S Link
Swift Around the Web
Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift
Stanford has officially switched to Swift for their iOS class and you can follow along! This is a HUGE boost for Swift. Not only will Silicon Valley companies have to interview Stanford grads in Swift for iOS dev positions, but the accessibility of this FREE high-end Swift learning resource opens up Swift to thousands of interested people worldwide.
Swift Quickie: Capture Lists
Apparently you can create new named values in closures and easily make these weak references. Cool trick!
Swift Weekly
"Swift Weekly is an exciting and new weekly magazine for Swift programming language enthusiasts." Each issue is very detailed, taking a deep dive into the topic specified. Just wish it was in RSS format, but for now it's on Github and I'm "watching" it!
Coding
Two Million Particles at 25 Frames Per Second on an iPad
Impressive: "Following on from my last post where I managed to calculate and render over 1,000,000 particles in realtime, I've done some pretty effective tweaking of the code to create an app that calculates and renders (with blur and trails) over 2,000,000 particles at around 25 frames per second on my iPad Air 2."
Let's Build Swift Notifications
NSNotification re-implemented in Swift - faster, better, stronger:
- No singleton involved
- Explicit parameters are used to pass data to observers.
- Notification parameters are statically typed. The types are specified in the observer set property and notification senders and receivers are checked by the compiler. All types are supported, with no need for boxing.
- For the common case where an observer is removed when deallocated, removal can be automatic.
Swifty APIs: NSUserDefaults
@radexp rethinks how we should interact with NSUserDefaults. Really great way of thinking about applying Swift-specific features to make an existing API more useable.
Apple News
Redefining Everything with the Swift REPL
New from Apple's official Swift Blog: "Our first entry on the REPL covered just the basics, showing how to use the REPL to experiment with Swift as you learn the language. This post explores one way that the REPL bends normal coding rules to give you new powers when developing."
Design
How Your Favorite Apps Will Look On The Apple Watch
As @parrots mentioned on Twitter, one of the best things about this article is that the apps showcased are designed based on actual UI constraints vs beautiful but currently unrealistic mock-ups on Behance or Dribbble.
Radial Bar Chart Generator
"A simple tool that generates images for animating radial progress charts for the Apple Watch and WatchKit."
Designing Chronicons: Icon Size
Ok, I'll admit it. I don't see the difference in the before vs after of the chronicon on the WatchKit Menu from this post, but I'll take this designers word for it. The big point is that designers will have to make sure to test that their design looks good on the Apple Watch - not just blindly follow the HIG. I wonder if having the actual hardware will cause even more disparity in the look of the app.
Other Cool Stuff
Videos
Understanding WatchKit Layout
I think the WatchKit Layout is pretty intuitive and easy to get started with. Yet, this is a great overview by @_DavidSmith as he points out the details behind layout issues I haven't thought about too much.
WATCH
How to debug an iOS app while the WatchKit app is currently running in the simulator
I've been putting up Alerts in my ViewControllers to debug my iOS app code while my WatchKit App is running. Glad there's a better way...
Integrating FontAwesome on WatchKit
In case you haven't heard of it, Font Awesome is a set of scalable vector icons that are incredibly easy to use - they work just like a font! And just like a font, they're that easy to use in WatchKit.
Swift Code
Flipbook - A Swift tool to render UIViews to image sequences for use with WatchKit, and accompanying sample WatchKit project.
CVCalendar - A custom visual calendar for iOS 8 written in Swift.
BreakOutToRefresh - Play BreakOut while loading
Side-Menu.iOS - Animated side menu with customizable UI
JSONHelper - Lightning fast JSON deserialization and value conversion library for iOS & OS X written in Swift.
Swift Thoughts
Yesterday I went on a really massive hike at Big Basin State Park that involved 31,518 steps according to my iPhone.
One of the women in my group had not only one but two Pebble+ Activity Trackers on her shoes as well as a fitbit wristband. Turns out, her job has a pretty great wellness rewards system based on using the Pebble+, so her co-worker asked her to wear the second Pebble+ on the hike as a way to game the system and get more rewards. In contrast, the fitbit wristband was used as her preferred fitness tracking device (outside of work).
If the Apple Watch is indeed "Apple’s Most Personal Device Ever", something a co-worker can't give away for the weekend without a second thought, maybe it'll be harder to game the incentive systems that are cropping up out there, making the fitness data actually useful.