Issue 216

Comment

So did you get an Apple TV Developer Kit? Congratulations if you did! Go build some amazing stuff, quickly. 😀 Unfortunately I was amongst those who got the email with the subject line "Your Status for the Apple TV Developer Kit" 😢 rather than anything including "Congratulations!". Still, I've been exploring the SDK with the simulator and we don't have to wait too long until the real thing is here.

The iOS 9 release came right on time and it seems like despite some people running into submission problems, the App Store was largely ready with all the updates. No watchOS 2 yet but it's better that they delayed it if the bug was major. What's another week to wait?

Now it begins all over again. Our friends in Cupertino move on to iOS 10 and we try to cope with new operating systems on four(!) platforms! 😁

News

Everything But The Web

I come down on the same side as Daniel Jalkut on the issue of WebKit not being included in the tvOS SDK. Safari would be a pretty terrible experience on the TV (if you want to display a web page, AirPlay from your iPad where navigation is natural). However, there are plenty of places that WebKit would be useful outside of building a browser. Of course, if WebKit was included, people would just build browsers and defeat the point of not having Safari so I can see Apple's position as well. It's also worth reading Daniel Pasco's thoughts on the same subject.

Of course it could all change in the future, but don't hold your breath!

Native UIKit apps on Apple Watch

You can always depend on Steve Troughton-Smith and Adam Bell to push the limits of what's possible. Of course, you're not going to get any of this close to the App Store but it's fascinating to see what they've been able to do.

Tools

Bitcode submissions are making crash report symbolication impossible

I want to be up front here and say I haven't looked into this any further than these tweets and so it's really not clear right now whether this is intentional (and it really may not be) or whether it will affect TestFlight as well as 3rd party crash reporting tools (I think it must right?). However, it's worth being aware of this problem before you jump in with both feet on Bitcode. If you want to turn it off, there's details in this HockeyApp support article.

Automatically resolving pbxproj merge conflicts

Turns out there's a reason that pbxproj files are actually quite easy to merge as the vast majority of situations will be where multiple people have added files/resources rather than modified settings. So why not just let git know that and let it do the merge? However, don't forget to test it before you commit! 😬

Update: Kasper Weibel Nielsen-Refs sent me a quick message recommending mergepbx by Simon Wagner as a better way to do this!

Code

Mastering the tvOS Focus Engine

For the last few years we've been training ourselves to write apps that directly manipulate UI and content through touch. The TV changes that and now we have no cursor (which is a good thing!) but also no direct manipulation. Michael Bachand and Adam Michela dig into what this means and how to deal with the focus engine.

Watchdog

How often (and for how long) do you block the main thread? You don't know? Watchdog can help. Simply define your threshold for the amount of blocked time you want to detect and it will tell you each and every time it happens. Simple as that. 👮

How to Make Text in a UIVisualEffectView Readable on Any Background

Super simple, but very effective tip from Shannon Hughes for keeping text placed into a UIVisualEffectView legible.

How to add iOS 9’s Quick Actions

How easy is it to implement 3D touch quick actions? Turns out it's really easy! 🎉

Design

ICNS

I love little tools like this. Connect your Dropbox and instantly preview app icons right on your device. It's easy to see how they'll look against different backgrounds/wallpapers and they instantly update when you export again to Dropbox. Recommended.

Getting Started with Apple TV Human Interface Guidelines

So last week I sent you all to read the tvOS HIG but if you didn't, maybe this article by Phil Letourneau will inspire you to dig into it.

Business and Marketing

This is the worst Apple Watch ever

Great piece on the future of the Apple Watch by Charles Arthur. This is the very start of a new platform, and form factor so of course it's going to be limited (and a little disappointing). However, I really liked the comparison he makes with the iPod. Who knows if it's going to follow the same trend but it's far from doomed.

App Store Refunds

Hopefully this isn't something you need to worry too much about but it's a good move anyway, it should always have been this way.

Videos

Let's Play 'Refactor the Mega-Controller'

Andy Matuschak with a great talk where he refactors a terrible view controller, live in front of an audience. Of course he mainly focuses on splitting it up, reducing its responsibilities but also takes the opportunity to make it more Swifty at the same time. This is a really fun idea for a talk and was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an hour.

And finally...

Secret Robot

I have a feeling that this is more than just a slightly amusing easter egg in the Citymapper iOS 9 update and instead is an interesting experiment with the Spotlight recommendations algorithm.

Apple have said they'll recommend your app to people who don't have it installed when they use Spotlight search. They're monitoring the apps and keywords that people with your app installed interact with and recommending apps from there. My hunch is that this is an experiment to see what kind of traffic through a term it takes to start getting recommended. Of course, Apple will probably remove it from the index for these terms manually once they spot it but of course Citymapper will have the data by that point. 😀 (If you're reading this, I really hope my linking to it doesn't spoil your experiment!)

If it's not an experiment, and just an easter egg. I hope you have analytics on it so it's not too late to grab this data. Please then write about it!

I know the And Finally is supposed to be a short and sweet one but I wanted to write this and it didn't fit anywhere else. 😎

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Issue 216 September 18th 2015