Issue 174 – March 12th 2019

Business

Slopes Diaries #29: A Disappearing Trick

Over the weeks I’ve shared a number of articles from parrots in which he shares much of his journey on building his indie app Slopes into a sustainable part of his business. Curtis’ latest post is no less interesting, with an in-depth look at the effect that changing his apps IAP line-up has had on this seasons revenue. curtisherbert.com

App Preview Guide: Convince Users To Download Your App in 30 Seconds

The App Store is a crowded place and your app preview provides a 30-second chance for you to persuade potential users to download your app. With this in mind, how to do make the most of it? Michel Faulkner provides some great advice on how to craft your and structure your story, setup your production process and design an app preview that makes your app stand out from the crowd. savvyapps.com

Automatic App Landing Page

Need to stand up a website for your app but pushed for time? @ebaehr has created a useful iOS app landing page project based on Jekyll that lets you stand up a new site using GitHub pages in less than 5 minutes. Great time saver. github.com

Design

Mobbin

Looking for some design inspiration? This week has seen the launch of a new site called Mobbin which contains a hand-picked collection of the latest mobile design patterns from over 170 apps. One to add to the resource list for when inspiration is needed. mobbin.design

Swift

Capture Lists in Swift: What’s the Difference Between weak , strong , and unowned references?

When using closures, capture lists capture values from the environment for use within the body of the closure. In Swift, we have three different options for altering how Swift captures these values – weak , strong , and unowned but choosing between them (and avoiding unexpected retain cycles), can be tricky, especially when you’re first getting started. As ever, @twostraws is here to help though with a well-written article that walks you through the different options. hackingwithswift.com

Safely Supporting New Versions of Swift

With Swift 5 beta’s now available for download, many teams are turning their attention toward how to migrate their code bases to the new Swift version. Building on the experience of previous Swift upgrades, @alanzeino has also been thinking about it and lays out the different options. medium.com

Code

All Things Marzipan

If you’ve been following social media in recent months you’ll have no doubt come across some of the great work that @stroughtonsmith has been doing with Marzipan. This week Steve has been keeping himself busy with three lengthy posts about Marzipan and his tool Marzipanify – Bringing iOS Apps to macOS Using Marzipanify , Making Marzipan Apps Sing and Deeper Integration with Marzipan . They’re definitely worth reading if you’re interested in the idea of iOS apps on macOS and provide an interesting insight into how things work in their current state and also what might be possible if/when Marzipan arrives in the summer. highcaffeinecontent.com

Tools

Cake

Modules are a powerful feature in Swift enabling encapsulation, namespaces, general organisation, testability and more. The problem though is that, currently, organising the modules in your Swift code can be a bit of a pain. With this in mind, @mxcl has been hard at work. His latest tool Cake sits in your menu bar and, when integrated with your Xcode project, automatically generates your module hierarchy based on your directory structure. github.com

Swift Code Formatters

In last weeks issue I included a link to a pitch from @allevato and @dabrahams around adopting an official style guide and formatting tool for the Swift language. With the community, still buzzing about the proposal, @mattt reviews the current state of play with Swift formatters to see how they stack up before taking a look at the proposed swift-format tool to see how it stacks up in its current state. nshipster.com

Mac

Getting Started with macOS Programming

If you’re looking to break out from the iOS platform and expand your development skills to macOS, @gabtheodor and the team at @appcodamobile have this week kicked off a new series on getting started with macOS programming that’s worth keeping an eye on. Could be a good place to get started if your looking to get up the learning curve. appcoda.com

Videos

Table Row Swipe Hint Animation

Discoverability can sometimes be an issue in app designs that use table view swipe actions as often users simply don’t know those swipe actions are available. In this latest tutorial, @bigmtnstudio shows you how to solve that problem with some subtle swipe hint animations to help improve the user experience. youtube.com