๐ Whatโs New
Apple Expected to Unveil Five All-New Products This Year
Apple's looking pretty busy this year! They're finally dropping that foldable iPhone everyone's been waiting for, plus some interesting smart home stuff like a Face ID doorbell and a home hub. It's unusual for Apple to launch this many brand-new products at once, but as an Apple fan, this would be like Christmas for me!
I want to hear about the times you messed up, when your code crashed prod, when your โquick fixโ became a three-day nightmare, when you made the wrong call and had to own it.
After 60+ conversations with people in tech, Iโm sharing three real failures every week.
๐ Must Read
Why MVVM-C with Coordinators Does Scale: A real-world SwiftUI perspective
This experience-driven take on MVVM-C explains why it can scale in SwiftUI when applied with real feature boundaries. I like the SwiftUI angle here: coordinators as explicit, observable flows that model intent instead of fighting navigation APIs. If youโre debating MVVM-C vs TCA or feeling growing fear around refactors and team ownership, this is a great read.
Danny Bolella wrote a really thoughtful piece about handling empty states in SwiftUI. It breaks down three distinct types of emptiness: EmptyView for layout structure, EmptyModifier for type system requirements, and ContentUnavailableView for actual user-facing scenarios. It's one of those reads that'll change how you think about every blank state and conditional you write in SwiftUI.
Universal Links At Scale: The Challenges Nobody Talks About
Universal Links sound simple until you ship them at scale. This article cuts through the usual setup guides to expose the real pain points: CDN caching issues, pattern matching quirks, and the complete lack of decent tooling. Worth reading if you're running these in production and want to avoid nasty surprises.
Providing access to premium features with StoreKit 2
A very practical guide to StoreKit 2 that skips theory and goes straight to real subscription mechanics. It clearly shows how to model tiers, handle upgrades correctly, and keep SwiftUI in sync with StoreKit state without hacks or global singletons everywhere.
๐ ๏ธ Toolbox
Jumping between your editor, terminal, git client, and AI chat kills momentum fast. Commander wraps it all into one native Mac app with Codex integration and built-in git handling. Solid option if you want AI coding assistance that doesn't fragment your workflow.
11 Things I learned after using AI Agents full-time
A checklist from someone who's actually running agents in production, not just tinkering. The focus is on discipline: plan first, keep changes small, set clear boundaries, and treat agents like juniors who need structure.
๐ฌ One More Thingโฆ
The Identifiable Protocol in Swift
A deep dive into Identifiable that explains why identity matters beyond just satisfying the compiler. Read this if youโve debugged strange List updates or navigation glitches and want to understand the root cause.
๐ณ๏ธ Weekly Poll
๐ Last Weekโs Poll Results
How do you feel about Siri potentially powered by Googleโs Gemini?
Top Answer: Cautiously optimistic
๐ Upcoming Conferences
February
10โ12 โ Arctic Conference (Oulu ๐ซ๐ฎ)
March
April
12โ14 โ Try! Swift Tokyo 2026 (Tokyo ๐ฏ๐ต)
12โ14 โ Deep Dish Swift (Chicago ๐บ๐ธ)
May
18โ20 โ Swift Craft 2026 (Folkestone ๐ฌ๐ง)
19โ21 โ MAU Vegas 2026 (Las Vegas ๐บ๐ธ)
June
3โ4 โ MDevCamp 2026 (Prague ๐จ๐ฟ)
July
7โ10 โ MacAdmins Conference (State College ๐บ๐ธ)
22โ23 โ Swift Rockies 2026 (Calgary ๐จ๐ฆ)
September
7โ11 โ Swift Island 2026 (Texel ๐ณ๐ฑ)
October
7โ9 โ Next.App DevCon 2026 (Berlin ๐ฉ๐ช)
November
20โ22 โ SwiftSonic 26 (Nashville ๐บ๐ธ)
๐ Thatโs it for this week
If you enjoyed this issue of The iOS Weekly Brief, consider forwarding it to a colleague!
Until next Friday โ keep shipping ๐