It’s thrilling for any app developer when Apple shines their light your way. It’s great to find something you worked on in an editorial list, or even better if your app is lucky enough to be picked as “App of the Day”. 😍 But I’d imagine nothing compares to winning an Apple Design Award or being picked as an App Store Award winner, though, and this week, Apple shined its light brightly on 15 winners across apps, games, and projects with cultural impact.

I always like to try a selection of the apps that win these awards. Not only are they usually worthwhile and well-made apps, but if you’ve even half an eye on one day being considered to win one, it’s a great idea to look at what Apple values when picking winners.

Look at all this year’s winning apps, and you’ll find clean and uncluttered designs primarily using standard UI. It’s always a good idea to integrate new operating system features or this year’s hot new device hardware feature if it makes sense, but look specifically at the UI of AllTrails, Photomator, SmartGym, and Too Good To Go. They are all well-designed, of course, but look at how simple and “standard” their UI is. Each of them fits perfectly into their platform. That’s far from Apple’s only criteria for these awards, but it’s something that I see happen every year.

That’s not to say that the apps that move further away from “standard” platform UI are being (or should be) punished for it. There are many good reasons to do that, especially with apps like Proloquo, where familiarity with a different set of standard icons and concepts is far more critical. Either way, UI “fit” is fundamental.

Anyway, congratulations to all the finalists and, of course, the winners!

I think it’s likely that we’ll see these awards expand to another platform next year. Will your app be the first App Store Award winner on visionOS?

Dave Verwer  

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testim.io  

Apple’s use of languages and technologies in macOS Sonoma

It has only been a few weeks since Alexandre Colucci covered Apple’s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 17, and here he is again with the same stats from Sonoma. It’s interesting to see Swift in the secure enclave and that Objective-C is going nowhere. It’s also notable that Mac Catalyst usage started to decrease this year, and SwiftUI is almost ready to swap places with it. Fascinating stuff.

timac.org  

Using on-demand resources

I had no idea that the “on-demand resources” that Toomas Vahter talks about in this article were a thing. If you want a reason to click through, this is how to store something like an API key more securely than just embedding it in your code. My mind has been blown! 🤯

augmentedcode.io  

Gestures in SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose

Are you curious about Jetpack Compose for Android? I liked the idea of this pair of articles from Chase Lewis. The one linked above implements some standard gestures in SwiftUI, and this article shows the same gestures implemented with Jetpack Compose. It’s not so scary when you look at them side-by-side. 👍

medium.com  

Animation in RealityKit

I enjoyed this post from Matteo Altobello and Tiago Gomes Pereira, where they look at both triggering integrated USDZ animations and animating the models in space using RealityKit. It’s one to pay attention to if you’re thinking about visionOS.

createwithswift.com  

How to import Swift macros without using SwiftPM

Can you use a Swift macro without a Swift package? If you’re not ready to move over to SwiftPM yet, Pol Piella has a way to get it working. I’m not completely convinced it’s worth the effort, but it was an interesting process!

polpiella.dev  

Frustration Using Apple News+

I wanted to love the magazines on Apple News+, but Sahand Nayebaziz is right that it’s hard to love. We’re four years in, and non-retina images and clunky navigation still prevail. This app should be a perfect iPad experience, but getting the publishers to make the necessary changes must seems to have failed.

sahandnayebaziz.org  

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How about making this year’s advent calendar a Swifty one? ❄️