A Grand Unification Theory of iOS Styling

June 11, 2016

If you've been on a team developing iOS apps before, you've probably been involved in a discussion or outright debate about how to handle styling, or the visual appearance of the app. Here, roughly, are the three sides of that debate:

1. We should style everything directly in storyboards / Interface Builder

It's . . .

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WWDC 2016 Wishlist #4: Universal Messaging Extension and APIs

June 05, 2016

Let me start off by saying this: it's 2016, we live in a time of software and service consolidations and unprecedented contextual awareness, and yet if I want to keep up with a friend or family member, I'm still having to do it in a dozen places: text messages, Slack, Twitter, e-mail (multiple accounts), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, . . .

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WWDC 2016 Wishlist #3 : More Useful Size Classes

June 01, 2016

The Current State of Size Classes

Apple introduced size classes in iOS 8, which provide a broad description of horizontal and vertical screen space. These broad descriptions currently only include "Regular" or "Compact" options. The great thing about size classes is that they allow developers to create different . . .

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Swift's "Final" Countdown

And the inevitable deprecation of inheritance-based polymorphism

December 22, 2015

There’s an interesting discussion happening currently regarding a proposal on the swift-evolution mailing list to make Class types final by default in Swift. The initial proposal references the occasional need for a reference type that is not intended to be subclassed as the primary motivation.

There are some developers who are . . .

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The New Apple TV Could Be More Than Just Another App Store

It Could Be a Whole New Paradigm For Apps

August 26, 2015

There's been a lot of talk and anticipation surrounding the revamped Apple TV that is rumored to be announced on September 9th (and which was earlier rumored to be announced back in June). Much of the excitement and focus has been around Siri / voice search, and the possibility for a game console-like platform for iOS apps. And yes, those . . .

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The Problems with MVVM on iOS

And some ideas for making it better

July 15, 2015

I love all the discussions I’ve been hearing about MVVM on iOS lately (that’s the “Model, View, View Model” design pattern for those who are unfamiliar). And I’ve now seen four different implementations of the pattern in working apps, one of which I have been involved with myself. But, despite the positive direction MVVM encourages, I’ve . . .

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WWDC 2015 Wishlist

June 05, 2015

I stopped being excited about Christmas at around the age of 17. I stopped wondering what Santa would bring and stopped having sleepless nights leading up to the day itself. This made me sad for many years because I felt I lost something when I no longer felt the same exhilaration and anticipation for something new. But then I became an iOS . . .

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