iOS Digest No. 5 (April 27 - May 16)

^{Image source: The Verge}

While we, dear readers, were on vacation, interesting events took place in the world of Apple and iOS-development. Details under the cut.

Industry news

• Update 12.3 for iOS and new versions of macOS, tvOS and watchOS have been released. Most of the changes affected the improvement of the UX application for Apple TV, although not everyone is satisfied with the result.
• As it turned out , iPhone SE will not receive an update to the next iOS 13. Until the end, the course with stopping their support is clear - they sell well, the cost is not high compared to shuttle smartphones. Fans can only wait for the release of the iPhone Xe in September with a comparable screen size. A list of possible improvements in the new ecosystem of Apple's ecosystem can be found in the article on bloomberg.com . Apple is planning a large-scale update of its applications, apparently, it was not in vain that last year for the first time in history they hired programmers more than developers of hardware.
• Apple Pay is now available as a payment method for purchases in iTunes, Apple Store, Apple Music, iCloud storage. In addition, users will be able to receive cashback when using.
• App stores are forecasting a quick end at the hands of Progressive Web Apps. An article on Medium describes the current state of PWA, and that it improves the way apps are installed on smartphones. The author of the article is indignant - on the part of Apple there are not enough advancements towards support on iOS and Safari, unlike, for example, the Windows Store - there PWA-based applications can be safely downloaded to the store. As noted in the comments, articles and statements of this kind appear already about as long as mobile development exists, but so far the applications are livelier than all living ones. There are also questions about the security of using PWA - a more centralized ability to manage installed content helps protect users from possible vulnerabilities, no one has heard about antiviruses on smartphones for a long time.
  
  It is clear that the current state of the AppStore is not perfect - for example, downloading some applications only via WiFi, the lack of good structured content. But it seems that if you make the store more than just a dump of applications (noticeable changes are already visible, starting with iOS 12), it will become much more convenient to use it.

IOS Development News

• An article is recommended for reading for those who need to organize a synchronous controlled data loading queue in the application using the OperationQueue. For example, we consider downloading files using URLSession, but the principle of operation can be used for any set of actions in the application.
• A small article for beginners with the fluffy.es resource on how to control the background color of UIStackView.
• Functional programming has nowhere to go in 2019 - we understand how to use pure functions in Swift .
• Once you’ve figured out the clean functions, it's time to work out the protocols and enumerations — when to use this or that approach can be understood after reading the Swift Tip: Enums vs. Protocols .
• An article on Declarative Views with thoughts on declarative UI on iOS - why there is still no such powerful and convenient tool like DOM on web or XAML from Microsoft.
• We figure out how to use xconfig files to configure the project configuration without the mandatory use of Xcode, which will help to avoid possible conflicts in version control systems when working in a team.
• For a change, there is a bit of audio and video content - the release of the podcast Artificial Intelligence Podcast with the creator of Swift language Chris Lattner has been released.
• Well, a funny little thing: a clone of the game Wolfenstein 3D , written in Swift, was released in Open Source . You can play around with the result or practice code review.

And finally: next week we will hold a Mobius conference in St. Petersburg , there will also be a lot of interesting things about iOS development.