Category: visionOS

First weekend of May brings us quite an interesting collection of good reads.

• Michael Tsai shares some findings on MarketplaceKit security and privacy aspects – Tracking Through MarketplaceKit;
  
  
• Two great takes from Natascha Fadeeva – Quick tip on adding child view controllers programmatically in UIKit reminds us on how to add child controllers and How to solve problems with bitwise operators in Swift on power of bit manipulation;
  
  
• Asking AI to Refactor Swift Code is a journey Jordan Morgan took to compare modern generative AI tools in code refactoring;
  
  
• Doug Gregor continues his saga on teaching C++ developers Swift – Swift for C++ Practitioners, Part 7: Closures;
  
  
• Donny Wals goes through defer operator in Swift and modern concurrency – What is defer in Swift? and covers privacy manifest file creation process – How to add a privacy manifest file to your app for required reason API usage?;
  
  
• SwiftUI Pie Charts by Keith Harrison guides through pie chart styling in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Jesse Squires talks about frameworks picked by Apple for mandatory privacy manifests – The curious case of Apple's third-party SDK list for privacy manifests;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov explains how to add inspector windows in SwiftUI – Inspectors in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Solve Missing API declaration using required reason (ITMS-91053) by Antoine van der Lee covers API usage declaration process;
  
  
• Pasquale Vittoriosi explains basics of UI tests with focus on accessibility – Testing your app's accessibility with UI Tests;
  
  
• Danijela Vrzan explains button styling approaches in SwiftUI – Configurable button with different states in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Several articles from Wade Tregaskis: string comparisons in Swift – Matching prefixes in Swift strings; performance aspects of Clock types in Swift – Swift’s native Clocks are very inefficient; and URLSession performance for byte streams – URLSession performance for reading a byte stream;
  
  
• Flora Damiano guides through visionOS and tvOS icon creation – Testing your App Icon with Parallax Previewer;
  
  
• Requesting user authorization for privacy-protected frameworks by Gianluca Orpello explains how to work with frameworks requiring user's authorization.

And that is it for today. Come back next week for more great articles.

Apple adds couple more resources for designers. New additions include templates for Apple payment elements, App Clips, iMessage, and other components.

Reference: Apple vastly expands Figma support with new set of design templates

Apple reports financial results for Q2 2024. Results actually exceeded analytics' expectations while still being below Q2 2023 numbers.

During the investor call Tim Cook also mentioned that Apple might have advantages over competition in generative AI solutions while not providing much of the details.

Tim Cook highlighted significant interest to Apple Vision Pro from enterprises with half of Fortune 100 companies purchased those.

Apple still considers China a strategic region and expects growth in long term.

Apple Newsroom: Apple reports second quarter results

References and further reading:

• Apple announces Q2 2024 earnings, slightly beating expectations with $90.75 billion revenue
• 2024 Q2 Apple Results: $90.8 billion revenue, Services record
• Apple Reports 2Q 2024 Results: $23.6B Profit on $90.8B Revenue
• Apple Reports Quarterly Revenue of $90.8 Billion for Q2 2024
• Apple CEO Tim Cook bullish on China, thinking long-term
• Tim Cook dismisses misguided DOJ lawsuit in the shadow of strong earnings
• Tim Cook on Generative AI: 'We Have Advantages That Will Differentiate Us'
• This is Tim: Complete transcript of Apple’s Q2 2024 analyst call
• Apple reversed its stock trajectory for the year in 30 minutes
• Apple's Q2 2024 Earnings Call Takeaways
• Apple Vision Pro a big hit in enterprise
• Apple charms investors with record $110B stock buyback, dividend hike
• Tim Cook says DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Apple is ‘misguided’
• Apple Q2 2024 Results
• Annotating Tim Cook’s Remarks on the Q2 Analyst Call
• Apple Q2 2024 earnings brought to life by Six Colors, with video too
• What did we learn from Tim Cook’s comments yesterday?

Apple advertises projects created by Swift Student Challenge winners. Projects include app helping elderly people, child stutter helper app and mountain biking app.

Apple Newsroom: Meet three Swift Student Challenge winners changing the future through coding

References:

• These are the best Swift Student Challenge apps this year
• Apple Introduces Three of the Distinguished Swift Student Challenge Winners

Apple now requires developers to submit privacy manifests and declare some API usage reasons, third-party binary SDKs should also have valid signatures.

Apple Developer:

• Reminder: Privacy requirement for app submissions starts May 1
• Describing use of required reason API
• Upcoming third-party SDK requirements

Apple publishes beta 4 for iOS/iPadOS 17.5, macOS Sonoma 14.5, watchOS 10.5, tvOS 17.5 and visionOS 1.2. No new Xcode beta is currently available.

iOS 17.5 introduces new 'Repair State' mode for Find My to keep track of the device during remote device repairs by Apple.

Release notes:

• iOS & iPadOS 17.5 Beta 4 Release Notes
• macOS Sonoma 14.5 Beta 4 Release Notes
• watchOS 10.5 Beta 4 Release Notes
• tvOS 17.5 Beta 4 Release Notes
• visionOS 1.2 Beta 4 Release Notes

References:

• iOS 17.5 introduces new ‘Repair State’ that keeps Find My on when sending an iPhone to Apple
• iOS 17.5 Includes 'Repair State' Option That Doesn't Require Turning Off Find My for Service

Apple sends emails to Vision Pro users to get insights on how device is used, what are general impressions, and current pain points.

Reference: Apple Asks Customers for Vision Pro Feedback

Outage with Apple ID service was triggering multiple password prompts for users in various countries.

In some cases this resulted in password reset.

As of now, issue seems to be resolved.

References:

• Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation
• Apple ID Accounts Logging Out Users and Requiring Password Reset
• Some users are randomly getting locked out of their Apple ID accounts
• Widespread Problem Has Locked Many Out of Their Apple IDs

Another round of great articles for Apple developers is here.

• Let's start with device management tips – How to Use Apple Managed Device Attestation to secure networks by Chip Loder;
  
  
• Core Data Reform: Achieving Elegant Concurrency Operations like SwiftData by Fatbobman is covering approach on how to make Core Data compatible with modern concurrency model in Swift;
  
  
• Natascha Fadeeva guides us through use of GraphQL in Getting started with Apollo iOS for GraphQL in Swift and GraphQL essentials for iOS development;
  
  
• Some scenarios for CloudKit queries based on CKReference fields by Jaanus Kase explains use of queries in CloudKit-enabled apps;
  
  
• Majid Jabrayilov explains layout tips in SwiftUI – Content margins in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Wade Tregaskis talks about his experience with multiple displays on Macs – Multiple displays on a Mac sucks;
  
  
• Privacy Manifests and Required Reason APIs on iOS by Nishant Desai covers upcoming requirement from Apple;
  
  
• Donny Wals shares multiple articles on Swift and concurrency – Dispatching to the Main thread with MainActor in Swift, What are lazy vars in Swift?, if case let in Swift explained and Deciding between a computed property and a function in Swift;
  
  
• Using @Environment in SwiftUI to link Swift Package dependencies by Antoine van der Lee helps mixing SwiftUI Environment and packages;
  
  
• Charlie Chapman explains errors in StoreKit – What is SKErrorDomain Error 0 and what can I do about it?;
  
  
• Tiago Gomes Pereira explain how to use maps in SwiftUI – Searching for points of interest in MapKit with SwiftUI and another take on displaying 360 images in visionOS – Creating an immersive experience with a 360-degree image in visionOS;
  
  
• How to Mirror Any View in SwiftUI? by Leonardo Maia Pugliese is a good example on how to add view effects in SwiftUI;
  
  
• Luca Palmese explains uses of ML – Applying sentiment analysis using the Natural Language framework.

And finishing up with great video by David Smith – An Inclusive Mindset.

This is it for today. Come back next time for more great topics!

Apple launches new series of sessions 'Made for Business' in participating Apple Stores. Sessions focus on use of Apple hardware in business environments focusing on small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Kicking off during National Small Business Week in the U.S., Today at Apple will offer six “Made for Business” sessions throughout May in Chicago, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., with ongoing programming in select stores around the world throughout the year. Led by small business owners with diverse and unique stories, the sessions will highlight how Apple products and services have powered their businesses’ success.

Apple Newsroom

Apple Newsroom: Apple launches “Made for Business” in select stores around the world