Fatbobman’s Swift Weekly #037 | Entering the Era of Futures
Weekly Comment
Entering the Era of Futures
The recent launch of Claude 3.5 Sonnet has been a pleasant surprise. In use, it not only better meets my needs compared to ChatGPT 4, but also seems to have higher response efficiency. The only disappointment is that even with a Pro account, the available token count still feels insufficient.
However, just as I was feeling satisfied with Claude 3.5’s response speed, I suddenly realized that what I’m currently using is not the real-time response model that OpenAI introduced at their May conference. At the same time, the highly anticipated Sora has yet to make its public debut.
This phenomenon of “more thunder than rain” seems to have become the norm in the tech industry.
Many users have already received Microsoft’s newly released Surface Pro (AI PC), but the AI-related features showcased at its launch event won’t be delivered for at least several months. Similarly, many of the exciting new features announced at WWDC won’t be available until 2025. Tech launch events are gradually losing their core of seeking truth and practicality, instead becoming increasingly filled with a culture that prioritizes traffic and hype.
The tech industry is clearly entering an “era of futures”: flashy launch events, exciting product descriptions, and enthusiastic pursuit from the capital market form a repetitive cycle. One launch event after another constantly stimulates public nerves, with new visions quickly making people forget the content and promises of the previous event. While this phenomenon has always existed, the current scale, number of participating companies, length of delivery cycles, and low rate of promise fulfillment are all unprecedented.
Admittedly, this situation is not entirely caused by one party. In the current social environment, features and characteristics lacking explosive appeal can hardly satisfy the appetites of consumers and investors. In this game, all participants have jointly shaped this seemingly “thriving” futures market, from which it’s difficult to easily withdraw.
Although I know this trend is hard to reverse, I still hope for changes in the future. I miss those good old days when products were delivered upon release and new features were quickly available. As one of the participants in this game, consumers should perhaps re-examine our expectations and find a balance between enthusiasm and rationality. At the same time, we should also call on tech companies to return to their original intentions, focusing on actual delivery rather than merely creating hype and expectations.
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Originals
Creating Stunning Dynamic Text Effects with TextRenderer
The Text component is extremely common in SwiftUI applications. Over the past few years, despite Apple continually expanding its capabilities, developers have been eager for deeper control over this component. At WWDC 2024, SwiftUI introduced the TextRenderer protocol, granting developers new powers to adjust the rendering performance of the Text component, making it possible to achieve many previously unimaginable effects. This article will delve into this new feature.
GeometryReader: Blessing or Curse? (New onGeometryChange Section)
At WWDC 2024, SwiftUI introduced a new modifier called onGeometryChange. Compared to GeometryReader, its representation is more rational and clear. This article has been updated to include a section on how to use this modifier and provides an implementation that can be used with earlier versions of SwiftUI.
Recent Selections
Chaikin’s Algorithm In SwiftUI
Chaikin’s algorithm, by adding new points at 25% and 75% along each line segment and iteratively connecting these points, effectively smooths lines. Compared to Bézier curves, Chaikin’s algorithm offers significant advantages in simplification and efficiency, especially suitable for quick and easy smoothing processes. In this article, Aryaman Sharda provides detailed code examples on how to implement this algorithm in SwiftUI, including how to calculate control points and apply linear interpolation (lerp).
SwiftData vs Realm: Performance Comparison
In this article, Jacob Bartlett compares the performance of SwiftData and Realm frameworks in aspects such as speed, storage, and memory usage. Although Realm shows clear advantages in read-write performance in most test scenarios, as data model relationships become more complex, these advantages diminish, sometimes even reversing. The choice of framework depends on specific application scenarios, data volume, and resource constraints.
SwiftData is still in its early stages of development, and even after maturation, high performance may not be its main strength. Its design primarily focuses on balancing development convenience, clarity of declarations, consistency with the Apple ecosystem, and enhancing overall app performance.
Preparing your App Icon for dark and tinted appearance
Flora Damiano
With the update to iOS 18, app icons on the home screen will change accordingly when the system switches to dark mode and allows users to customize the tint. To ensure consistency with the system, developers are advised to provide three different variants of their app icons: light mode, dark mode, and tinted mode. Flora Damiano offers guidance and recommendations for designing new icons in this article.
Free, on-device translations with the Swift Translation API
Apple announced a new feature at WWDC24 — the Translation framework, a first-party framework built on CoreML models, allowing developers to perform free in-device translations in Swift applications. Pol Piella demonstrates how to use this framework in a simple SwiftUI application, enabling users to input text and translate it into different languages by pressing a button.
5 Strategies for Managing Image Resources Effectively in iOS
This article by Tuan Hoang explores effective strategies for managing image resources in iOS development. He points out that image resource management is an aspect often overlooked by engineers, which can significantly affect app performance and development efficiency if not properly addressed. The article shares some effective strategies his engineering team is using, which have successfully helped them reduce app size, lower memory usage, and significantly improve app performance.
WWDC 2024 Sessions
At WWDC 2024, Apple brought a plethora of exciting sessions for developers. Facing so many topics, deciding which are most worthwhile is indeed a challenge. To aid developers in making their selections, Bruno Rocha and Keith Harrison have provided their recommendations in their articles.
WWDC 2024 Viewing Guide
Recommended WWDC24 Sessions
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