In less than 75 hours, we’ll know what Apple announced in this year’s WWDC keynote. 🚀

They say there’s no smoke without fire, and the billowing clouds of it rising above Cupertino mean some kind of VR/MR headset announcement seems inevitable. I’ll be shocked if the hardware is available for anything more than an on-stage demo, but let’s talk more about software. After all, isn’t that the most exciting bit?

I know the days before a potentially world-changing announcement aren’t the best time to encourage you all to keep your feet on the ground, but we have a perfect breadcrumb trail to follow when it comes to Apple AR software. ARKit has been with us for six years, which is plenty of time to know what it can do. If we’re about to see a headset-style device that supports third-party apps, expect the developer interface to be an evolution of ARKit and friends rather than something revolutionary.

Yes, a device that could potentially do real-time detection of various objects introduces fascinating UI challenges, but what’s more likely? An SDK that allows any app to watch any sensor from the background¹ and flood the wearer’s vision with unrestrained amounts of UI, or a model where Apple’s apps may be able to do some of those things while third-party apps get to run one at a time with significant UI limitations?

It’s also worth thinking about the possibility of it launching without being able to run non-Apple apps. Even though ARKit and related tech has been with us for a long time, something this different from a flat screen² may need a little time to settle before it can host an app platform. The obvious counterargument to that is whatever they announce is more VR focused, it will require a store to host the large amount of VR titles that will be relatively easy to port across to another headset.

Even though I’m trying to temper expectations here, and I should probably sign this as “The Grinch” rather than with my name, that doesn’t mean I’m not excited about whatever Apple have in store for us. I can’t wait to see it, use it, and maybe even develop an app for it!

Dave Verwer  

¹ The privacy implications of background sensor and vision monitoring are certainly serious enough to impact what third-party apps will be allowed to do. I’d also not expect to be able to freely place UI that could block people’s vision in any Mixed Reality mode.

² Meaning iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch as they all present any UI through a flat piece of glass.

A Layered Approach to Mobile App Security

Developers are being called on to reevaluate their mobile application security architecture, educate themselves on security best practices, and implement them throughout their dev lifecycle. Access the new report to discover the layered approach to mobile app security.

guardsquare.com  

Upcoming changes to the App Store receipt signing intermediate certificate

If you use StoreKit, check this carefully:

If your app verifies App Store transactions using the AppTransaction and Transaction APIs, or the verifyReceipt web service endpoint, no action is required.

If you have anything more complex than that, you’ll want to read everything in this announcement.

apple.com  

Text Filters in Kaleidoscope 4

Here’s Florian Albrecht talking about one of the new features in the recent release of Kaleidoscope 4. I’ll let him explain everything, but if you ever need to diff log files, this could turn a previously almost impossible task into something trivial.

For full disclosure, I know the authors of Kaleidoscope and received a complimentary license for the app.

kaleidoscope.app  

SwiftUI Notes Before WWDC 2023

Michael Tsai has done a fantastic job rounding up a huge selection of quite negative but valuable feedback on the SwiftUI features from last year’s release. Next week will be the 5th release of SwiftUI (!!) from Apple, and looking at the enormous improvements each year, alongside some of the frustrations highlighted in this round-up, reminds me what a colossal task replacing the entire UI layer across multiple platforms is.

mjtsai.com  

Using Upcoming Feature Flags

Just sneaking in on the official Swift blog before all of next week’s news is this post from James Dempsey with an in-depth look at Swift feature flags, which will become increasingly important as we move closer to Swift 6, which will have source-breaking changes.

Oh, and while I mention James, I linked to the James Dempsey and the Breakpoints live show last week, but there will also be an online live stream! I only wish it didn’t start at 3:30 am in my timezone! 😬

swift.org  

Network Path Monitoring

Do you ever need to show network connectivity status in your app now that you can configure URLSession to wait hours or even days before finally giving up with a network request? I agree with Keith Harrison that there is, especially for user-initiated network requests. Find out all about network path monitoring in his latest post.

useyourloaf.com  

Using SwiftUI’s compositing groups to unify semi-transparent shapes

This is a brilliant little tip from Matthaus Woolard.

nilcoalescing.com  

Pushing the limits of NSStatusItem

John Nastos got my attention with this opening line of his latest blog post:

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) make macOS great. Developers should know and follow them. But there are places where the HIG has fallen behind modern computing needs.

He gives a great example of when it’s OK to stretch what you do inside the menu bar and details of how they used NSStatusItem to get what they wanted.

remotion.com  

Senior iOS Developer @ komoot – You’ll team up with four world class iOS engineers and take over full responsibility for our iOS app. You’ll develop diverse features for navigation, routing, social interaction and content visualisation that will make your work challenging and fun. – Remote (within European timezones)

Swift Product Engineers @ The Browser Company – Fully remote, diverse team building an all-Swift web browser and bringing Swift to other operating systems. Series A, well-funded and a seasoned engineering team. We're building a beloved product by thinking differently about how we work and the future of the internet. – Remote (within US or European timezones)

Mac & iOS Software Engineer @ Flexibits Inc. – We make Fantastical and Cardhop, award-winning calendar and contacts apps for Mac and iOS. We were honored to win Apple's Mac App of the Year in 2020 and we're looking to make our apps even better! Our team is a 25 person, fully-remote company spread across the US and Europe. – Remote (within US or European timezones)

You all know what I will write here by now, so I'll just leave you this link. If your company is hiring, please click it! 😂

What a very cool feature, and an even better use of that feature! ✈️