Development

Apple’s move to share health care records is a game-changer

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Game changer? Really? Hmm. Let’s take a look.

Aneesh Chopra, Shafiq Rabaneesh Chopra and Shafiq Rab, Wired:

In late January, Apple previewed an iOS feature that would allow consumers to access their electronic health records on their phones. Skeptics said the move was a decade too late given a similar (and failed) effort from Google.

But:

This move is a game-changer for three reasons: It affirms there is one common path to open up electronic health records data for developers so they can focus on delighting consumers rather than chasing records. It encourages other platform companies to build on that path, rather than pursue proprietary systems. And it ensures that the pace of progress will accelerate as healthcare delivery systems respond to the aggregate demand of potentially millions of iPhone users around the world.

This, indeed, is a game changer. To me, the key is this:

That’s because Apple has committed to an open API for health care records—specifically, the Argonaut Project specification of the HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources—so your doctor or hospital can participate with little extra effort.

Developers, this is an app opportunity, an area full of untapped potential.

Start with the linked Wired article, then dig into the details of the Argonaut Project.

Great stuff.

Details on the unicode symbol that is crashing iOS

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The Register:

Apple last month fixed a flaw in macOS and iOS that allowed a text message to crash its chat software – and now it has the opportunity to do so again.

Various macOS, iOS, and watchOS apps that rely on Apples’s text-rending code can be crashed when sent a message containing a symbol composed of characters used in the Indian language Telugu.

And:

The symbol represents a combination of Telugu letters and signs, specifically the letter “ja,” the sign “virama,” the letter “nya,” a zero-width non-joiner and the vowel sign “aa.”

Trying to open a message with this symbol in iMessage or other apps that rely on Apple’s UIKit framework for text rendering, like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and WhatsApp, will cause a crash. Don’t what ever you do try to create a filesystem folder using that symbol.

Unless you use Telugu or interact with someone who does, chances are you’ll never encounter this bug. But it is interesting. This came to light when this OpenRadar post appeared.

The original radar was marked as a duplicate, meaning Apple already knew about the problem. And sure enough, there’s already a fix in place in the latest betas:

https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/964228823196848129

How Apple plans to root out bugs, revamp iPhone software

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Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple’s annual software upgrade this fall will offer users plenty of new features: enabling a single set of apps to work across iPhones, iPads and Macs, a Digital Health tool to show parents how much time their children have been staring at their screen and improvements to Animojis, those cartoon characters controlled by the iPhone X’s facial recognition sensor.

But just as important this year will be what Apple doesn’t introduce: redesigned home screens for the iPhone, iPad and CarPlay, and a revamped Photos app that can suggest which images to view.

These features were delayed after Apple Inc. concluded it needed its own major upgrade in the way the company develops and introduces new products. Instead of keeping engineers on a relentless annual schedule and cramming features into a single update, Apple will start focusing on the next two years of updates for its iPhone and iPad operating system, according to people familiar with the change. The company will continue to update its software annually, but internally engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren’t as polished to the following year.

Read the rest of the article for details, but can’t help but see this as a significant move in the right direction, assuming it is true.

Apple’s emoji crackdown

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Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia:

WhatsApp used Apple emojis on Android for years, and only recently created its own emoji set for use on Android and the web. Slack, too, offered Apple emojis on all platforms until today.

Whether these changes were due to pressure from Apple, or a growing realisation that this might not be the right way to go about cross-platform use, we don’t know for sure.

Other apps such as Signal and Telegram continue to use Apple emojis on Android.

That’s Android. How about using Apple emoji in your iOS app?

Last week app developer Sam Eckert reported that an update to his iOS app BitTracker was rejected by Apple due to lack of compliance with its guidelines for trademarks and copyrights.

Specifically, emoji use in BitTracker was called out as being problematic in both the iPhone app, and a small ? Chart Decreasing emoji used in the watchOS app was also an issue.

Jeremy goes on to show more examples of app rejection, and Apple’s inconsistency in using emoji in their own teaching materials.

At the very least, Apple is sending mixed signals. It’d be good to have a clear sense of what will fly and what won’t in terms of using Apple emoji in your own app.

Using the iPhone X to make your face invisible

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This is pretty cool. Watch the video embedded in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/noshipu/status/945844851261579264

The developer built an app that runs on the iPhone X and uses the face mesh to render your face invisible. A neat trick. Not sure how useful this is, but A for effort.

The iPad Pro as main computer for programming

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Jannis Hermanns explores the idea of using an iPad Pro as his main computer for backend development. He’s not doing iOS development, nothing that requires Xcode. But there are a lot of developers for whom this model would work perfectly.

I love the portability, but even with the larger size of the iPad Pro screen, would feel cramped without my large screen second display. Nonetheless, well worth the read.

Google introduces ARCore, plays catch up with Apple and ARKit

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Back in May, just before Google I/O, Google released this blog post, updating developers with the latest on their Augmented Reality project, known as Tango:

With Tango, devices can track motion and understand distances and their position in the real world. For VR, we’ve used technology from Tango as the foundation of WorldSense. For AR, it can be used to enable smartphone AR experiences by placing digital objects in real spaces. The next phone with Tango technology will be the ASUS ZenFone AR, available this summer.

That last sentence is key. Tango was a device specific technology.

A month later, at WWDC, Apple rolled out ARKit, as part of their iOS 11 announcement. Though there is a minimum hardware requirement (requires A9 or later), it will run on any devices that meet the spec.

This is a huge difference. Tango plays to an audience limited to a few specific phones, while ARKit plays to a vastly broader audience, anyone with a relatively recent iOS device.

Google has now leveraged their Tango investment with their own ARKit-like SDK, known as ARCore.

From Google’s official announcement:

We’ve been developing the fundamental technologies that power mobile AR over the last three years with Tango, and ARCore is built on that work. But, it works without any additional hardware, which means it can scale across the Android ecosystem. ARCore will run on millions of devices, starting today with the Pixel and Samsung’s S8, running 7.0 Nougat and above. We’re targeting 100 million devices at the end of the preview.

Just how many A9 chip or later has Apple sold to date? Not sure. But I’d bet it’s closer to 500 million than 100 million (please Tweet at me if you have an actual number).

We know they sold 11 million iPads last quarter and about 41 million iPhones. That’s more than 50 million qualifying devices in just the last quarter. As a reminder, ARKit will run on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, both released in September 2015.

For Google, feels like ARCore was a direct (and seemingly hurried) response to ARKit’s wave of adoption and publicity. Interesting developments.

Apple makes deal with more than 30 college systems to teach Swift

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Apple press release:

Apple today announced the App Development with Swift curriculum will now be offered in more than 30 community college systems across the country in the 2017-2018 school year, providing opportunities to millions of students to build apps that will prepare them for careers in software development and information technology. The Austin Community College District (ACC), one of the nation’s largest higher learning institutions, will begin offering the course to its 74,000 students this fall.

This is a pretty big get for Apple. Though Swift is open source, it seems fair to say that if you grow up learning Swift, you’re going to want to develop in Swift, and that means building apps for the Apple ecosystem, not to mention a likelihood of buying Apple products. Good stuff.

Resizable Home button and more riches from the HomePod leak

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Ben Lovejoy walks through the latest revelations from Steve Troughton Smith’s dig through the recently leaked HomePod firmware.

Here’s the first tweet:

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/895486535742705664

Note the reference to a resizable Home button. When the implementation is in software, rather than hardware, there’s ultimate flexibility. Not sure if there is actually a plan to allow the user to resize the home button, but I think a larger target would be a terrific assistive feature.

Here’s the second tweet:

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/895558456773496832

Check out the mockup in Ben’s article. Looks remarkably like the iPhone 8 dummy in this post.

Detailed vector maps for your Apple Watch, no iPhone required

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WorkOutDoors is a workout app that allows you to load detailed, localized vector maps onto your Apple Watch for offline use. This means you can go for a run, have detailed maps on your watch, and leave your iPhone behind. Or work out in a facility without cell/wifi service, again leaving your iPhone behind. Or go hiking in a remote location without cell service. You get the idea.

There are other solutions to this problem, but I found this one fascinating. Here’s the web site, and here’s the link to WorkOutDoors in the App Store.

Chinese app developers file antitrust complaint against Apple

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Wall Street Journal:

A group of 28 Chinese app developers filed a complaint against Apple Inc. alleging antitrust violations over the company’s App Store.

The complaint accuses Apple of engaging in monopolistic behavior by removing apps from the App Store without detailed explanation and charging excessive fees for in-app purchases. The complaint also alleges Apple doesn’t give details on why apps are removed and puts local developers at a disadvantage by not responding to queries in Chinese.

And:

In a statement, Apple said that “most submissions in China are reviewed and approved to be on the store within 48 hours, or less.” It added that its App Store guidelines apply equally to all developers in every country and that if an app is rejected or removed, developers may request a review to restore the app in a timely manner.

The timing correlates with the mass removal of VPN apps from the App Store. A rock and a hard place, that.

Everyone can code: An encounter with Swift Playgrounds

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Jordan Smith:

A few days ago my wife expressed an interest in learning how to code. ‘Really..? Sure!’, I said. ‘You should check out an app called Swift Playgrounds’.

And:

I hadn’t tried the app myself, but Apple made a big deal of introducing it last year, and I had heard positive things – so it seemed like a good suggestion.

It didn’t take long to get the app installed, and as Joelle (my wife) started the first lesson, my curiosity turned to fascination. Yes, the app was fun, exciting, and engaging, but that wasn’t it. Despite a few rough edges, Swift Playgrounds made coding seem approachable, perhaps even ordinary. As if by magic, coding had become something that everyone can do.

Read on. What follows is a detailed post mortem and analysis of Joelle’s experience and Jordan’s take on what worked and what might be improved.

Apple partners with Cochlear for iPhone hearing implant

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Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June, Cochlear’s Nucleus 7 Sound Processor can now stream sound directly from a compatible iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to the sound processor.

The device also allows those with a surgically embedded implant to control and customize the sound from their iPhone.

This sounds incredible.

ARKit app lets you redecorate, plop new furniture in place

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Dave here. I love ARKit, love the endless possibilities it brings. In today’s episode, watch this ARKit user select some new furniture, plop it in place, angle it just so, and even resize it for the space.

https://twitter.com/madewitharkit/status/888469295478517762

I can see a future where this is how you try/buy your furniture, and how you order custom-sized pieces for an exact fit.

Apple’s long history of rejecting ‘objectionable content’ from the App Store

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Louise Matsakis, Motherboard:

The App Store is the most successful guarded ecosystem in the history of the internet. For nearly a decade, Apple has undertaken a remarkable task—keeping an enormous software marketplace free from spam, malware, and risks to user security. And for the most part, it has been good at the job.

But at the same time, Apple has repeatedly rejected apps and refused to clarify its decisions to developers and users. While it’s also frequently corrected its mistakes, rejections like Metadata’s show that Apple is not afraid to wield its power without explaining itself.

The company has effectively dictated what kind of content should live on the devices we carry around with us everywhere, and stare at for hours each day. By controlling what’s allowed in its App Store, Apple has shaped how iPhone, iPad, and Mac users experience the internet.

The article includes a small handful of examples to make its point. As you read this, keep in mind how impossibly complex a task Apple has in reviewing millions of apps in a steadily surging river of inputs. In recent years, Apple has improved the process with most app submissions turning around in a matter of a day or so, many turning around in a few hours.

With a process this complex, mistakes will be made, and edge cases will exist. But given the choice, I’d rather live in the walled ecosystem controlled by Apple, with its commitment to keeping out spam and malware, than any other choices out there.

How to tell which of your Mac apps is 32-bit vs 64-bit

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Why should you care whether an app is 32-bit or 64-bit?

From this Apple developer page:

At WWDC 2017, we announced new apps submitted to the Mac App Store must support 64-bit starting January 2018, and Mac app updates and existing apps must support 64-bit starting June 2018.

32 bits allows you 2-to-the-32nd addresses:

2^32 = 4,294,967,296

That’s 4 gigabytes of addressable space. A 32-bit computer can’t have more than 4 gigs of memory. A 32-bit program can’t directly address more than 4 gigs.

64 bits, on the other hand, gives you access to 2^64 which is equal to 2^32 times 2^32. Clearly, that’s a way bigger number. I won’t say we’ll never need more than 64-bits of addressable space, but I can’t imagine that need in my lifetime.

So how to tell which apps are 32-bit and soon to be end-of-lifed?

Easy. Go to the Apple menu, select About This Mac, then tap the System Report… button. In the page that appears, scroll down to the Software section (in the list on the left) and then tap Applications. Wait a minute or two while the list is built.

Once the list appears, widen the window so you can see the column labeled 64-Bit (Intel). If you tap that label, the table will be sorted into the haves and have nots, 32-bit apps on top, followed by 64-bit apps.

For me, the vast majority of 32-bit apps are legacy holdovers from previous installs that the migration assistant brought along during various system updates.

Why doesn’t Apple let you have both? In a nutshell, supporting both flavors means Apple needs to maintain and ship 32-bit and 64-bit versions of all its supporting frameworks, essentially doubling their workload as well as the size of the OS. In addition, both 32-bit and 64-bit frameworks are loaded into memory, doubling that part of the memory footprint.

Another peek at ARKit’s future

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This video shows a more sophisticated bit of ARKit, letting you walk around a room and quickly map out the floorspace. While this app might not widely useful, it does show the tip of a pretty large iceberg.

For example, imagine walking/measuring around your entire house and ending up with a reasonably precise set of up to the minute blueprints. You might feed those into another app and place/rearrange furniture to get a sense of what will fit and what works where. You might use the numbers to order the precise amount of carpeting you need, or take your app to a store to make sure that bookshelf will fit in that corner.

Take a look. ARKit is a big deal.

https://twitter.com/madewitharkit/status/885217993088782339

Apple ARKit in action

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Nice collection of ARKit videos, most farmed from @madewithARKit.

My favorite:

https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/status/884512251184590851

I love the T-shirt. Reminds me of the earliest CodeWarrior black shirts. And I love the fact that ARKit is linked to the HTC Vive. Bravo!

iPhone bugs are too valuable to report to Apple

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Motherboard:

In August 2016, Apple’s head of security Ivan Krstic stole the show at one of the biggest security conferences in the world with an unexpected announcement.

“I wanna share some news with you,” Krstic said at the Black Hat conference, before announcing that Apple was finally launching a bug bounty program to reward friendly hackers who report bugs to the company.

The crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause. But almost a year later, the long-awaited program appears to be struggling to take off, with no public evidence that hackers have claimed any bug bounties.

And at the core of it all:

The iPhone’s security is so tight that it’s hard to find any flaws at all, which leads to sky-high prices for bugs on the grey market.

The question is, are the bugs valuable enough for Apple to raise their bounties to compete with the grey market?

A Minecraft Augmented Reality demo

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[VIDEO] There are a lot of AR demos out there, including a few measuring tape demos that show how easy Apple has made it to put together an AR app. But the Minecraft demo shown in the video embedded in the main Loop post struck me as a perfect demo of ARKit. Enjoy.

Appocalypse

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[VIDEO] This is how Apple brought up the curtain on this year’s WWDC (video embedded in the main Loop post). Note the extra P in the title. It’s all about the apps.

I love it when Apple takes chances. I think this was well done and worked well. Enjoy.

Apple launches app development curriculum for high school and community college students

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Apple press release:

Apple today launched a new app development curriculum designed for students who want to pursue careers in the fast-growing app economy. The curriculum is available as a free download today from Apple’s iBooks Store.

App Development with Swift is a full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators to teach students elements of app design using Swift, one of the world’s most popular programming languages. Students will learn to code and design fully functional apps, gaining critical job skills in software development and information technology.

Here’s a link to Apple’s Everyone Can Code page.

And here’s a link to the ECC curriculum in iTunes.

10 Years of iPhone — A Developer’s Perspective

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Long time iOS developer Adrian Kosmaczewski lays out the evolution of the iPhone and the App Store from the wild west earliest days through the ten years since.

This is a fantastic read, full of interesting details. No development background required. And smack dab in the middle of it is a book I wrote with Jeff LaMarche, complete with the very first of many fruit cross-sections to adorn Apress’ line of iOS/Mac development books.

I still remember reacting to the first cover shot they sent our way:

“Wait, you want to put a piece of fruit on the cover? Why?”

“It’s Apple related. So fruit. Get it?”

Many, many arguments later, that fruit cover stuck and turned out to be iconic in its own small way. The book sold, helped a lot of people get started, so ultimately it did its job. And Jeff and I had a helluva ride.

Damage

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Shawn posted this last night, but this hits very close to home for me, wanted to add my 2 cents.

Matt Gemmell:

No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple.

Not that other companies wouldn’t have done the same thing — they would have. It’s just that Apple was the successful one.

It’s resolutely the fault of us as consumers, and it’s actively encouraged by the App Store.

This is a scorcher. At its heart, this is about the iOS App Store’s race to the bottom, price-wise, and the difficulty of making a living as a developer in a “pennies for your work” market.

Matt does an excellent job laying out all the details. A core argument:

Has Apple created a huge market, in terms of potential customers? Absolutely. It’s just done so at the expense of its platform-invested developer community. Judging by the company’s value and income, it was a very wise move, and you can justify it on that basis if you choose. But don’t ignore the reality of the situation. Apple is not a benevolent entity; your human-centric partner in aesthetics and ethos. If that was ever true at all.

Apple created the App Store. Is it their responsibility to ensure that the people whose work they benefit from, on whose backs they ride, have the ability to earn a living? Are developers in the same “fair trade” category as the miners who dig the rare earths that go into each and every iPhone?

Matt cocludes with this about the Mac App Store, which offers an economic model based on far fewer users and much higher pricing:

For developers who target the Mac, the last segment of the glass-and-aluminium Cupertino hardware line-up to still have plausibly sustainable economics, there’s only one course of action: pray that Apple remains disinterested.

Still chewing on all this. Lots to process. But thought this was worth sharing.

“Like using a lunchbox to make lunch”

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Ars Technica story about Masahiro Sakurai the creator of 1992’s Kirby’s Dream Land:

Sakurai recalled how HAL Laboratory was using a Twin Famicom as a development kit at the time. Trying to program on the hardware, which combined a cartridge-based Famicom and the disk-based Famicom Disk System, was “like using a lunchbox to make lunch,” Sakurai said.

As if the limited power wasn’t bad enough, Sakurai revealed that the Twin Famicom testbed they were using “didn’t even have keyboard support, meaning values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard.”

Amazing story. Be sure to follow the link to the full story, complete with pictures.

Panic on making a living building apps for iOS vs macOS

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From long time macOS and iOS developer Panic (the folks who produced the excellent Firewatch game, mentioned yesterday):

If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!

The macOS marketplace is so much smaller than that for iOS, it’s much easier to stand out in the crowd, get the word out on excellent work. In addition, the smaller market allows for higher prices, so you can break even selling fewer copies.

iOS 11 lock screen concept

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Matt Birchler:

iOS 11 will all but surely be revealed at WWDC in June this year, and I would expect something to change on the lock screen there. So before Apple shows us what we’re getting in iOS 11, I decided to design my own new lock screen for iOS.

Matt has some excellent ideas here, designed to wring some usefulness from the lock screen, beyond checking the data and time and seeing notifications that have occurred since your last unlock.

I’ve long felt we should have the ability to fine tune what shows up on the lock screen and that Apple should open up the lock screen to developers. For example, I’d love to see the current temp/weather, along with my next appointment, on my lock screen.

Great writeup, worth reading.