iOS Digest No. 4 (April 5 - April 26)

Hello, Habr! This is the new issue of the digest about iOS development news for iOS developers and not only (the digest begins with general Apple news interesting to a wider circle). All previous issues can be found on the VK page , but this time experimentally try a more familiar and convenient for the Russian IT platform.

It is interesting to listen to your feedback on the format and wishes in the comments.

Apple News

• The annual presentation of WWDC is approaching, which means that we should expect leaks and insiders about innovations for iOS users and new opportunities for developers. For example, in the 13th version of iOS, it will be possible to include Dark Mode in the system, so dearly loved by Mac users. Multitasking on the iPad will also improve, and a new gesture will appear for the Undo operation - apparently shaking the 13-inch iPad Pro is very inconvenient.
• In addition, Apple will open the curtain of the system API: the number of NFC standards supported for reading will expand (it will add support for ISO7816, FeliCa and MiFare tags), it will be possible to update CoreML models on the fly (now the models are static and cannot be retrained in the process without updating the application). Applications will be able to import photos directly from external storage devices, and users will not need to add photo cards to the Photos application before using them in Lightroom-like programs.
• Canalys predicts that the number of smart speakers will almost double this year compared to the previous one. Apparently, the corresponding specializations and vacancies of “HomePod Developer” will soon appear with the requirement of five years of programming applications for speakers.
• Apple is a pretty successful company, and many want to get some of this success for themselves. Not even a month has passed since the last case , when students again use their wit to get rich at the expense of the company: this time the teenager sued her, claiming that facial recognition software led to a false arrest . Apple, of course, did not delay the answer .

Swift News

• Generics in Swift were from the first versions and were announced as one of the main features of the language, although then they had more stringent restrictions, and their use, coupled with Protocol Oriented Programming, could give interesting results. For example, here is what the part of the program interface for working with the collections of the standard library looked like:
  
  
  
  It’s quite difficult to figure out the number of entities used and the relationships between them. But progress and the language development community are not standing still: a new proposal has appeared to improve the functionality of generics. It turned out to be quite massive, its simplified version can be found in the Swift Generics Evolution article . The syntax is planned to be expanded and sprinkled with sugar in the form of keywords:
  
  

  protocol Shape {
      associatedtype Renderer
      var renderer: Renderer { get }
  }
  func allEncompassingShape() -> some Shape
    // Вместо сложного ` T` возможно писать лаконичное `some Shape`
  func union(_ leftShape: some Shape, _ rightShape: some Shape) -> some Shape
    // `some` может быть использован в сигнатуре несколько раз для каждого нового типа

  
  
• And remember, there was such a C ++ language? In fact, of course, he is alive and continues to develop actively, but he is again buried on the Internet . This time, the author proposes to switch to safer Rust and Swift for system programming, reproaching even new versions of C ++ with possible vulnerabilities compared to the proposed alternatives. Discussion of the article appeared on the Hacker News forum , the flames have not subsided so far.
• More - More: Swift as the standard for Machine Learning. The article Embracing Swift for Deep Learning proposes in the future to replace Python, which was not designed to write safe and productive programs. The authors also point out the lack of normal typing and the complexity of debugging programs. They recently published another article about Swift and ML - “High Performance Numeric Programming with Swift: Explorations and Reflections” .
• In conclusion - about different things. First, MindNode continues to disclose its product details on the blog. In a previous post we talked about improving the performance of the interface, in a fresh one - about working with text. And secondly, a whole course of Reverse Engineering iOS Applications was released based on real-life vulnerabilities found by the author in applications.