Comment Last week’s downtime on Curated set me thinking about this newsletter and about the fact it has been the same format for a very long time now. That’s no accident, of course. A collection of links to community-written posts along with news articles, an opinion piece from me, and a light-hearted link to finish is a format that has worked well for many years. Why fix what isn’t broken? My process of writing the newsletter has been the same for years, too, so much so that I turned that workflow into a product in 2014. I sold that product in 2016 and it’s been sold a couple more times since ..read more

Comment Stop! Don’t pack up your desk and welcome the weekend just yet. It’s Monday, not Friday. ? As you may have seen there was a hiccup with publishing last Friday’s issue where the software I use to publish it was completely broken for the day. ? Thankfully it’s back now, and I can keep my promise to publish today. 13 years and 7 weeks isn’t a bad streak for publishing every Friday, though, is it! ? -- The big Swift news from last week happened at the Server-Side Swift conference in the keynote session. Tony Parker and Ben Cohen announced swift-java, a Swift/Java interoperability library ..read more

Comment Happy New Device Day to those who are celebrating! I hope you’ll forgive me a shorter-than-usual comment section today. I’m not feeling very well at the moment and haven’t been able to put my usual level of effort into today’s newsletter. ? Hopefully I’ll feel better soon and normal service will resume next week. Please do enjoy the articles below, and I’ll be back before you know it! Dave Verwer Sponsored Link Join the FREE iOS Architect Crash Course If you're a mid/senior iOS developer looking to improve both your skills and salary level, join this free online crash course. It’s avai ..read more

Comment It’s go time for iOS 18, macOS 15, and all their friends! Your app updates that you slaved over throughout the summer are probably already pending release and it all kicks off on Monday! I've been running the betas recently, and the iPhone Mirroring feature confuses me. It works well when my phone is close by, but I accidentally left it downstairs in the kitchen a few days ago and attempted to use mirroring for a real task for the first time. Unfortunately, it failed to connect because my phone was too far away. ? Now, before you start thinking I live in a mansion and I was trying to c ..read more

Comment I don’t know how I missed Orta Therox announcing that CocoaPods is in maintenance mode a couple of weeks ago, but I did! Or, to be accurate, the post clarifies that CocoaPods has been in maintenance for a while now: Strictly speaking, we don’t plan on changing how we’re maintaining CocoaPods*. We’re just going to start being clear how CocoaPods has been maintained:* SwiftPM had a slow start. Apple announced it in 2015 but didn’t see significant usage until four years later when they shipped iOS and macOS support. The writing was on the wall for CocoaPods with support for those platfo ..read more

Comment If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know I rarely talk about rumours, but I’ll talk about one today. What makes it different? Unlike product leaks or rumours of developer changes, I likely won’t ever get to talk about this one if I wait. It’s about an internal change that will almost certainly never be announced publicly. If you haven’t seen the rumour already, it’s that Apple will create two App Store teams. One team will be responsible for the current App Store and the other will deal with the “alternative app distribution”. If this is true, I’ll be sad to see it happen. Once ..read more

Comment I can’t find it in the iOS Dev Weekly archive, but I’m sure that I was impressed when I first linked to AltStore, but that I was also sceptical that it wouldn't be with us for long. I thought Apple would either find a way to stop it from working or ask for it to be shut down. It will surprise none of you that my predictions were wrong. As far as I know, Apple didn’t seriously try to stop it, and it did much more than survive! As soon as third-party app stores were possible, it was one of the first to launch. Yesterday, AltStore’s future became even brighter as they announced they had s ..read more

Comment I’m sure you already read this week’s news that Apple’s profit from services is creeping up on its hardware profit. That’s mind-boggling, but it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. They’ve been working on this plan for years. What does “services revenue” mean in practice? It means subscriptions and part of that revenue comes from subscriptions attached to apps in the App Store. That set me thinking about pricing again. ? When the App Store launched, the only option was a one-time purchase or free. Prices started “high” and raced to the bottom. Then came in-app purchases in 2009, and sub ..read more

Comment Sometimes I have so much to write here I can’t decide which topic to comment on. Other times, like this week, I draw a blank all week. Couple that with my email software having major unplanned downtime for most of the day today, and it’s some kind of miracle that I’ve managed to get an issue published at all! There are plenty of links, though, so enjoy those and I’m sure I’ll feel inspired to write something more significant than this next week. ? Dave Verwer Sponsored Link Looking for an App Center Alternative? Bitrise Release Management supports App Store and Google Play releases. So ..read more

Comment In the last two weeks since my device arrived, I’ve had a blast going through apps in visionOS. Thanks to everyone who sent me a link to your app, too. I’m no expert yet, but I’ve spent some time thinking about the potential of visionOS as an app platform in the last couple of weeks. The first conclusion I’m ready to draw is that there are two types of apps: Apps that will make you put your headset on. Apps that are worth using if you already have the headset on. The App Store has plenty of apps that are good to use if you already have the headset on, and I’m quite sure this is due t ..read more