The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #43
Apple's Google AI bet, dependencies you don't need, native Markdown rendering, gesture hierarchy, Agent Skills, and custom string interpolation
Perfect CVs are useless. I want to hear about the times you messed up, when your code crashed prod, when your “quick fix” became a three-day nightmare, when you made the wrong call and had to own it.
After 60+ conversations with people in tech, I’m sharing three real failures every week. First issue is live.
🆕 What’s New
Joint statement from Google and Apple
Hey, Siri…ously?! Apple and Google announced a multi-year partnership in which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini, powering Apple Intelligence and a more personalized Siri.
Apple keeps on device execution and privacy, but bets on Google for the core AI foundation. This is HUGE, probably the biggest Siri change in years!
📚 Must Read
Should you use all these dependencies?
Good reality check on how dependencies sneak into iOS projects and become expensive later. The RxSwift and Alamofire examples are spot on, they show how "everyone uses this" often means solving problems you don't actually have.
SwiftUI does support Markdown, you just need to understand how Text and AttributedString work. The AttributedString part is really useful, showing you can do a lot without extra libraries. Must-read if you're presenting user content or docs and want full control.
Understanding gesture hierarchy
Clear explanation of why gestures stop working when you nest views. Shows GestureMask, highPriorityGesture, and defersSystemGestures with simple examples. Read this to avoid broken taps or drags in your app.
🛠️ Toolbox
Agent Skills explained: Replacing AGENTS.md with reusable AI knowledge
Good article on making AI tools work across multiple projects. Antoine explains why AGENTS.md becomes a mess, and how Agent Skills help you reuse knowledge properly. If you work with AI agents on Swift projects, this will help your workflow.
🍬 One More Thing…
Defining custom string interpolation behavior in Swift
Swift’s string interpolation can do way more than most people think. The FormatStyle example shows how to make your strings clean and reusable.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
📊 Last Week’s Poll Results
Does your app fully support Dark Mode?
Top Answer: Yes, fully supported across the app
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👋 That’s it for this week
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Until next Friday — keep shipping 🍏