iOS Dev Weekly - iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 469

War… huh. What is it good for? Maybe making changes to App Store guidelines and revenue models? 😅
 

iOS Dev Weekly

 
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ISSUE 469  August 14th 2020

 
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There’s no other way to describe what happened yesterday other than to say that Epic declared war on Apple. They pushed very specific buttons, with full knowledge of what would happen, and they carefully choreographed their video and lawsuit response for maximum impact.

I had planned to write about the App Store this week anyway, but last night’s shenanigans cemented it. I was going to write on this topic because of all the other high profile App Store related events recently. The antitrust investigation, the congressional hearing, Microsoft backing away from xCloud on iOS, and … the list goes on.

I’m not going to talk about any of those events though. Instead, I’m going to step back and give some thoughts on the fundamental problem which Apple has with the App Store guidelines and revenue model.

Back when Phil Schiller defended the “Hey.com” decision, he was widely criticised for his “have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years” line. He was right to face criticism for saying it too. That statement was the wrong place to say it, but the point he was trying to make was valid.

In my opinion, we should all be paying something for the value we derive from such a well trusted and easy to use App Store. It's the flat percentage based revenue model brings that brings so many problems though. Those issues so often end in awkward workarounds from companies trying to avoid the fee. That then leads to more rules from Apple trying to force their hand. It’s a mess. Worse, Apple still receives no revenue from the largest of companies who are (sometimes indirectly) making the most money from the App Store. Then, on the other end of the market, the smaller, developers who play by the letter of the rules effectively subsidise the big companies. It makes no sense.

I’m not going to attempt to determine how much Apple deserve to be able to take for running the App Store, but it’s certainly not nothing. What they created was revolutionary, and they deserve to earn money from it, not just cover their costs.

What’s clear to me is that what might have been a reasonable crack at a revenue model in 2008, does not work in 2020 and I think Apple need give both the guidelines and business model a thorough overhaul. However, what that overhaul might look like is far from clear to me. This is a more complex problem than you or I will ever have to deal with, and I do not envy the people responsible for it.

I wouldn’t hold your breath for any kind of changes quickly (even if it’s forced by legal action, changes take time) but I do hope that there’s a re-think in the works.

Dave Verwer

 
 

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  News  

 

Airport

An "App Store" for TestFlight? Airport itself is currently distributed via TestFlight, and what could possibly go wrong with that idea? 😅 When the inevitable happens, I suspect it might find a new home here. It's beautifully designed and helps with a challenging part of app development, getting early adopters (I'm not going to call them testers, as that's rare). Want more information? Here's Jordan Singer, the creator with more details. Good luck Jordan!

airport.community

 

XCSSET Malware Infects Xcode Projects

This is worth your attention. We have seen hacked versions of Xcode before, but have we ever seen malware that targets an Xcode project? I'm not sure we have. It embeds a shell script inside an xcassets file inside a hidden directory in your project. The full report is worth a read, as well as this thread from Mark Villacampa.

trendmicro.com

 
 

  Tools  

 

Hacking iOS Simulator with simctl and dynamic libraries

This post from Ahmed Sulajman might look at first glance like a look at the standard features of simctl, but quickly turns into an adventure with dynamic libraries and method swizzling with Objective-C as the starring characters. I'm not sure how useful this technique is, but it's a very interesting post.

curvedlayer.com

 
 

  Code  

 

Fetching objects from Core Data in a SwiftUI project

My money is still on Apple having some kind of persistence framework revamp in the works, but until then (if it even happens!) we still have Core Data. Here's Donny Wals with a technique for abstracting Core Data persistence code so it fits better with SwiftUI.

donnywals.com

 

Sharing layout information in SwiftUI

Using GeometryReader can feel a little awkward, but knowing about it might get you out of a layout scrape, or two as you build your SwiftUI screens. Let Federico Zanetello give you a tour of what it can do.

fivestars.blog

 

Introducing the farmers pattern

I hadn't heard of the farmers pattern before, and as Bram Huenaerts explains, you probably won't have either since it's something he made up! You should read about it though, there's a great piece of advice in here.

huenaerts.be

 

Force-Unwrapping in Swift is NOT a Bad Thing

I’m a big fan of crashing rather than coping with "this should be impossible" type situations in code, but my go-to has been to do the guard and preconditionFailure dance with a message rather than using a bang. After reading this piece from Wolf McNally however, I questioned whether it's really any better.

wolfmcnally.com

 
 

  Design  

 

The Step-by-Step Guide for Pairing Fonts in UI Design (with examples)

It's common knowledge that too many fonts in design can be a bad thing, but a well-chosen pair of fonts can be a powerful combination. Which fonts go well together though, don't just guess. Learn from Erik D. Kennedy instead.

learnui.design

 
 

  Jobs  

 

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  And finally...  

 

This was @always @going @to @happen. 😂

 
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iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 468

Saturday, August 8, 2020

NSProcess and package manifests. Is it time to think about dependencies more carefully? 😅 View on the web Archives ISSUE 468 August 7th 2020 Comment You've likely seen Kane Cheshire's post this

iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 467

Friday, July 31, 2020

“My new project is 100% written with …” View on the web Archives ISSUE 467 July 31st 2020 Comment “My new project is 100% written with …” I see this phrase everywhere in the iOS/Swift community. Most

iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 466

Friday, July 24, 2020

Did you see all the new things added in the beta 3 releases? 🚀 View on the web Archives ISSUE 466 July 24th 2020 Comment I usually write my comment for this newsletter on Wednesday or Thursday during

iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 465

Friday, July 17, 2020

Are you feeling the mid beta-cycle lull too? 👋 View on the web Archives ISSUE 465 July 17th 2020 Comment It's been quite a quiet week in iOS development, which always happens at around this point

iOS Dev Weekly - Issue 464

Friday, July 10, 2020

Is your app crashing today? You know what to do… 📦🗑👏 View on the web Archives ISSUE 464 July 10th 2020 Comment Every day is a great day to remove (or advocate for the removal of) the Facebook SDK from

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