhanced global pricing. Unless developers explicitly update their price tiers for all storefronts, updates will be applied automatically based on US storefront prices. Developers are encouraged to update prices themselves.

Apple Developer: App Store pricing upgrades have expanded to all purchase types

App Store Connect: App Store Connect API 2.3

Swift team announced availability of swift-certificates and swift-asn1 projects. These projects target operations with X509 certificates (which are commonly used in TSL connections) and ASN.1 data type definition language.

Swift ASN.1 provides routines for DER serialization and deserialization.

Swift Certificates provides routines for X509 parsing, chain building, validation and OCSP resolution.

GitHub:

• swift-certificates
• swift-asn1

Swift team: Introducing Swift Certificates and Swift ASN.1