Instead of writing about this, I’m going to take Holly Borla’s advice and write something positive.

When I first linked to Airport, I wished Jordan Singer good luck but was sure that Apple would find a way to stop it from existing. I thought they’d see it as an “alternative App Store” and remove it from TestFlight. I’m delighted to say that I was dead wrong, and it has thrived over the past year. If you’re not familiar with Airport, there’s a good overview here. It’s great to see it do well, and I commend Apple for leaving this harmless project alone.

You can download Airport itself via TestFlight, or if that’s at capacity, there’s also a web version created by Siddharth Sharma.

But I’m not writing about Airport again only to let you know it exists. I’m writing about it because of what I see surrounding it. Every time I see someone link to a TestFlight beta on Airport, I see it received by excitement and positivity.

Some of that optimism is due to pre-release apps not yet facing the unforgiving reality of the App Store, but it’s more than that. Airport is nurturing exactly the kind of community we should encourage.

So, let’s listen to Holly, and after sending a pleasant message to someone in your life, download a beta app from Airport and send a developer some positive feedback.

Note: Remember that positive feedback includes phrases like “I like how...” or “Great job with…”. 😂 Developers will always be grateful for suggestions and bug reports, but remember to keep that positivity channelled while you do it. I can be guilty of this, as we all can be, so it’s worth keeping in mind.

I picked RPGen from Lyzzi Brooks. I love D&D and have secretly always wanted to run a game, or at least a one-shot. However, I also know how bad I am at improvising. This app has a vast database of all kinds of names, items, places, and other objects, all available at the tap of a button. Great job, Lyzzi! In terms of potential future directions. I wonder what a “Story mode” would look like, where you could say, “I need three NPCs here, a city name, and three shops that the party might walk past, and be able to save all those into a list. Also, maybe I should try and find time to run that first one-shot? 🤔

Right. Wasn’t that better than 500 words debating the pros and cons of a tiny subset of apps being able to add a single link that may or may not eventually lead to a page where people can make a payment? Especially when we don’t even know the full details yet.

Dave Verwer

Using Instabug in a SwiftUI-based iOS app

This post by John Sundell talks about using Instabug with SwiftUI apps and shares a few tips to streamline the process and help you get more out of Instabug. Read it now.

instabug.com

Keeping WWDC videos and sample code current

Here's another advantage of not having on-stage presentations at WWDC. Daniel Steinberg noticed that Apple updated the code samples in some concurrency sessions to match the APIs as they progressed through beta.

I agree with Daniel's closing thoughts on this. Apple should be shouting about this from the rooftops. The biggest complaint about documentation-via-WWDC-videos is that they go out of date.

dimsumthinking.com

Additional banking information required

I considered linking this in last week's news but decided not to as it seemed too trivial. It appears that Apple had other plans, and a few bugs in the process have turned it into a newsworthy item. If you're having problems getting the information updated, this thread from Craig Hockenberry goes through some of the issues you might hit.

apple.com

Record the Simulator to a GIF

I was aware you could save videos from the Simulator, but I did not know you could change the format to GIF by right-clicking the thumbnail once it finishes recording! 🤯 Thanks to Ting Becker for the top tip!

twitter.com

Swift Package Collections

I talked about package collections in the Swift Package Index when they appeared in the first beta of Xcode 13 and Swift 5.5. However, I didn't explain how to create your own back then, which is where this article from Shaps Benkau comes in.

It's interesting to note that the article also covers signing package collections using the brand new "Swift Package Collection Certificate" that you're now able to create in your developer account.

benkau.com

Increment: Mobile

You may not have heard of Increment before. It's an occasional magazine from Stripe that covers one topic per edition, and this issue is focused entirely on mobile development. You'll want to check the whole issue out, but I'd say the highlights are this article on the history of smartphones from Poornima Apte and Peter Steinberger's article on declarative UIs. However, the standard is very high across the whole magazine. You'll spend an enjoyable hour with it.

increment.com

Creating Slick Color Palette APIs

What does the "Provides Namespace" option in an asset catalogue folder properties do? I didn't know either, so we're lucky that Joe Fabisevich is here to explain why you'd want to use it.

fabisevi.ch

Circular Gestures with the 2nd Gen Siri Remote

It's been a while since I saw anyone write about tvOS, but David Cordero breaks the silence this week with this post on capturing a circular gesture from the new Siri remote. 👏

dcordero.me

iOS Developer @ Doximity – Doximity, medical network used by over 80% of US clinicians, is hiring passionate iOS engineers (remote). You'll 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. – Remote (within US timezones)

iOS Lead @ mobile.dev – Mobile.dev is leading the charge on the shift-left in mobile engineering. We're an ambitious team looking for a world-class iOS engineer who is passionate about building novel tooling for mobile teams. Join us and help shape the future of iOS development! – Remote (Anywhere)

Mobile Full Stack Engineer @ Expensify – Join our passionate team of top-notch engineers to solve a real-world problem, and help people spend less time managing expenses and more time pursuing their real goals. Being part of the Expensify team means building the easiest, fastest, and most efficient expense-related platform. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (Australia, United Kingdom, or United States in CA, MI, NY, or OR)

Lead Engineer, Apple Platform @ Hudl – Be part of our mission to empower sports teams to make every moment count by joining one of our cross-functional product teams in the UK to create and drive strategy for our native Apple apps (i.e. Hudl Sportscode) used by elite teams around the world (e.g. Premier League, Bundesliga, NBA). – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)

Senior iOS Developer @ Shape Games – We deliver award winning sports betting products used all over the world. As a developer at Shape you can pride yourself with building products used by millions of people and have fun while doing it. – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (Denmark)

Software Engineer · iOS (all levels) @ Playground – Come join Playground on our mission to make intelligent products shapeable. We build foundational tools that allow anyone to customise data-driven experiences. You'll collaborate with a team of designers, engineers and data-scientists, on building the next generation of intelligent products. – Remote (Anywhere) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)

Senior iOS Developer @ Grailed – Grailed is one of the largest peer-to-peer clothing marketplaces. We use RxSwift, functional programming, and agile practices and we also get to interface directly with users to build and develop features for the app. We are committed to clean code, supporting work-life balance, and enjoying life! – Remote (within US timezones)

Senior iOS Engineer @ Circle – We're a cross-platform community product built for web and mobile, and we're looking for a Senior iOS Engineer to help take our iOS app to the next level. Our iOS team is small and lean, so you'll get a ton of responsibility in building critical features for our iOS app. – Remote (within US or European timezones)

Senior iOS Engineer @ Marshmallow – Marshmallow is building a world where insurance benefits everyone. We’re looking for iOS Engineers to join our mobile team at Marshmallow to help us rebuild insurance – for good! You'll have the opportunity to help shape the roadmap, impacting both what we build and how we build it 🚀 – Remote (within European timezones) with some on-site work (United Kingdom)

The re-launch of iOS Dev Jobs has been a great success so far, and if you're actively looking for a new challenge, you should go sign up to the mailing list or grab the apps.

But, I also need your company's open positions on the site. You can list any iOS or Swift related position for free, so there's no reason not to! Get started here.

Eng Mgr: Right, let's review that implementation plan!

Team:Well...

😱