Developers

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming an app developer, the Apple Developer Academy is now open for applications. You could be one of 400 lucky students to win a year’s free training in Naples, Italy, completely free of charge.

You’ll also get a free iPhone and Mac …

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iOS 12.2 beta 3 just dropped and contains a few user-facing tweaks as we reported here. For developers, there are new discount options for auto-renewing subscriptions.

Apple has also released a set of design resources for Siri Shortcuts, for iOS and watchOS. The company also released the SF Compact Rounded font to developers, which is used in several places inside watchOS.

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The French government is taking both Apple and Google to court, accusing the companies of ‘abusive trade practices’ in the way that they treat developers.

Reporting on the case is light on detail, but France appears to have three objections to the way the relationship works between app stores and developers …

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Apple has today announced that it is removing the Catalogs category, as well as the Educational and Dice subcategory (under Games) from the App Store.

Apple has sent out emails to developers who are affected by this change, those that have apps currently listed under the Catalogs category or Dice subcategory.

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The App Review guidelines were updated this week to accommodate App Store policy changes and new rules for usage of frameworks introduced in iOS 11, like MusicKit.

One change is the addition of section 1.1.7. This new paragraph requires developers to use the official in-app rating UI added in iOS 10.3 and states that they ‘will disallow custom review prompts’ going forward …

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As Apple boasts of creating two million U.S. jobs, it has been accused of making life as a small developer unsustainable.

The claim was made by Matt Gemmell, a software engineer who used to work for Apple as a contractor and whose source code has been used in hundreds of iOS and macOS apps.

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

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Update: This change appears to have been reverted; editing of description and what’s new fields is now possible again outside of app review. As Apple never officially acknowledged the change, it is possible that this was a temporary bug that was never intended to go into effect in the first place. Original story below …

Overnight, developers have noticed a silent policy change to iTunes Connect interface which does not seem to have been formally announced by Apple.

Developers are no longer able to edit descriptions, update notes or any other metadata for their apps without making a new version, which must be submitted to App Review for approval …

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Apple has just published a list of App Store improvements that will begin to go into effect next Wednesday, September 7th. The changes seek to remove broken and forgotten apps from the App Store, apps that are currently breaking App Store review guidelines, and that are just no longer functional.

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During Apple’s State of the Union and 15th annual Apple Design Awards, Apple explained that the App Store Review Guidelines would be receiving new updates this year. Currently on Apple’s own App Store Review Guidelines page there are two different guidelines listed, pre- and post- June 13,2016. Apple has decided to take these changes one step further into a partnership with Madefire. At the end of the Apple Design Award ceremony this year, Apple announced a collaboration with Madefire to make reading the newly updated guidelines easier. By releasing it as a comic book.

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Apple has just wrapped up its exciting WWDC 2016 keynote announcing macOS Sierra, iOS 10, watchOS 3, and the latest installment of tvOS. The event was mostly focused on what Apple would be releasing at the end of this year, but Apple also likes to put the attention back on the amazing developers in the community. Every year Apple celebrates developers and the work they’ve accomplished across the various software platforms at its Apple Design Awards. This year’s 2016 Apple Design Awards showcased apps for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS. The award ceremony made sure to highlight apps that were localized in multiple languages, and had been built with accessibility in mind.

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Although it didn’t make the keynote cut, one of the bigger news items for developers today is that Apple is rolling out a new file system for storage for all its products:

The Apple File System (APFS) is the next-generation file system designed to scale from an Apple Watch to a Mac Pro. APFS is optimized for Flash/SSD storage, and engineered with encryption as a primary feature. Learn about APFS benefits versus HFS+ and how to make sure your file system code is compatible.

Details are scant but developers can access information about the new File System here, but it comes with some significant caveats/limitations which will initially limit its usage:

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iOS 10 got its first public revealing today but it won’t be available to customers until later this year. Developer betas are coming today, and public betas for non-developers will follow in July.

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Apple has officially announced iOS 10 at WWDC 2016. Craig Federighi started the announcement by sharing that iOS 10 features ten new tent pole features.

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Novelists and app developers have a lot in common. An author puts a lot of work into writing a novel, but when it’s finally published it’s competing with millions of other books out there. Unless you’re a big-name writer, most people will never even get to know that yours exists.

You can try to be creative with your marketing. For example, I did a Kickstarter campaign for my first novel, 11/9, and included the opening scene of The Billion Dollar Heist at the end of it to drive sales through to that. But it’s impossible to compete with the big publishing houses.

The same is true of small-time app developers. Your app may be the greatest in the world, but it steps out into a world that already has around 1.5 million iOS apps and where nobody has ever heard of yours. And with Apple now allowing successful companies to buy even more App Store visibility through search result ads, it can only get tougher for the little guy.

Which is why I think Apple could usefully learn from a new model being used for books by Amazon …

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Apple’s WWDC event kicks off on Monday, but App Store head Phil Schiller is already sharing some major changes coming to the App Store that will impact developers. The news comes just six months after Schiller added additional App Store responsibilities to his role.

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[UPDATE 6/7: iOS 9.3.3 beta 2 is also now available to public beta testers.]

Apple started testing iOS 9.3.3 with developers and public beta testers near the end of May, and today the second beta version of the pre-release software has been released for developer iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. The update marks the first iOS 9.3.3 beta available for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which missed out on the first beta version during the iOS 9.3.2 update bug.

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