It was Data Privacy Day last week, and Apple was all over it. The most significant part of the event was Tim Cook’s appearance at the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference. Tim doesn’t often speak publicly, which should tell you how important this is to Apple.

Last year saw the introduction of privacy “nutrition labels”, and all apps must now disclose their data collection practices so the App Store can show a (relatively) glanceable summary.

The Washington Post investigated how accurate these labels were, and the results were unsurprising, with plenty of apps are either deliberately, or accidentally getting this information wrong. Apple appears to be verifying some information, to some extent, but that’s difficult on the client-side, and impossible when data hits a server. Manual verification is potentially part of the solution, but it can never be the whole picture. Disclosure needs to be trust-based, but you can’t trust companies. What’s the solution? Heavy penalties, like the removal of developer accounts, is one option, but I hope that Apple has plans to ensure apps toe the line.

There will be much turbulence as Apple continues to make everyone (including end-users) care about privacy. The biggest shakeup will come from App Tracking Transparency, which has the potential to fundamentally affect companies whose business models are to sell your data.

If you’re a small or independent developer, it’s unlikely that this will have a significant impact on your business, but you’ll still want to stay on top of privacy with every third-party service you use. We’re going to hear a lot about it from Apple over the next few years.

Dave Verwer

Scaleway launches Apple silicon M1 as-a-Service, a first in Europe

Get the best macOS Big Sur experience running on the lightning-fast Mac mini M1 for €0.10/hour. Perfect for tackling complex macOS or iOS continuous integration and delivery for distributed development teams. Available now at Scaleway, the cloud that makes sense. Get started in minutes!

scaleway.com

App Store Review Guideline updates now available

Oh look, new App Store guidelines, and it should be no surprise to anyone that App Tracking Transparency becoming mandatory is by far the most significant change here.

Added: “You must receive explicit permission from users via the App Tracking Transparency APIs to track their activity. Learn more about tracking.”

Read the whole update though as there are plenty of changes.

apple.com

Xcode 12.5 Beta

I don’t link to Xcode release notes very often these days, but this one feels like a significant one. It’s also going to be the first version of Xcode to require Big Sur, so if you’ve not yet taken the plunge, this is your nudge in that direction. Also, animated GIF recording from the simulator, and I think this deserves a “finally!”

apple.com

Hive mind execution on Android

This is wild.

twitter.com

Pulse

This new tool and library from Alex Grebenyuk looks great. It’s a network monitor, but in a similar way to Proxyman with Atlantis, there’s no need to worry about proxies. View the logs either on-device in your app, or via a macOS app. 👍

There’s also an interesting business model here. If you want access right now, you'll need to sponsor his open-source work on GitHub, but once the number of sponsors reaches a certain level, the project becomes open-source and available to everyone.

kean.blog

What’s new in Swift 5.4?

The Xcode 12.5 beta comes along with a beta of Swift 5.4 too! It’s not quite async/await time yet, but that doesn’t mean there are no significant changes coming with this point release. As always, Paul Hudson has put together a blog post and playground with the low down.

hackingwithswift.com

A Simple, Smart Search Algorithm for iOS in Swift

Primitive strings comparison is rarely sufficient for searching in a real-world application, and moving to something like a full-text search implementation can sometimes give unexpected results. I enjoyed this article from Geoff Hackworth, where he talks about something in-between those two things.

medium.com

URLSession’s Delegate Queue Should Be the Main Queue

When you see an API ask for a queue, it's easy to think this should be a background queue and create one without thinking about it, but It's always worth giving things more consideration when it comes to asynchronous code. As always, this is good advice from Brent Simmons.

inessential.com

nil-null-mess in Objective-C and Swift

The best line in this post from Andy Ibanez is this:

If nil is the essence of nothingness itself, NSNull is a representation of nothingness.

If that doesn't make you immediately read this post, nothing will! 😂

andyibanez.com

Do you need to capture self?

Nick Lockwood with a great tip to potentially clean up your closures. Also, we should be able to edit tweets. 😂

twitter.com

Wrangling Time

When is a Date not a date? I enjoyed this article from Harshil Shah that should get you far enough into the problems of dealing with dates just enough to really scare you! 😂

harshil.net

A Combine Kickstart

If you enjoyed Daniel Steinberg's recent book on functional programming, this makes a great companion to it. It covers all the basics of Combine in a very readable style.

For full disclosure, I received a review copy of this book.

editorscut.com

iOS Software Engineer @ Grammarly – We’re looking for an experienced iOS Engineer to help us level up Grammarly on iOS. You will work in a team of iOS engineering professionals and partner closely with the Design team from the ideation stage to ultimately bring your ideas to life. – Kyiv Ukraine

Senior iOS Engineer @ Primer – Primer is an online community for homeschooling kids, where we host interest-based clubs. Our iOS app allows kids to have magical shared experiences around their interests with other kids in the clubs. As the second iOS engineer, you will have a lot of impact on the future of this product. – San Francisco CA

Senior iOS Software Engineer @ Doximity and iOS Software Engineer @ Doximity – Doximity, the medical network used by over 70% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (remote-friendly!). You'll get to be part of an amazing product team and work on an app that is constantly evolving. Use your skills (Swift, MVVM, FRP) to be an integral part of our newly launched telemedicine feature. Apply today! – Remote within the US

Interview questions are getting easier!

Don’t read the replies. I wish people could let something make them smile and then move on. 🙄