Xcode is our playground and let's meet at conferences this year.

Jeroen Leenarts: Hi, and welcome to episode 63 of my podcast app Force One. My name is Joe Linus and I've been developing software for a long time, also been developing iOS apps for nine years. The Dutch cocoa hats is also thing that I'm working on this episode, I'm going to talk about a number of things, Swift Playgrounds for building a text to speech app entirely on iPad. Swift computed properties can be tuples, work around Xcode, and continuous integration issues on Apple silica. Some thoughts on Xcode cloud, public key cryptography with crypto kit for iOS metric, it's getting started the future of server side Swift. And of course, daanish, Monday morning tweets, there will also be a number of conferences I'd like to mention. So that's a lot of stuff. So let's get started. Hi, and welcome to the new year in 2022. First week of the year, for me was a lot of catching up on email, and just getting the backlog of all the information out of the way. So it was already a busy week. On top of that I was able to do my first edits on Final Cut Pro on a conference talk that a colleague of mine is giving at IRS conf SG, that's the Singaporean based conference that's happening at the end of January. So that's around the 20th and 21st. link in the show notes. Check it out. It's an awesome conference. And I was very nice just doing something new, something I haven't done before editing a video. But also on top of that I had to set up a green screen learn about lighting and making sure that I was able to get a good result. And the feedback that I've been getting from people has been very positive. For instance, thank you for your I mentioned that it looks great. And yeah, it's just fun to just do something new again. And next to that my kids, they're finally allowed to go back to school again. Especially my youngest, Milan, he really loved that he's able to go to school again. And his first day, he really loved it. And he wasn't even tired at the end of the day. So that's going to be interesting how we will be at the end of the week. But it's good that he's able to go still in lockdown here and and Netherlands except for the primary schools. So there is not a lot of stuff that you can do here in in your spare time. But we as a family are getting through things. My wife and I both had our booster shots. Both had a bit of a bad day afterwards. But yeah, just doing our parts. And yeah, hopefully we're not end up in a situation that we had to get one of these shots like every half year things are progressing. My daughter starts in her new gymnastics group. She's really loving the new kids that she's able to train with still outside because Corona restrictions. But soon hopefully, she's able to start doing her gymnastics training inside. And she's having three trainings every week, I'm looking forward to so how she likes training so much every week. And if she's still enthusiastic about that a couple months from now, it's her choice. She wants to do it. And I'm only there to support her and what she likes to do and what she wants to develop herself into as a small kid. So yeah, things are looking up here a bit in the Netherlands. It's been a couple of nice days as well. Some rain, but also a lot of sunshine. It's getting a bit colder here. But yeah, hopefully by the time spring comes around, we can actually go to conferences, speaking about conferences, I will be attending iOS conf SG, that's a virtual conference, I will be attending swift heroes that's hopefully an in person conference in Italy. And but if things are allowed by the world circumstances, I will also be attending the 360 I def indenfor. This year, I'm still looking into a couple more conferences to go to, to maybe even speak at, but already three conferences scheduled. I think I'm getting started with my yearly goal of doing more conferences in the right way. So who knows if you know any conferences that are great to attend, especially if to focus on iOS development. Let me know I would love to mention them in my episodes are already am looking at conferences like swift leads, maybe do iOS. There's also at DEF CON happening sometime this year. I don't know yet. There's no not much detail yet. But yeah, who knows if that's a new conference, just let me know. And I'd love to shout out on them in my podcast. So back to the content of this week. The first article Swift Playgrounds for building a text to speech app entirely on iPad. In this article by Simon in WWDC 21, one of the announcements that caught his attention was the massive change. To Swift Playgrounds not only can you learn Swift use playgrounds, this new update allows developers to to create apps entirely on iPad and submit to the App Store directly. And recently, an Xcode update came through with this promise by Apple. Fifth playgrounds is a great way to learn to code right on the Mac or iPad, which Swift Playgrounds for that's now available, users will be able to create the visual design of an app with Swift UI. App Purchase can be opened and edited in Swift Playgrounds or in Xcode. And when they're ready, users can build a real app and submitted directly to the App Store right from their iPads. Simon of course has been waiting for Released for a couple of months and couple of weeks ago, Apple finally released Swift Playgrounds for allowing us to build both iPhone and iPad apps right on the iPads. If you already own a Mac, you may be wondering why it's such a huge step for Apple to bring iOS app development to iPads. Other than publishing online courses and ebooks. Simon also organizes various in person workshops for absolute beginners to experience iOS app development. And one of the most common questions that Simon gets is can I write code and develop apps on iPad? Because I don't have a Mac? In the past? His answer was obviously no. But now with version four, with the release of Swift Playgrounds, beginners can start learning swift and swift UI without a Mac. And that's in my book, that's actually something that's really huge because the iPad is such a generally available device, people can now really get a taste of software development with the things they already have available at home. So then the barrier of entry is again, lowered a little bit. And a low barrier of entry into software development is a great thing, because there's still plenty of room for more people to do software development. So yeah, I hope a lot of people are able to make a career switch in 2022. So in his article, Simon takes a look at Swift Playgrounds for and sees how you can develop a simple text to speech app on iPad. He goes through the steps through the motions on how you can create a project, how you write some goals, how you can do some user interface layout, and how we can implement a text to speech feature. Of course, you need to add some images as well to make things look right, and then running the app and showing how we can actually use it. So it's a quick overview of what Swift Playgrounds can do for you. If you just want to get a taste of if it's something you should investigate. Look at this article by Simon. The next article is by Chris Wu fifth computed properties can be tuples. Chris recently discovered that computer properties can be tuples. And Chris actually didn't notice I didn't notice it myself. So in this article, Chris describes what tuples in Swift actually are, and how you can use tuples in computed properties. It's it's a nice fun, have you short rate, lots of code, it actually works with Xcode autocomplete as well. And Chris thinks that use tuples, like everywhere is not the best thing that you can do. But it's nice to that you should be aware of in your tool chest of language features available in Swift. The next article are actually two articles are about Xcode and continuous integration, basically two flavors. The first one article that I wanted to mention is working around Xcode, and continuous integration issues on Apple silicone. This is an article by Mark Thompson, like probably a lot of people, we all jumped in and bought some new Apple, silicone and one Mac Minis to replace a couple of InterBase build servers. So the old servers running Jenkins with a pretty standard configuration to build and test your iOS apps. The initial transition was pretty straightforward, install homebrew Xcode and all the other tools that you need, copy the Jenkins configuration and all the plugins to the new machine and start working the initial setup and testing was pretty smooth. And performance was amazing compared to the Intel MX almost twice as fast. But then you run into the situation that some of your dependencies or some of the tools that you're running are compiled for Intel Macs. And since you're running an apple silicon based Mac, you cannot execute this binary anymore. So he kept these could not find module for targets errors. It found arm 64 arm 64 Apple iOS simulator, but not the apple silicon slides in the binary. So in his article, Mark describes what he needed to do to get their entire build from an Intel based workflow onto an apple silicon based workflow. There are some fixes and some changes that he needed to do here and there, some updated tools that he needed to run and even reuse reset for a few issues. So the conclusion is you can get your apple silicon based built environment to work with your existing builds. But probably you need to do some tweaking and some some fixing here and there. And it was good to read that Mark was able to get through all the issues and able to transfer the build to his new hardware. The second article on Xcode builds is by Oliver bins. Some thoughts on Xcode clouds, Apple has acquired buddybuild back in 2018. And there's been a lot of speculation on what Apple was planning to do with the tools and technology in the team that they acquired when they bought out buddy bills, where they're going to be providing automated builds infrastructure or tooling as a part of the offering to developers. And indeed, Apple released X cloud and it prompts an easy setup secure automated workflow for apps heavily integrated with Xcode and App Store Connect. But does it meet these promises in his article all of her attempts to build a pipeline similar to the one that he's been previously using before and to find out if the demo pipeline in the repository for his open source project London Underground witches can be transferred to Xcode clouds. So he goes over the steps that he needed to take to get his existing projects into expert clouds and he goes over all the different aspects of his built infrastructure that he was using without actually Got clouds and he was successful. He thinks that extra cloud is probably going to work great for you. If you're new to automation and you don't have a CI CD workflow setup for your project yet, depending on the pricing, Oliver is happy to continue using Xcode clouds for his standalone side projects. However, he thinks there's an exception for himself, it's not quite compelling enough to invest time in switching over from an existing pipeline to another profile, Oliver likes to see some additions to the pre installed software like swift lens and Fastlane in particular access to the code. In the post testing step and support for server side swift projects. He has a positive experience with Xcode clouds and is really looking for people who have similar or different experiences with Xcode clouds. So reach out to all of her, you can find him on Twitter at all of her underscore bins with double N and let them know what you think of Xcode clouds. The next article is by Natasha fidei. For public key cryptography with crypto kit for iOS, public key cryptography, also called asymmetric cryptography, that's a difficult word provides fundamental security in today's IT systems and network communications. When it comes to iOS applications. Apple already provides a built in TLS, encryption and digital signer for free when communicating over HTTPS. But when we work with sensitive data, you might want to add an extra level of security. In article by Natasha, she shows how you can use public key cryptography and how you can use it in your iOS applications. When you have increased security needs. She goes over the basics of what public private key cryptography is, what are some typical use case for it, what algorithms are available and how you can use these features. With the crypto kits API provided by Apple. It's a short read good stuff in there. So definitely have a read of Natasha's article. And I love it that somebody is actually writing about these crypto kits API's that are available in iOS, then there's an article by Adam rush metric, it's getting started. Historically, building an iOS application was always a simple task, a small lightweight application that simply displayed a list of items, or made very few network calls. Most of the processing happens server side and therefore making iOS applications very slim. Because of this reason, collecting metrics was always the last thought and never really considered that important. Or you'd grab the basics that go with a free SDK, things like Firebase, or Google Analytics, for example. But nowadays, iOS applications have become a lot more complex. And you want to have some insights on what your app is doing on the end users device. With this purpose. Apple has introduced metric it because Apple has always provided some level of reporting fear App Store connect, but the level of detail there was very small and even down in the API layer, it was difficult to grab that information. So in 2019, Apple announced metric it's a brand new framework written in Swift that provides a brand new API that would provide out of the box reporting links directly inside your Xcode organizer. But even more important, they provide all this raw data in JSON or dictionary format. So you can upload it direct to digest and display in real time, by default metric, it already provides some metrics on your application. But if you want to have more insightful metrics that are specific to your use case, metric, it also has an API that allows you to create customized metrics. So in his article, Adam goes over how you initialize metric it at the basic level, and then how you can use metric it to provide more insight in what's happening within your application. So these are called custom metrics. So in the article, you get an overview of what metric it is, what it can provide you and how you could use it. In your own use case. metric is great way to access existing vital bits of information so you can better support users and understand the smallest bits of detail so you can keep on improving in your app. So with metric it Apple has provided a nice addition to your tools to be able to get some more insight in what's happening in your app. The final article is by teba Bowditch, it's an article on the future of server side Swift. So what's going to happen with Swift on the server in 2022, distributed actors favor five some predictions and wishes in this article teper goes over the new improvements in Swift 5.5 and what it could mean for server side Swift. Also he looks a little bit ahead on favor five and what kind of changes paper five could be getting in the near future. Next to that he has some reflections on his open source project Feder CMS, which is a very nice typesafe modular CMS written entirely in Swift by teba himself that you should definitely check out and he thinks about what he can be doing to federal CMS with these new language features in 2022. I like that. Tabor is indicating that Federer CMS is approaching sort of like a feature complete state and I think it will be a very interesting project to to use in the future when you are creating surf sites swift content table also has some grand goals for server side swift on M one hardware in the future. So he really hopes that he is able to look back In 10 years from now, at this current period of time as the beginning of server side Swift, but who knows, we'll have to see, I also wanted to mention a couple of conferences. Those are iOS confetti happening at January 17 1820. And 21. It's Singapore conference. So most likely it, it can be a bit odd hours, but they will be providing recordings of terror talks. But definitely check out their schedule. There's an amazing lineup of speakers there. Yeah, so just check them out iOS count.sg, they still have tickets available. The next conference, I wanted to mention his swift heroes, they haven't officially announced the exact dates yet of the conference, but they are very active in creating their call for papers and selecting talks for their conference. So have a look at I think it's called Session eyes, because they have their coffee papers there, I will make sure to put a link in the show notes. And also check out Swift heroes.com. And finally, there's one conference I'm keeping an eye on as well. And that's 360 IDF that's going to be happening at the end of August in 2022. If world circumstances permit. And yeah, just looking forward to when they announced their CFP, when they start announcing speakers, but the tickets are already available. So definitely check it out. And then finally, there's one more thing I wanted to mention. And that's done is Monday morning tweets. Tony hopes everybody had a nice weekend catch you then that you're ready for the second week of 2022. He's asking what your plans are, are you learning something new, working on something cool shipping something, let him know. So, of course, first response is again by Leo GDL. He released an episode with Mufasa yc. That's the creator of the tasks app. He's working on Objective C blog posts, and he's creating an iPhone app for heart switch. He's working on Swift package for MailChimp, and he is editing an episode with Michael Tigges. Daniel Stonebrook is preparing the talk for iOS conf St. So he's working on his music app. He can build stations, but now he has to play them and he's updating his bread book. Michael tikkas is lining up his ducks. So he can reveal an indie app number two this week. And he spent a little bit of time creating different app icons and deciding on a particular one that he wants to use for his new app. Taka is picking up swift UI again after break trying to figure out something basic how to draw a grid of characters that the user can input on. Tivo is planning on finishing his book updates, that's practical server side Swift, you can get this book at the Swift def.gumroad.com and Christian costs. Rawski is doing a free coding class in elementary schools in his neighborhood, and lots. And there's like a ton of pictures of young kids getting their first exposure to software development with the help of Christian awesome work, dude. And Johan is telling us that he's reading about two virtualization frameworks on M one Max, how you can create virtual machines and such, and maybe afterwork, he'll get some time to get stuff up and running. So that would be very cool. If you can find the time. Denise Napolean is trying her best with Affinity Designer factor and picks graphics to create some wallpapers for iOS developers. It's still a long way to go. But she has a first draft that she wanted to share, then it's a it's a nice purple gradient shape image with with the Swift birds flying around in them. So it looks quite nice, actually. And Darko is deep diving into Swift concurrency. And he's asking Donnie, if it's maybe an idea for a new book. And Donald replies that it's definitely been an idea. And that has been floating around in his head for a while now. Bobby ballpark is making coffee and testing it with his new filtro app features ahead of the launch of it. And he's really enjoying it. The developer wants to brush up on his Python skills, but just because of office work and freelancing work, he does not have time to do so. For instance, as learning swift UI so he can make his own apps and change careers. Hello is mentioned that the new version of Kestrel mag comm is ready, and it's finally time to start promoting it. Flow writes code mentions that last week he took off a couple of days. But he did work on blecksmith a package that brings forge his marketing image generator app, and to Xcode allowing to automatically generate marketing images or App Store screenshots for every build. Dominic grotto has an interview scheduled in two hours from when he posted his message. And he's getting ready for that. He's really going over the basics and realizing how much of the fundamentals he has forgotten. Francoise mentioning that in the App Center has ended so he can focus on his other projects again, starting with trial under an iOS app to watch alcohol consumption. That ties into the trial January thing that a lot of people do afterwards. December month, semi she telfa is planning this week to finish the Shawn Allen def, iOS def LaunchPad course and also doing some challenges with each lesson so that he, he learns a lot more by actually doing things. So a lot of people are doing a lot of things, actually, you can really notice that the holidays are over, people are getting back into things again. Last week, it was just starting up. And this week, it's like, going at it full force again, refreshed with some time off and with great ideas, because people actually had some time off. Because the thing with ideas is they always happen when you're not doing anything, really. So make sure to rest well, and do some other things besides only sitting at your computer, because that allows you to have the best ideas and to enjoy the fruits of your labor as much as possible. So have a great week, and talk to you again next week. If you have any feedback on my episode, please let me know at app Force One. Also, I'm looking for guests from a podcast. Please reach out on Twitter DM, I really need a few people again, to be a guest on our podcast. So if you feel inclined to do so if you're interested. Send me a DM on Twitter at app force one