Category: Platforms

Apple announces another series of sessions with App Store team from February 28 til April 13. Sessions include topics on app marketing, product pages, user acquisition, design, subscriptions, in-app events.

Apple to host sessions in multiple languages and different time zones to allow more users to participate.

Apple Developer: Meet with App Store experts

Apple Developer Events: Meet with App Store experts (schedule)

Apple provides information on security fixes of iOS 16.3.1. Having these issues in mind Apple now no longer supports downgrading to iOS 16.3 and previous releases.

Apple Support: About the security content of iOS 16.3.1 and iPadOS 16.3.1

References:

• Apple Stops Signing iOS 16.3 Following iOS 16.3.1 Launch, Downgrading No Longer Possible
• Apple reveals multiple new security exploits that were patched with iOS 16.3 updates

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!

Swift team announces that The Swift Programming Language is now published using Swift-DocC documentation compiler.

This is a significant milestone for the DocC documentation tool.

This is a major step for the book. It was first open-sourced in August 2022 and since then, we’ve merged over 50 pull requests as we converted to DocC. We also made enhancements to DocC based on what we learned working on the book, like adding control over automatic see-also sections and new on-page navigation. Other DocC content that guides developers through a linear narrative, like the documentation for large or complex packages, can also take advantage of these enhancements.

Swift team

DocC project is open-source and open for contribution.

GitHub: Swift-DocC

Swift Docs: The Swift Programming Language

Reference: “The Swift Programming Language” book now published with DocC

Apple publishes first beta for iOS/iPadOS 16.4, macOS Ventura 13.3, watchOS 9.4, tvOS 16.4. This time operating systems are accompanied by Xcode 14.3 beta.

Developers will now be able to enable developer beta from Software Update on iPhones and iPads.

Apart from that new beta versions add support for more emojis.

iOS 16.4 brings support for Web Push to Apple's mobile devices.

A web app that has been added to the Home Screen can request permission to receive push notifications as long as that request is in response to direct user interaction -- such as tapping on a 'subscribe' button provided by the web app. iOS or iPadOS will prompt the user to give the web app permission to send notifications. The user can then manage those permissions per web app in Notifications Settings -- just like any other app on iPhone and iPad.

WebKit team

Also this beta works on Matter support for Apple platforms including Apple TV.

Beta download: Operating Systems

Release notes:

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

WebKit Blog: Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS

Reference:

• iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 Betas Add Support for Web Push Notifications
• iOS 16.4 Beta Adds New Emoji Like Donkey, Jellyfish, Pink Heart, Hyacinth, Ginger, Goose, Shaking Face and More

Microsoft announces support for running Windows on Apple Silicon Macs with Parallels software.

Some limitations still apply – Microsoft does not support running Windows Subsystem for Android, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Sandbox and Virtualization-based Security when Windows 11 is running in virtualized environment.

Microsoft Support: Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1® and M2™ chips

Alludo: Parallels Desktop Now an Authorized Solution to Use With Windows 11 on Mac With Apple Silicon

Reference: Microsoft announces full support for virtualization of Windows on ARM through Parallels Desktop 18

Apple publishes iOS and iPadOS 16 adoption rates on Developer website.

According to Apple, iOS 16 is now installed on 81% of modern devices and 72% of all compatible devices. iOS 15 is installed on 15% and 20% respectively.

iPadOS 16 is running on 53% of modern devices and 50% overall. iPadOS 15 powers 39% modern and 37% of all compatible iPads.

These numbers show that projects targeting iPad still need to consider supporting previous major iPadOS releases.

Apple Developer Support: App Store

Reference: Apple reveals iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 usage stats for the first time

Recently reported issue when icons were not showing on Safari favorites section is addressed in recent release of macOS Big Sur 11.7.4.

No other changes are reported for this release.

Reference: Apple Releases macOS Big Sur 11.7.4 With Fix for Safari Favorite Icons

Point-Free Pointers started working Composable Architecture (opinionated approach on SwiftUI application development) quite a long time ago. And now they're preparing the first release of the architecture.

Library is free to use and distributed under MIT license.

GitHub: swift-composable-architecture (discussion)

Reference: Composable Architecture 1.0 Preview

Google has released the first developer preview of Android 14, and you can install it now on supported Pixel phones. Based on my experience, you can face some battery optimization issues, so I recommend waiting until the next beta if you use this phone daily.

Main features and app changes:

• Migrate foreground services to user-initiated data transfer jobs
• Foreground service types are required
• Schedule exact alarms are denied by default
• Context-registered broadcasts are queued while apps are cached
• Minimum installable target API level (For new Android it is 23)
• Non-linear font scaling to 200%