Those Who Swift - Issue 214
Your weekly dose of Swift!
Weekly note ✏️
This week’s issue is packed with hidden features, overlooked vulnerabilities, and deep dives into Apple’s architecture. In the video section, don’t miss a gripping breakdown of how Apple allegedly leaves extra room for its own apps and features to shine—often at the expense of third-party developers.
It’s a frustrating reality, even for large companies. Framework owners may claim neutrality, but many decisions seem guided more by business strategy than by user-first thinking.
Still, the tables do turn. The more transparency we gain—from researchers, developers, and investigative journalists—the more pressure mounts. Slowly but surely, even the biggest systems start to evolve, sometimes in small but meaningful ways.
Change doesn’t always come from loud announcements. Sometimes, it starts with someone noticing the little things.
Connect with the "Those Who Swift" team - Justas Markus & Anton Gubarenko 👋
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Swift Around the Web 🌐
Traps and Countermeasures for Abnormal onAppear Calls in SwiftUI
Fatbobman investigates unexpected onAppear behavior in SwiftUI, where the modifier may trigger even when a view shouldn't be visible, particularly within NavigationStack and TabView. These anomalies can lead to performance issues and unintended state changes.
Read more.📍
What's New in Swift 6.2
2 weeks in a row: Paul Hudson highlights the key enhancements in Swift 6.2, focusing on significant improvements to Swift Testing. The update introduces features like exit tests, enhancing the robustness and reliability of test suites.
Read more.📍
Coding 👨💻
Building a Serial Task Executor in Swift
This article demonstrates how to implement a serial task executor in Swift, ensuring tasks are executed sequentially. It provides a practical approach to managing asynchronous operations in a controlled, orderly manner.
Read more.📍
Using Model Context Protocol in iOS Apps
Artem Novichkov continues to show how to integrate the Model Context Protocol (MCP) into iOS applications using SwiftUI. He provides a practical example by creating a HealthKit-based MCP server that retrieves the latest blood pressure readings, and connects it to a Claude LLM-powered chat interface via the Anthropic API.
Read more.📍
Design 🎨
Customizing an App Intent
This guide explains how to customize App Intents in iOS to enhance your app's functionality with Siri and Shortcuts. It covers creating, configuring, and optimizing intents to provide seamless user interactions and automation capabilities.
Read more.📍
Other cool stuff 🧰
Complexity #5: Interfaces
Story continues: Dmitrii Ivanov explores the role of interfaces in managing software complexity, discussing how they define contracts between components while hiding implementation details. The post examines interface design tradeoffs in Swift, including protocol-oriented patterns versus concrete types, with practical examples of balancing abstraction with clarity.
Read more.📍
A Tale of Two Custom Container APIs
Danny Bolella compares two approaches to building custom container views in SwiftUI. The article highlights the evolution of SwiftUI's layout system, discussing the benefits and trade-offs of each method. It provides practical insights into creating flexible and reusable UI components using SwiftUI's latest APIs.
Read more.📍
A Privacy Mechanism That Backfired
This thought-provoking analysis examines a privacy-focused security feature that unintentionally created new vulnerabilities. Bluetooth LE prompt might be a backdoor to unentended behaviour.
Read more.📍
AI 🤖
Qwen3 with DeepResearch
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Tutorials 📒
Using Core Motion Within a SwiftUI Application
This guide demonstrates how to integrate Apple's Core Motion framework into SwiftUI apps to access device motion and sensor data. It covers setup, data handling, and practical implementations like detecting shakes or tracking orientation changes, with code examples for bridging UIKit's motion functionality to SwiftUI.
Read more.📍
Debug Crashes in iOS Using MetricKit
This article explains how to leverage MetricKit to diagnose and debug crashes in iOS apps. It provides practical steps for collecting and analyzing crash reports, power metrics, and performance data to improve app stability and user experience.
Read more.📍
Video 🎥
Apple’s Widget Backdoor
Amazing story and discovery of a backdoor made by Apple themselves and widely used by 3rd party apps. With twists and unexpected outcome…
Watch here.📍
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