the app developers guide to winning ios...

THE APP DEVELOPERS GUIDE TO WINNING IOS 8BY DAN ROWINSKI

INTRODUCTION01

pple kicked off the Mobile Revolution in 2007. At the time,

the iPhone was a curiosity, lampooned by some, praised by

others. In seven years, it has proven to be the most important

driver of technological industry growth since the inception of the

World Wide Web.

In the process, Apple has made a household name out of the

operating system for the iPhone: iOS.

It is hard to imagine now that now that iOS is part of the popular

lexicon, but it originally did not have a dedicated name. When the

first iPhone was released in July 2007, Apple just said that it ran a

version of Apple’s desktop operating system, Mac OS X. In 2008,

Apple started calling it “iPhone OS” (which subsequently led to the

debut of the Apple App Store). It wasn’t until the fourth iteration in

2010 that Apple renamed the operating system to the iconic iOS.

Here we are, the autumn of 2014, ready to dive into iOS 8.

Wrap your mind around the notion of the Mobile Revolution,

because it informs everything about iOS 8. Apple fundamentally

changed the computing paradigm with the iPhone, imagining a

world where a powerful computer was in everybody’s pocket,

connected to the Internet and easy to use.

A Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has styled the Mobile

Revolution as, “ubiquitous computing and ambient

intelligence,” as a means of describing the spread of

smartphones everywhere connected to the Internet and

the cloud. The notion of ubiquitous computing doesn’t just

stop with the smartphone, even if that is where it started.

The Mobile Revolution has pushed the bounds of hardware

and software as developers, manufacturers and engineers

have built systems that are smaller and more powerful to

increase the capabilities of these pocket-based computers.

The PC shrunk to fit into a phone. With that accomplished,

all those small and powerful components in the phone are

ready to explode like a supernova, invading every gadget

that we touch: our cars, our homes, our watches, our

televisions … everything.

We worked so hard to get the technology to fit in one

device. Might as well use it in all devices.

This is the essence of iOS 8, leading us into the Second

Phase of the Mobile Revolution.

THE APP DEVELOPERS GUIDE TO WINNING IOS 8

BIG SPLASH

BIG SPLASH

WHAT’S NEW02

WHAT’S NEW IN IOS 8?Apple has said that iOS 8 is the biggest release of iOS ever. It has more than 4,000 application

programming interfaces for developers to play with and a variety of new standards and frameworks

in which to develop iOS apps.

Since it was announced at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in June, iOS 8 has flown a

bit under the radar. iOS 8 does not have the hype of its predecessor iOS 7, where the beta release

that was meant solely for developers but saw broad downloads by millions of people because it

fundamentally changed the design and functionality of the operating system from previous versions.

This time around, no major design or user interface changes are coming to iOS 8. The iOS 8 beta

period was truly a developer release, giving iOS app builders the summer to adapt to the new

operating system before it goes public after the launch of the iPhone 6.

Apple added a variety of new tools to iOS 8. It wants to invade home automation with HomeKit.

Your health and fitness now have a new repository for data in HealthKit and the iOS Health app (not

to mention the Apple Watch, coming in early 2015). Photo storage is improving with PhotoKit and

Apple has done some big things on the backend of the entire system with iCloud and CloudKit.

The biggest and most immediate concerns for developers come in the form of App Extensions

that provide interoperability between apps, Handoff (Continuity) that shares content between Apple

devices and Adaptive Layout, which will help iOS developers build apps for the new variety of Apple

screen sizes.


03

XCODE 6: GETTING STARTED WITH IOS 8 •• If you are reading this ebook, we presume that you know a

thing or two about iOS. To develop iOS 8 apps you will need Xcode 6, which was released as a Gold

Master version ahead of the official public release of iOS 8 on September 17th. Xcode 6 includes all

the libraries and frameworks needed for both iOS and Mac OS X development and includes the iOS

Simulator and the Xcode integrated developer environment.

Here are some highlights of Xcode 6 that developers will need to become familiar with:

• N E W S W I F T P R O G R A M M I N G L A N G U A G E :

Apple released a new programming

language that it hopes will eventually

replace both C and Objective-C

languages for future iOS development.

Xcode 6 provides a playground for

developers to learn the language and

make it as easy as possible to learn,

build and debug. Xcode documentation

shows helpful hints and libraries for

when to employ Swift or Objective-C

among other helpful features to get

started with Swift.

• T E S T I N G : Xcode 6 lets developers use performance

measurement and asynchronous code testing

through an enhanced XCTest framework.

• I N T E R F A C E B U I L D E R : The iOS family now has a large

variety of screen sizes. The new Interface Builder in

Xcode 6 helps developers build apps that will work

across a range of screens and includes live rendering,

support for size classes and custom iOS fonts. More

on this in the Adaptive Layout section below.

WHAT’S NEW


04

• D E B U G G I N G : Several new debugging tools are in Xcode

6, including a “view debugging” function for debugging

visual and design problems. The queue debugging has been

enhanced with a new bug navigator. Debug gauges provide

“at-a-glance” information about resources while debugging

and includes three new gauges for network activity, file

activity and iCloud.

• I O S S I M U L A T O R : The new iOS Simulator has configurations

to keep data and configuration settings together.

• G A M E D E V E L O P M E N T : Both of Apple’s primary

game development frameworks have been

upgraded in iOS 8 including SceneKit and

SpriteKit and have new support in Xcode 6.

• H O M E K I T A C C E S S O R Y S I M U L A T O R : If you

are developing for the smart home with

iOS 8, Xcode 6 has a simulator to test on

accessories like lights or appliances.

The Xcode Server, instruments, app compiler and localization features also have new features and

enhancements. Make sure to take an in-depth look at what is new in Xcode 6 as you get started with

iOS 8 development.

WHAT’S NEW


WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO DEVELOP FOR IOS 8

Let’s break down just about everything

that you are going to need to know

to get started with iOS 8.

Note: Gaming is a huge part of the app

economy and iOS 8 development. Apple has improved

its gaming frameworks and engines with SceneKit,

SpriteKit and Metal for both casual and hardcore game

development. This book will not cover the gaming

aspects of iOS 8 as they are a separate topic that we will

tackle in the near future.

This book also not cover Swift, Apple’s new programming

language, as it is not specifically pertinent to what is

new in iOS 8 and a large topic that we will cover in

depth soon.

05

APP EXTENSIONS •• In iOS, apps have long been treated

as individual silos. You have one app for email, one app

for sports scores, one app for music. To access the data

and functionality of each of those apps, you would have to

manually switch from one to the other, like jumping from one

square to another in hopscotch. The individual app—and its

limited functions—has long been the king of iOS.

Android has never had this particular problem. Since its

inception, Android has always allowed developers to share

functionality and data between apps. The system is called

Android Intents and nearly 90% of apps in the Google Play

store employ it to one degree or another. Intents allows apps to

employ third-party (not system-level) keyboards, embed social

sharing or play music from a wholly different app. Because

of Intents, Android has long been the more egalitarian app

developer environment, making it easier to share properties

between apps.

Apple has finally awoken up to this subtle but important

difference of iOS to Android and is set to remedy it in iOS 8.

Dubbed “App Extensions,” iOS 8 apps are about to get a lot

more integrated with each other and the operating system.

DEVELOPMENT


06

EXTENSION POINTS •• Both iOS and Mac OS X have

a variety of different kinds of App Extensions.

Each of these extensions is connected to an aspect

of the operating system. According to Apple’s

documentation, each “system area that supports

extensions is called an extension point. Each

extension point defines usage policies and provides

APIs that you use when you create an extension for

that area.”

When building applications for iOS 8, it will be

important to note that extensions can expand an

app’s functionality outside of its own walls, to

various points of the operating system. This can

help reinforce users behavior and usage of the

app, providing interesting and useful information

outside of the app’s central silo.

Seven different types of app extensions exist within iOS and

Mac OS X:

• T O D A Y : An update or task in the Today section of the drop

down Notification Center.

• S H A R E : Share content with other apps or to a website.

• A C T I O N : View or employ content within another app.

• P H O T O E D I T I N G : Edit a photo or a video in the native iOS

Photos application (iOS only).

• F I N D E R : Show information about file synchronization in the

Finder (Mac OS X only).

• D O C U M E N T P R O V I D E R : Access and manage a set of files

(iOS only).

• C U S T O M K E Y B O A R D : Replace the native iOS keyboard with

a third-party keyboard (iOS only).

An app can employ one or more extension points, depending

on what type of functionality it seeks.

DEVELOPMENT


A CONTAINER FOR EXTENSIONS •• An extension is not an

app, though it does have its own binary that gets written

and rendered to the operating system. Apps that contain

multiple extensions are referred to as “container apps” and

developers will need to build and design some custom user

interface elements for each extension point that an app will

provide.

This is where it can get slightly confusing. Developers will

need to submit these containing apps to Apple separately

from their primary apps (defined as “host apps”) even though

the container apps will ultimately be served to the user in a

single app downloaded from the App Store.

The benefit of the container app is that once a user downloads

an app that has extensions in it, that functionality will live

across the operating system.

07 DEVELOPMENT


WIDGETS (IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING) •• Since Apple detailed

the broad strokes of iOS 8 at its World Wide Developer

Conference in June, people have spoken in gushing tones

that iOS is finally getting “widgets.”

The idea of widgets has Apple fans tittering about finally

getting Android-styled apps that automatically update and

function from the home screen. If iOS users are expecting

these kinds of widgets, they are going to be disappointed.

The widgets in iOS 8 are actually called “Today” extensions

because they live in the Notification Center of iOS 8. The

Today extension points will act like a widget, but only in the

Today menu item. That means that users won’t be able to

download a live-style “widget” like lives on the home screen,

like they would on Android with the likes of the Facebook,

Google Now, Evernote or Spotify widgets.

08 DEVELOPMENT


09

INTENTS & PURPOSES •• If the Today extension is Apple’s

version of Android or Windows Phone-style mobile widgets,

the Action and Share extensions are essentially the equivalent

of Android Intents.

Action extensions help users manipulate a piece of content

with an app. For instance, Action extensions can help a user

edit a piece of text in a text-editor app. Action extensions are

dependent on the type of content that is being manipulated

and will not work with different types of content they are

not specified for (a text extension won’t work on a video

etc.). In iOS 8, Action extensions can assists users in viewing

a document in a type way and will always appear as an action

sheet or a full-screen modal view.

The Share extension is exactly what it sounds like: it allows

users to share content between apps and websites. The Share

extension is Apple’s way of opening iOS 8 and Mac OS X to

all types of sharing apps and behaviors. Previously, only apps

like Facebook and Twitter could do this on iOS as they were

natively baked into the platform. Now all social apps can

have the same native functions across the operating system

that Facebook already does.

A STEP INTO ANDROID’S REALM•• Extensions are

going to be a massive boon to iOS developers, if a

little bit of a headache. The additional container

app that defines what extensions are used and

where they point is going to be painful for

developers. At the same time, if you app needs

additional capabilities but the development team

does not have the time or expertise to build it,

iOS 8 extensions can be immensely helpful.

iOS Extensions allow iPhone and iPads to have

one of the most-requested features that has long

been Android specific: third party keyboards.

With the coming of iOS 8, the likes of SwiftKey

and Swype from Nuance will be available to all

apps on iPhones and iPads.

DEVELOPMENT


10

ADAPTIVE LAYOUT, CLASS SIZES AND THE IPHONE 6 •• The iPhone

6 and iPhone 6 Plus comes in two sizes—4.7-inches and

5.5-inches, respectively. Design layout for iOS 8 is still simpler

than the thousands of different varieties and sizes of Android

devices, but iOS design is not as easy as it used to be.

Even before new screen sizes for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6

Plus, iOS screen sizes currently in consumers’ hands range in

form from 3.5-inches, 4-inches, 7.9-inches and 9.7-inches. Add

in two more display sizes and iOS design becomes just a little

more complicated.

Adaptive Layout was introduced in iOS 7 and is being expanded

upon with new size classes in iOS 8 that allow for designers

to create a single layout that translates to both the iPad and

iPhone. Instead of creating an entirely new storyboard for the

iPad, designers can now choose between regular class size

(iPad) or compact (iPhone). Apple says that every size device

with have a designated size class.

Going back to what’s new in Xcode 6, iOS 8 now allows

development for different screen size classes. Apple refers to

this as unified storyboards for universal apps. Developers can

DEVELOPMENT

now take their Storyboard and .xib

files can be used for all of Apple’s

different sizes and orientations,

including the new wide-view

orientation in the iPhone 6 and

iPhone 6 Plus. The Interface Builder

in Xcode will allow developers

to build the iOS app with core

components that will be in place

for every screen size and then do

custom design work to fit certain

screen size differences within the

iOS device lineup.

Each dimension of an iOS 8 app can either be compact—

such as the horizontal of an iPhone landscape—or compact

such as the height or width of an iPad. Interface Builder in

Xcode will be able to handle size classes and dimensions

without much additional work for the developer, in theory.

The auto layout has proven to still be a headache for

some developers and will choose to perform the layouts

programmatically.


11

ASPECT RATIO, RESOLUTION AND THE NEW USER EXPERIENCE

Apple has finally broken out of its mold and listened to what

people want. Consumers want bigger screens on smartphones.

Thus, mobile app developers want bigger screens on because

that is what consumers want.

Well, Apple has delivered.

The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch screen with a 4.7-inch, 1334-by-

750 screen that translates to 326 pixels-per-inch (ppi). Good

news for developers, this is the exact same pixel count as the

iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S and iPad Mini with

Retina Display.

The iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch screen with a 1920-by-1080

resolution with 401-ppi. The new pixels-per-inch count will be

what developers are going to focus on because it is this metric

that will directly affect what their existing apps will look like

on larger screens. To this end, Apple has created a desktop-

class scaler in the Xcode integrated developer environment to

deal with all the new screen sizes and (limited) pixel variation

among iOS devices. Apple also employs the Adaptive Layout

feature introduced in iOS 7 (and advanced in iOS 8) to help

developers make apps that fit any of its device sizes.

More good news for developers, Apple has stayed consistent

with the aspect ratio of the iPhone with the new models,

continuing its use of 16:9 it introduced in the iPhone 5.

Previous versions of the iPhone had 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratios.

New form factors mean more opportunities for developers.

When Apple released the iPad, many developers created

whole new apps for the larger screen, with entirely new

user experiences. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus offer

developers a means of taking advantage of new screen real

estate and new an interesting ways while the universal

storyboards allow them to keep the core elements of an

app the same across size classes.

The iPhone 6 Plus especially presents new challenges

to app designers. Apple seemingly has coined the term

“reachability” for the ability to handle the 5.5-inch screen

with one hand. That means that apps designers will want to

place button and action objects at the corners of their apps,

as opposed to the center where it will be difficult to reach

with a thumb. The iPhone 6 Plus will also have the ability

for apps to have a custom-designed landscape orientation

for each app.

DEVELOPMENT


12

TOUCH ID•• Apple has opened the Touch ID biometric authentication fingerprint

sensor to third-party developers in iOS 8. Consumers do not have to worry

that third-party developers (who may not always be the most upstanding of

digital citizens) are accessing their fingerprints as all of the biometric data will

be stored and sandboxed on the iPhone and not in iCloud or on third-party

developer servers.

Apple has a new item in the iOS Keychain to work with TouchID. iOS 8 also has

a new “LocalAuthentication” framework to work with Touch ID which can also

be provisioned for iOS devices that do not have Touch ID.

Apple has taken data security very seriously with Touch ID, which is one of the

reasons that it did not open up the development standard when it was introduced

with the iPhone 5S in 2013. After a year of watching how users employ Touch ID,

Apple is ready to take the training wheels off, to a certain extent, to the third-

party developer community.

Developers that deal with sensitive data might be keen on employing the new

Touch ID framework for access to apps. Banks and financial processors could

be keen on Touch ID for both internal and external purposes as well as health

insurers and healthcare professionals. Touch ID with a PIN number has the

potential to be a real-world version of two-factor authentication for data-

sensitive apps.

DEVELOPMENT


13 DEVELOPMENT

HANDOFF (CONTINUITY) •• After the various new user

interface features that people will experience with App

Extensions in iOS 8, the next most visible and viable feature

will be Continuity, also known as Handoff.

Handoff enables users to seamlessly transition the use of

one app to another device. For instance, if you are reading

this article on your Mac, you can shift it to your iOS device

that is signed into the same iCloud account. Other Apple

apps like Maps, Mail, Contacts, Note, Calendar etc. can take

advantage of Continuity.

Third-party developers will be able to implement Continuity

in iOS 8 as well with the object in the NSUserActivity class

in the iOS Foundation. APIs found in the UIKit and AppKit in

iOS will support some functions of Handoff as well.

Handoff is for those people that love their Apple

devices. They own an iMac and a MacBook, an iPad and

an iPhone. Probably and Apple TV as well. Their cars

will eventually be CarPlay enabled and they absolutely

can’t wait for the inevitable iWatch. That’s a lot of

iStuff. Handoff is Apple’s plan to connect all of it with

seamless transitions from one to the other.

Engagement and user retention is always of tantamount

importance to developers and app publishers. How to

get people to open your app more and spend more

time in it? Handoff could be one of the answers to that

questions, giving users the ability to never truly leave

and app, but rather just hand it off from one Apple

device to the next as they go through their days.


14

SIRI •• Apple’s digital voice assistant Siri does not have any significant

upgrades in iOS 8. From a consumer perspective, Siri has a couple new

features including touchless activation dubbed, “Hey Siri” which wakes

Siri up for queries such as weather, Web search or sports scores.

Siri has better voice recognition and can help set reminders, make

calendar dates or keep notes. Siri now has native integration with

Facebook and Twitter and can open apps with voice commands. Siri can

also take dictation for emails or texts and has been integrated for “eyes

free” driving with voice commands in Apple’s CarPlay.

Siri has also been integrated into new databases in iOS 8 including

Fandango, restaurants information and local search. Siri also has

Shazam-like functionality where it can listen to a song and tell you the

album and artist.

DEVELOPMENT


15

APPLE PAY •• Apple thinks it can do what no company in the United

States has yet been able to do: gain mass consumer and retail adoption

of mobile payments. Combined with its Passbook apps, Apple’s ambition

is to be the de facto mobile wallet that will replace consumers credit

cards once and for all.

We’ve heard this before.

Google tried to go down this road before with Near Field Communications

and the Google Wallet. Google reportedly spent upwards of half-a-

billion dollars to break into the payments industry and in the end was

left with little traction and low consumer and retail adoption. PayPal,

Square, LevelUp and other companies have long tried to break down

the mobile payments door and have had varying degrees of success but

nothing approaching a revolution in payments.

From a practical standpoint, Apple’s new mobile payments system is

not specifically related to iOS 8, but rather the NFC-enabled iPhone 6

and iPhone 6 Plus. Apple Pay will be available to the iPhone 5S, iPhone

5C and iPhone 5 through the Apple Watch when it becomes available

in 2015.

Apple Pay will come with three layers of security, starting with the

Secure Element chip that sandboxes all payments data on the iPhone 6

and iPhone 6 Plus. A secure element chip is fairly standard in all forms

of NFC payments and is no different in the iPhone. The second layer of

security is that the iPhone obfuscates the actual card

number of the credit card being stored in Apple Pay

and replaces it with an iPhone-only account number

so that the actual credit card number is never stored

directly on the iPhone.

The third element ties up the first two in that Apple

does not share the actual card information (name,

credit card number etc.) with the merchant but creates

a one-time payment number for each purchase which

is verified through Apple Pay’s partnerships on the

backend of the transactions, such as the issuing bank

and payment processor like Visa or MasterCard.

Enterprises, retail stores and any player in the

commerce and sales industry is going to want to

keep track of how well Apple penetrates the mobile

payments business. If Apple is able to make mobile

payments a commonplace practice through Apple Pay,

then the entire industry in the U.S. will have to adjust

to the new paradigm. It will not happen overnight,

but monitoring the progression and adoption of Apple

Pay will be essential for all companies and developers

going forward.

DEVELOPMENT


THE KITS16

THE KITSThe frameworks and software developer kits in iOS are

where we will see where iOS 8 breaks out of the iPhone

and iPad and into everyday aspects of our lives.


17

HEALTHKIT •• Apple wants all of your fitness and health related data.

Health and fitness are going to be the primary selling points for the Apple

Watch when it is released in early 2015. The Apple Watch will come

with a variety of healthy apps that help track calories and activity and

dedicated workout apps. Apple will accompany this with the upgraded

M8 motion coprocessor in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus which will

also be open to developers through iOS 8.

HealthKit is a developer framework that lives in the Core Services Layer

of iOS 8 and provides developers the ability to read and write health

data to a central app (iOS Health) on iPhones and iPads. Data is stored

and secured in the Health app and users have the ability to decide which

data is shared with the app.

HealthKit is essentially a secure data repository for

health and fitness data from third-party apps and

accessories in iOS 8. Dig into HealthKit documentation

and you will essentially find a tutorial in how to store

and retrieve this health data sandboxed on the iPhone.

From the fitness side of the equation, developers

like RunKeeper or Runtastic can choose to push

user health information to the Health app through

HealthKit. HealthKit also allows for Bluetooth and

Wi-Fi connectivity for health accessories and APIs for

collecting and storing health information, like blood

glucose levels and blood pressure.

HealthKit offers an array of opportunities to build

healthcare apps, but its implementation is not without

obstacles. The Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has long been a

limiting factor in health software development. HIPAA

controls the flow of personally identifiable information

to a “covered entity” such as health care provider or

insurance company. Apple has reportedly met with

the FDA and Office of the National Coordinator for

Health Information Technology (ONC) to determine

the HIPAA compliance of HealthKit.

THE KITS


HOMEKIT •• Have you ever envisioned your iPhone as the

remote control for you life? You can use it to come home

and turn up the heat your apartment, turn on the lights, set

the home security system, turn on some music and set the

oven to preheat? This is where HomeKit (mixed with certain

other iOS 8 functions like Handoff) will come in handy.

HomeKit is located in the Core Services Layer of iOS 8

and provides the hierarchy for how developers can create

capabilities through the iPhone and iPad that control various

aspects of your home.

Three major functions can be controlled via HomeKit:

18

• The ability to discover accessories

and add them to a persistent, cross-

device database.

• Display, edit and act upon

connected home data and content.

• Communicate with accessories and

allow them to perform actions (like

turning on the lights).

THE KITS


19

The data containment of HomeKit-enabled configuration is centered on locations

within a house or an apartment. It works on a hierarchy of areas in the house where

an accessory is located and has an app that can control it.

Here’s the hierarchy of data classes for HomeKit:

• H O M E S : The top-level container that represents what could be considered a single

home. Homes contain data for either single dwellings or a set of single dwellings (like

a vacation cottage and a suburban house).

• R O O M S : An optional part of homes that a user designates by name. Apple uses the

example of rooms for when a user might like to say, “Siri, turn on the kitchen lights.”

• A C C E S S O R I E S : These are the actual gadgets that are equipped in homes and placed in

rooms and tend to be home automation devices like lights or a garage door opener.

• S E R V I C E S : What an accessory actually does and can be controlled by the user. This is

where app developers will tap into the appropriate APIs to make accessories perform

a function.

• Z O N E S : The ability to group rooms into categories and perform actions on that group.

For instance, the ability to turn off all the lights upstairs.

THE KITS


20

PHOTOS FRAMEWORK•• Apple did much of its photo and image improvement work in iOS 7,

so the new Photos framework in iOS 8 is a little light on heavy-hitting features. Native photo

and video editing in the iOS camera app is handled by the Photos App Extension.

The new Photos framework in iOS 8 provides an alternative to the Assets Library framework.

The Photos framework provides APIs for handling how images are handled in iCloud and

provides a “thread-safe architecture” for acquiring and caching photos.

Apple has also given the camera app more granular control by the user, such as the ability

to manually control settings, like white balance and focus. Improved camera functionality in

iOS 8 and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus also include the ability to determine if a photos

is captured in HDR (High Dynamic Range, a software function for increasing photo quality),

improved image stabilization in the iPhone 6 Plus, the ability to capture photos in higher

resolution and a new auto-focus feature.

THE KITS


21

CLOUDKIT•• Apple’s relationship with cloud technology has been

tenuous at best over the last couple of years. CloudKit is Apple’s attempt

to give iOS developers a full backend suite of cloud capabilities. At its

most basic level, CloudKit is the pipes that iOS data travels upon in

this new framework, allowing developers to securely store and retrieve

iCloud data within their apps.

CloudKit is almost a “backend-as-a-service” type of integration, like

Kinvey or Parse have become for mobile middleware, but without the

full service stack of many third-party services. CloudKit will be helpful

to developers that do not employ backend technicians as it will help

develop apps without having to learn server-side logic.

At its most basic level, CloudKit provides a service for managing

transfer of data from an app to Apple’s iCloud servers. All data is saved

as “Records” in CloudKit that places value on individual objects of data

for transfer, organization and management. Cloudkit basically means

that many developers don’t have to have a server to save state across

devices anymore.

THE KITS


22

While fragmentation is a concept often associated with the Android Operating System,

elements are starting to slip into iOS. The new testing matrix for iOS is growing ever

more complicated to account for variations in processors, screen sizes, resolutions

and sensors. What looks great on the screen of an iPhone 4S may appear jagged and

empty on an iPhone 6 Plus. A game that takes advantage of new frameworks such as

Metal may run flawlessly on an iPhone 6, but crawl to a halt on an iPad 2.

In addition to the new emulators and automation bots available in Xcode 6 it is

important to test on real devices in real locations. Testing in the wild, with professional

testers, will help you discover edge cases and unexpected behaviors that your end

users are likely to encounter when your apps leave your test lab. And with the new

screen real estate available in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, you’ll want to perform

a usability study to understand how your users expect to interact with your app in

these new form factors.

TESTING YOUR APPS

TESTING YOUR APPS FOR IOS 8


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The company is headquartered near Boston, with offices

in Cambridge, San Mateo, Seattle, Germany, Israel and

Poland – with resellers serving dozens of international

markets. Since launching as uTest in 2008, Applause

has raised more than $80 million in funding, generated

triple-digit revenue growth annually, made consecutive

Inc. 500 appearances and was named the 7th Most

Promising Company in America by Forbes in 2014.

http://www.applause.com/testing-services

http://www.applause.com/functional-testing

http://www.applause.com/usability-testing

http://www.applause.com/localization-testing

http://www.applause.com/load-testing

http://www.applause.com/security-testing

http://www.applause.com/app-quality-tools

http://www.applause.com/mobile-sdk

http://www.applause.com/mobile-analytics

http://www.applause.com/360-degree-app-quality-dashboard

http://www.applause.com/360-degree-app-quality-dashboard

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