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 secured an Epic MegaGrant. I hadn't heard of Epic's grant program before but it's usually for small teams building projects using Unreal Engine. I'm not surprised they are fans of AltStore, though, given their history with Apple. No matter what you think of Epic, it’s hard not to get excited when a project like AltStore secures a more stable future. A project born not of a desire to profit but to distribute apps¹ that Apple doesn't want on the App Store. I’m also happy to see Epic put their biggest properties on AltStore along with this announcement. It’s a huge boost for the project.

Epic is still going ahead with its own EU-basedapp store, which is apparently in review with Apple as you read this. I'm not very excited about that store, but it makes sense for them to build it.

Back to AltStore, though. I couldn’t be happier to see this happen², and I hope that the MegaGrant is not a one-time thing, but an ongoing agreement. I'd love to see AltStore thrive for many years because we need more projects like it.

¹ Yes, primarily one specific app, but the vision has expanded since then.

² I’ve still not come around to believing alternative app stores will be a net positive for the platform. However, what I think doesn’t make a blind bit of difference so I think I'll stop adding this disclaimer every time I write about the subject.

Dave Verwer  

Harnessing Mobile-Led Growth: The Case for Mobile App Performance

Discover why your company’s bottom line is closely related to your mobile app’s performance and how you can elevate your app’s user experience to capitalize on the rapidly growing mobile app market and achieve robust mobile-led growth. Learn more in this blog post.

instabug.com  

NFC & SE Platform for Secure Contactless Transactions in iOS 18.1

I don’t see Apple handing out this entitlement liberally, but I’m happy to see this will become possible once iOS 18.1 ships. What I’m surprised about is that the “double-click” of the side/home button is up for grabs with this feature. 👍

Default app settings. Users can choose any eligible app as their default contactless app which will enable the app to support Field-detect and Double-click features.

Double-click. The default contactless app automatically launches when the user double-clicks the side button (for Face ID devices) or the Home button (for Touch ID) and after user authentication (if the iPhone is locked).

apple.com  

Apple Entrepreneur Camp applications are now open

As with every year, Apple continues to run its entrepreneur camp program every year, but this year it’s back in person, which it hasn’t been since 2019. Applications are open for the next two weeks.

apple.com  

String Catalog

Today’s LLMs like ChatGPT are excellent at translation, so can we use them to translate our apps? Before you think “I bet I could write an app that does that!”, pause for a second and check out Bill Richards’ latest project, where he has done exactly that. It’s early days, so there may be a few bugs, but it’s a good idea and will probably give better results than Google Translate.

For disclosure, Bill sent me a login for the app so I could test it before linking to it.

stringcatalog.com  

Concurrency Step-by-Step: A Network Request

Matt “Concurrency” Massicotte is back with another post, but this time it’s not looking at a Swift Evolution proposal or making concurrency mistakes. No, this time he’s looking at one of the most common async tasks you might face: To load and decode an image from a URL. That should be a really short post then, shouldn’t it? 😬

massicotte.org  

Recursive enums in Swift

Could you build a filesystem with a Swift enum? Turns out you can, and Natalia Panferova shows us how as she demonstrates recursive enum cases. Now, the question of whether you should implement a filesystem with a Swift enum. I’m not going to express an opinion there! 😂

nilcoalescing.com  

An Initial Hands-On with SwiftCloud

The concept of a serverless online service is a tempting one, but the reality of some of today’s serverless services can be quite complex. In this post, Natan Rolnik introduces Andrew Barba’s new package, swift-cloud. It aims to simplify serverless development, and while it only supports AWS Lambda currently, it looks like a promising start.

swifttoolkit.dev  

Developer guide to Swift AWS Lambdas

On the same subject, it’s pure coincidence¹ that Pol Piella also wrote about AWS Lambda this week. He takes the approach of working directly with it, so you have both options!

¹ At least, I think it’s a coincidence!

polpiella.dev  

Mobile Developer (iOS) @ Planning Center – Our Mobile Team works on both iOS and Android. While focuses are leveraged, there is a healthy bit of collaboration in the execution of how things are released. – Remote (within US timezones) with some on-site work (United States in CA)

Senior iOS Developer @ komoot – You’ll take over full responsibility for our iOS app. Your work will touch all parts of the app and make outdoor adventures easily accessible to our users. You’ll develop diverse navigation, routing, social interaction, and content visualization features that will make your work challenging and fun. – Remote (within European timezones)

iOS Engineer @ Pika Earth – We're a high-growth, Sequoia backed climate tech company. iOS is our main user surface area, so you'll be responsible for many high-impact features that touch our core users. There are a ton of interesting technical problems, from offline mode to AR/VR modeling, and we have a world-class team. – On-site (United States in CA or NY) with some remote work (within US timezones)

Software Engineer for AI Training Data (Swift) @ G2i, Inc. – We are currently seeking Swift Developers for project-specific roles focused on RLHF. This role will play a key part in our reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) initiatives, contributing to cutting-edge projects. – Remote (within US, European, or Asia-Pacific timezones)

Two pallets of Playdates worth $400k went missing?!