Development

Theos Team announces Orion, a project to support tweak development using Swift

Many jailbreak tweak developers will be familiar with Theos, which is best described as a cross-platform suite of tools for developing software for the iOS and iPadOS platforms without the use of Xcode. The reason for Theos’ familiarity is that it has proven to be a particularly instrumental mechanism in the development of jailbreak tweaks over the years.

Just this weekend, however, the Theos team took to /r/jailbreak to announce Orion, a new and open-source DSL that will empower developers to more easily craft jailbreak tweaks using Apple’s renowned Swift programming language.

How to renew your Apple Developer Distribution Certificate

apple developer certificate icon

Action Needed: Distribution Certificate Expires in 30 Days. Your Distribution Certificate will no longer be valid in 30 days. To generate a new certificate, sign in and visit Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles.

If you've received this email from Apple and don't know what to do about it, I will walk you through the steps you need to take in order to generate a new Distribution Certificate to replace one that is set to expire soon. You may replicate these steps whether you need to renew an iOS, macOS, watchOS, or tvOS distribution certificate.

All it takes is a Mac, an internet connection, and about 5 minutes of your time.

Apple acquires developer tool startup Buddybuild

Apple has acquired Canadian startup Buddybuild, according to a blog post on the company's website. The firm has developed a "continuous integration, continuous deployment, and user feedback platform for development teams," and they will be joining the Xcode team at Apple.

Apple relaxes its controversial guidelines for template-based apps, waives dev fees for governments and nonprofits starting next year

Apple took a stance recently against cookie-cutter style apps by outright banning them from the App Store. These template-based apps were often used as ways to clone low-quality apps (any remember the onslaught of Flappy Bird lookalikes?) Unfortunately, they were also often used by small business, nonprofits, or government organizations who didn't have the resources to develop their own apps from scratch.

Apple posts Sketch and Photoshop design assets for iOS 10 development

Apple today shared new user interface resources aimed at iOS 10 development. They come in the form of ready-made design templates for Photoshop and Sketch and include a variety of other helpful assets for quickly designing iOS apps.

Apple says these resources accurately depict the full range of UIKit controls which are available in iOS 10, as well as views and glyphs to help speed up the process of constructing and designing user interfaces in iPhone, iPad and iPod touch apps.

Quiver 3: a digital notebook built for developers

Without fail, anytime I settle down to work on a programming project, a large chunk of my time is devoted to searching Google and StackOverflow for the best ways to tackle a given coding issue. Even if I haven't run into a problem per se, looking for the most efficient approach to a function or finding a snippet of code that carries out a specific purpose are just a couple reasons why I'm continuously researching whatever language with which I'm working. That's why Quiver is such a huge help to me.

Apple reminds developers of upcoming 64-bit requirement for app updates

As a reminder to developer, Apple published on its developer portal today that starting June 1, 2015, all app updates submitted to the App Store will have to include 64-bit support and be built with the iOS 8 SDK. While the move probably won't affect active developers who are already in compliance, smaller developer who haven't updated their apps for iOS 8 or 64-bit devices yet will have some catching up to do, and it's only good for us users.