This week I’ve been thinking about...
Since my first iOS device, I have always installed iOS beta versions because I wanted to gain new experiences that nobody else had yet. There is an interesting moment when iOS was released to everyone, and for me, this version had already gotten boring 😅
That’s why I keep going with betas: if I don’t install the beta, I end up sitting on one version longer than everyone else.
What’s cool is that Apple made betas public a long time ago, since before you needed a developer account to install them. And I can tell that when you pay for a developer account just because you need to install a new beta, willingly or not, you start thinking, maybe I should start developing some software, since I’m already paying for it, right?
Anyway, a new beta came out again this week, and the release is coming soon. I hope you’ve prepared all your apps. You install betas too, because you’re software engineers, and you must be sure your users get a good user experience.
In this issue, a few topics are available in beta, so I’d strongly recommend checking them out before the release. Once everything is out, you’ll be armed with new tools and new capabilities to make your software development process even better than it was before.

What’s New

Changes for apps in the European Union

Apple is releasing new terms for developers in the EU, you should check this out.

Believe me or not, but I think Apple deserves that commission. Without the App Store many of us wouldn’t have a way to make money from an app. Apple gives you the platform and handles the payment infrastructure, it’s worth something anyway.

I’m curious about the 5% commission on transactions that are outside Apple’s systems... Tracking purchases without touching App Store infrastructure sounds like a hard problem to solve 🤔

Releases

iOS 27.0 beta 6

Must Read

Swift Structs: Why Apple Chooses Value Types Over Classes

A great breakdown of the difference between structs and classes with every nuance and use case: mutating methods, computed properties, property observers, etc.

Swift Testing explained with code examples

For our project, we started migrating to Swift Testing, and it’s been cool so far. Apple lets both frameworks live in the same target, it means you migrate when you want and what you want. For example, I use Swift Testing for new tests and convert old ones whenever I have time. No pressure to do it all at once.

The framework is easy to pick up and well documented. I recommend you take a look at this tutorial, it walks through the key concepts you need to get started.

iOS 27: StateReporter

With iOS 27, you will get a framework that allows you to attach application state to performance diagnostics. MetricKit and Instruments will tell you what your app was doing during a hang. That’s cool, because now you don’t need to guess between a suspicious interval and your own signposts.

Quick Read

Responding to geometry changes in SwiftUI

.onGeometryChange(for: Bool.self) { geometry in
    // Derive only the boolean we need, not the raw size
    geometry.size.height > geometry.size.width
} action: { usesVerticalLayout in
    // Called only when the result differs from before
    self.usesVerticalLayout = usesVerticalLayout
}

iOS 26: Data Detector

for await match in text.dataDetectorMatches([.emailAddress]) {
    if case let .emailAddress(email) = match.details {
        print(email.emailAddress)
    }
}

Video

Device Hub Explained - What Every Apple Developer Should Know

As I mentioned before, this whole resizable simulator thing feels like a hint at some new iPhone form factor, will see see where that goes soon! In the meantime, DeviceHub has a lot of useful features, and this video walks through all of them well.

Toolbox

Obsidian

I use Obsidian for my daily notes, weekly worklogs, performance reviews, etc. I also connect it with Claude Code, it allows you to find and add information fast. If you are not using a proper notes app yet, check this out.

iOS Job Market (USA)

69 new iOS positions this week (+3% vs last week · +138% vs last month)

Senior / Mid / Junior — 25% / 75% / 0%
Most wanted skills: SwiftUI 49% · UIKit 28% · MVVM 13% · Core Data 9%

This week’s picks:

iOS Engineer II at Expedia Group (Chicago, IL) — SwiftUI-based codebase powering one of the world’s largest travel booking platforms; mid-level scope covering features, performance, and quality across a high-traffic production app. Salary $111K–$155.5K → Apply

Nuuly iOS Engineer at Nuuly (Philadelphia, PA) — SwiftUI + UIKit stack with unit testing explicitly required; Nuuly is URBN’s clothing subscription rental service, shipping to hundreds of thousands of subscribers on a pure iOS consumer product → Apply

Member of Technical Staff, iOS at Mercor (San Francisco, CA) — SwiftUI codebase deeply embedded with AI throughout the stack; Mercor is an AI-powered hiring platform. Salary $130K–$400K → Apply

Weekly Poll

📊 Last Week’s Poll Results
Do you use Git Worktree in your workflow?
Top Answer: Yes

Upcoming Conferences

September

7–11 — Swift Island 2026 (Texel 🇳🇱)
17–18 — NSSpain XIV (Logroño 🇪🇸)
29–2 — MacSysAdmin (Gothenburg 🇸🇪)

October

November

2–3 — Swift Connection (Paris 🇫🇷)
10–12 — Do iOS 2026 (Amsterdam 🇳🇱)
19–20 — Swift Bharat (Mumbai 🇮🇳)
20–22 — SwiftSonic 26 (Nashville 🇺🇸)

February 2027

16–18 — ARCTIC Conference (Oulu 🇫🇮)

March 2027

2–4 — try! Swift Tokyo 2027 (Tokyo 🇯🇵)
16–18 — Appdevcon 2027 (Amsterdam 🇳🇱)

The iOS Weekly Brief

The iOS Weekly Brief – Issue #74