Apple Developer Weekly #229 iPlayground to be Held on Aug 30-31 at NCCU Public Affairs Center
Lots of news about events and development tools
From 13
This week's news is very diverse, with many important updates.
There's a lengthy preview article about Swift 6.2, and Apple's upcoming requirement for apps to adopt the UIScene-based life cycle.
We have the official date and location for iPlayground, as well as a campaign for recommending sponsors.
There's information about education-related competitions and seminars, plus updates to Apple's official teaching materials.
We have tools like xtool for cross-platform iOS project compilation, KMM's Compose officially supporting iOS, and news about acquisitions in development tools and services.
There's also a recording of Jony Ive's rare public conversation.
Even this month's Cocoaheads Taipei event was particularly lively, which is unusual for a month before WWDC.
I hope this information is helpful to you.
13 on May 12, 2025
🆕What's new in Swift 6.2 by Paul Hudson
Swift 6.2 is coming soon.
This article is packed with content. Paul says it took over seven days to write, and reading it feels like preparing for WWDC. Definitely worth savoring.
🧪Apple Releases & News
Xcode 16.4 beta (16F1t) No updates
iOS 18.5 RC (22F75) & 17.7.7 RC (21H433)
⚠️TN3187: Migrating to the UIKit scene-based life cycle
A few weeks ago, we were speculating that Apple might deprecate UIApplicationDelegate. This week, they published this Technote teaching everyone to switch to the UIScene life cycle.
If you haven't implemented UISceneDelegate yet, you'll start seeing warnings in iOS 18.4. It will become a requirement later, so please prepare early.
🗓️iPlayground Dates Confirmed, Launches "Recommend a Sponsor, Get Rewards from iPlayground!" Campaign
The official tweet is very clear, so I'll quote it directly:
iPlayground will be held on August 30-31 this year at the NCCU Public Affairs Center!
We urgently need sponsorship from various sectors and want to leverage community power to find sponsors:
🚨 From now until May 31, if you recommend a company contact and successfully facilitate sponsorship negotiations, you'll receive these thank-you gifts:
🎟️ Free ticket + 👕 2025 limited edition commemorative T-shirt (limited quantity, while supplies last)
See details below👇
🤝Community Activities
Cocoaheads Taipei May 2025 event recording: This event had a good turnout (I attended and spontaneously shared some things)
This week I chatted with Cocoaheads Taipei organizer Hanyu about iosdev.space, a Mastodon server primarily for iOS developers, so he created an account (iosdev.space/@hanyu_chen_tw). Currently, there aren't many Chinese-speaking developers on there, but I'll also share my account (iosdev.space/@ethanhuang13)
iOS@Taipei online meetup announcement (announced on March 18, but I just saw it recently): Changed to "the first Tuesday of each month." They're using Spot, and the participation link is fixed
GSoC 2025 announced 4 accepted projects, with topics as follows:
Improve the display of documentation during code completion in SourceKit-LSP - Ahmed Elrefaey
JNI mode for swift-java's source jextract tool - Mads Odgaard
Swiftly Integration in VS Code - Priyambada Roul
Improved Console Output for Swift Testing - Tien Quoc Bui
🎓Educational Activities and Resources
Apple's Develop in Swift Tutorials updated with Machine Learning chapters
2025 Mobile Application Innovation Contest (MAIC) registration closes on May 31. This is the 10th year of the competition, and students who want to express their creativity through apps shouldn't miss this opportunity
NTU and Apple RTC jointly host three themed lectures. This Friday's lecture "AI Technology and Education - AI-Assisted Teaching Applications" is the second session and is open to non-university participants. Interested friends are welcome to register (can you guess who the speaker might be?)
Official press release for the WWDC Student Challenge: Local Inspiration, Global Impact: Meet Four of This Year's Swift Student Challenge Winners
🛒Third-Party Development Tool News
Xtool: cross-platform Xcode replacement. Build iOS apps on Linux and more! A tool that can compile iOS apps on non-macOS platforms (though Apple's License Agreement doesn't allow this, so the reasonable use case is still on macOS). Check out its GitHub Repo
Kotlin Compose Multiplatform 1.8 announces official stable support for iOS
🤬Unless You Dropped Out of Middle School, You Should Know Flutter Web Shouldn't Exist in This World by Suica
Honestly, I'm still an evangelist for Flutter's mobile development capabilities. However, I cannot endorse Flutter Web in any way, and I'll explain my reasons in this article.
Very savage.
📺A conversation with Jony Ive
This week at Stripe Sessions, CEO Patrick Collison had a fireside chat with Jony Ive, who has rarely been seen in public recently.
Here's also a summary of key points compiled by former Apple designer Edward Sanchez.
📣Recruitment/Job Seeking/Freelance Section
If you have iOS development-related job openings or resumes you'd like to publish in the Developer Weekly, please see About.
↖️Last Issue Highlights
If you've been too busy to read last week's content, here are the highlights:
Discussion of the impact of App Store allowing external payment links in the US
That's all for this week's Apple Developer Weekly. Feel free to like❤️, comment💬, or reply✉️ to share your thoughts.
Welcome to join iOS Developer+ membership for more exclusive advanced iOS knowledge and experience sharing.
If you'd like to sponsor this newsletter, please check out this page. For one-time donations, you can buy me some apples🍎 through Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you.