Developers

A range of apps have been updated today with limited-time promotions, in aid of the (RED) charity. Apple has participated in the event with an update to GarageBand, offering a limited-edition In-App Purchase that makes over 300 new drum, guitar, synth and bass loops available as an In-App Purchase. All proceeds from the sale of this expansion pack go directly to the (RED) charity, which sends the money to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The In-App Purchase, which is priced at $0.99, will be available until December 7th.

Other notable developers are also participating, many of which including exclusive additional content. For example, Threes has been updated, with a fresh red theme and updated icon. Monument Valley has added one special (RED) level, Star Walk has added exploration of Mars, The Red Planet. The popular drawing app, Paper, has also participated with a red application theme and icon. The ‘Over’ app has made special edition font and artwork packs available for purchase. djay and Heads Up! are also taking part in the event. Like GarageBand, 100% of proceeds of app and IAP sales go to the (RED) fund.

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If you’re a retailer, you have two options when it comes to deploying Bluetooth beacons. You can deploy the hardware yourself and build an accompanying mobile app for the experience, or you can open the experience to existing apps that users already have on their device using a beacon network. Some retailers have decided they want to own the experience and have everything go through their own mobile app, but new data suggests that might not be the way to go.
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If you want to get quickly up to speed on the basics of creating an Apple Watch app following the release of WatchKit, developer Nick Walter has put a free 50-minute video tutorial online. You can also sign up for a full online course for just $39 on Kickstarter – saving $161 on the likely launch price.

Walter gained a certain amount of fame recently when Forbes reported that he made $66,000 in one month following a similar Kickstarter campaign for a course in making iPhone apps … 
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Apple has just released a flood of information about how apps on Apple Watch work, through the WatchKit framework. There are three types of integrations currently possible: WatchKit apps, Glances and actionable notifications. Although they sound similar,  the development process for WatchKit apps are actually very different to that of normal iOS apps for iPhone and iPad, as much of the computation is done on the connected iPhone rather than rendered by the watch’s hardware itself.

The interface elements and interaction patterns for WatchKit apps revolve around a core set of user interface components and layouts. Arbitrary views are not supported, which is a big departure from how iOS apps are constructed.

The constraints are in place because although the Watch renders the UI, any other coding logic is actually managed by the connected iPhone through a WatchKit extension, that silently runs on the iPhone. For instance, animations are pre rendered as an image sequence on the phone GPU before being sent OTA to the watch for display. Apple has announced that fully-native Watch apps will debut later in 2015, which will likely loosen these restrictions somewhat.

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Apple has officially announced the availability of WatchKit, the software tools that developers will use for creating software for the Apple Watch coming in 2015. The company revealed last month that the SDK, or software development kit, would be released sometime this month. Apple says WatchKit enables developers to “create innovative WatchKit apps, actionable notifications and Glances, for timely information accessible by an easy, quick look at Apple Watch.” Additionally, resources within WatchKit reveal the screen resolutions for both Apple Watch sizes.
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Apple has today notified developers about some upcoming rules regarding App Store submission, via its developer news portal. From 1st February 2015, newly-submitted apps and updates must be built against Apple’s iOS 8 SDK. This is not particularly surprising: Apple required similar adoption of the iOS 7 SDK last year.

In addition however, Apple will also require that all apps and updates include 64-bit support from that date too. Currently, developers can choose whether to submit only 32-bit apps or universal binaries. This will no longer be an option from February. Moving all apps to 64-bit will bring big performance and memory gains for newer devices (which include A7 or A8 SoC’s) as running the 32-bit apps necessitates loading a lot of additional resources into system memory.

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Apple has now finalized and published specifications for HomeKit through its Made-For-iPhone/iPad/iPod (MFi) licensing program. The finalized specifications, which allow accessory makers to start building products that integrate iOS 8’s new framework for home automation devices, come ahead of Apple’s yearly MFi summit in November where it plans to brief manufacturing partners on HomeKit and other new iOS 8 features for accessories.
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Apple drew a lot of attention earlier this year when it debuted its own blog dedicated to updating developers on Swift, its programming language for building Mac and iOS apps first introduced at WWDC in June. The blog has since been used to share updates on the state of Swift as well as technical details about the programming language, but today Apple posted an official video tutorial (embedded below) targeted for new Swift developers on using the language and Xcode to build an app for iOS from scratch.
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Apple has released OS X Yosemite GM Candidate 1.0 for developers via the Mac App Store today. Candidate 1.0 of OS X Yosemite GM follows the release of the first iOS 8.1 beta to developers yesterday and Yosemite Developer Preview 8 two weeks ago. Apple is expected to debut to the new version of the Mac operating system to the public next month. We’ll update with changes found in the new version, and feel free to share any discoveries in the comments or via tips@9to5mac.com. 
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Update: Apple has resolved the problem overnight. Downloading apps now also loads the embedded extensions successfully, just in time for iOS 8’s public debut …

With iOS 8 set to launch tomorrow, Apple is well underway approving apps and app updates that incorporate the new features of iOS 8. Apps that require iOS 8 are currently ‘Pending An Apple Release’, but apps that support earlier versions are beginning to show up in the store. However, developers have discovered that integrated extensions, like Today widgets, are not working and failing to appear in Notification Center. Both PCalc and OmniFocus have acknowledged these issues, but it applies universally.

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TestFlight is now appearing in the App Store, ahead of an expected launch later this month. The service will allow developers to easily share betas of upcoming apps with public testers. It was discovered Apple had bought TestFlight earlier this year and the company subsequently announced the integration of the service into its developer portal at WWDC.

Before Apple’s acquisition, TestFlight was not in the App Store itself as it violated app review guidelines. Being part of the App Store makes it much more accessible to the general public and should incentivize more beta testers to participate in general.

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Apple today released the seventh developer preview of OS X Yosemite bringing the latest build to 14A343f. The previous developer preview (build 14A329f) was released two weeks ago. Xcode 6 beta 7 was also released alongside new builds for OS X Server 4.0 Developer Preview and Apple Configurator 1.6 beta 5. If you find something new, you can let us know at tips@9to5mac.com. The release version of Yosemite is currently scheduled for the later half of October, and it will ship separately from iOS 8. Here’s what’s new:
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As noticed by Apfelpage, Apple has published a new page to be more open about why it rejects apps. A chart at the bottom of the page shows the top ten reasons for app rejection in the last seven days; such as lack of information, crashes or bugs encountered, complicated user interfaces. Around 60% of rejections come from violation of just ten guidelines of the App Store rules. Some of these, like the existence of placeholder text in applications, seem rather trivial issues and it’s interesting that it arises so frequently as a cause of rejection.

The page goes into more detail on some of these points. In one instance, Apple highlights what it deems to be a ‘substandard user interface’, which apparently is responsible for 6% of all rejections. In the example, Apple advises use of a tableview to cleanly lay out information.

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Developer James Thompson has found an interesting behavior in the latest iOS 8 beta, giving even more weight to the reports that indicate the iPhone 6 will feature a new resolution, featuring a new ‘pixel-tripling’ scaling factor of 3. In May, 9to5Mac first broke news of Apple testing a new screen resolution for an upcoming iPhone, which used a 3x screen scale for content.

https://twitter.com/jamesthomson/status/505371301272645632

The behavior is inconsistent, as iOS 8 beta 5 does not always load these 3x assets. However, it reliably chooses the 3x image on 2x devices using the ‘initWithContentsOfFile’ method. After seeing Thompson’s discovery, 9to5Mac has independently confirmed that this is indeed the case.

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