The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #45
Swift goes Windows, AI speeds you up (and breaks you faster), linking choices that actually matter, and why your pickers keep surprising you in prod.
🆕 What’s New
Announcing the Windows Workgroup
Swift officially launched a Windows Workgroup for long-term platform support — toolchains, core libraries, proper Windows API interop, the whole thing. This feels different from previous attempts. It's community-led, focused, and actually looks sustainable. Swift isn't just "that Apple language" anymore, and I'm honestly curious to see where this goes.
Every week: 3 stories of how it all went wrong.
Real devs. Real failures. Real lessons.
📚 Must Read
AI App Development: What I Learned in One Month
Antoine wrote an honest post about going all-in with AI tools for app dev. Yeah, you ship fast. Really fast. But tech debt, hidden dependencies, and missing guardrails hit you even faster. His main point resonated with me: AI doesn't replace good process, it just makes your current process louder. If your setup is messy, AI will help you build mess faster. Linting, clear agent rules, early dependency checks — these matter way more now. Good reality check if you've been riding the AI hype train.
Static, Dynamic, and Mergeable Linking in Modular iOS Apps
This one breaks down linking strategies in modular projects and the real trade-offs you face with many targets, extensions, and CI pipelines. Here's what stuck with me: at scale, linking isn't some low-level compiler thing anymore. It's a product decision. It affects build times, binary size, Xcode previews, team velocity. Worth reading if your modular setup is starting to feel slow and you're wondering if SwiftPM defaults still make sense for your project.
Sharing content among apps using AppEntity and Transferable protocol
Practical walkthrough on making your app data work system-wide with AppEntity and Transferable. What I liked here is the framing: this isn't about "export" features, it's about making your app a real citizen in the Apple ecosystem. Data becomes the interface, not UI. If you care about Shortcuts, Siri, or just proper iOS integration, this is worth your time.
🛠️ Toolbox
Stop Flaky Tests from Blocking Your PRs
Flaky tests kill productivity, and with AI-generated PRs everywhere now, it's getting worse. Tuist's approach makes sense: auto-detect flakiness, quarantine those tests, keep shipping. Don't let noise block your team. If your CI feels unreliable lately, this is a practical fix worth checking out.
🍬 One More Thing…
Deep dive into SwiftUI pickers — the parts that actually break in production. Tags, identity, optional selections, picker styles that scale. The key insight: pickers are value-driven, not view-driven. Once you get that, 90% of the weird bugs make sense. Good watch, even if you think you already know pickers. Turns out most of us don't.
🗳️ Weekly Poll
📊 Last Week’s Poll Results
How do you feel about AI agents in your daily dev workflow?
Top Answer: Useful, but I stay cautious
🗓 Upcoming Conferences
February
10–12 — Arctic Conference (Oulu 🇫🇮)
March
April
12–14 — Try! Swift Tokyo 2026 (Tokyo 🇯🇵)
12–14 — Deep Dish Swift (Chicago 🇺🇸)
May
18–20 — Swift Craft 2026 (Folkestone 🇬🇧)
19–21 — MAU Vegas 2026 (Las Vegas 🇺🇸)
June
3–4 — MDevCamp 2026 (Prague 🇨🇿)
July
7–10 — MacAdmins Conference (State College 🇺🇸)
22–23 — Swift Rockies 2026 (Calgary 🇨🇦)
September
7–11 — Swift Island 2026 (Texel 🇳🇱)
October
7–9 — Next.App DevCon 2026 (Berlin 🇩🇪)
November
20–22 — SwiftSonic 26 (Nashville 🇺🇸)
👋 That’s it for this week
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Until next Friday — keep shipping 🍏