The iOS Weekly Brief: Issue #84

The iOS Weekly BriefOct 30, 2026

The iOS Weekly Brief: Issue #84

Touchscreen MacBook Pro, SwiftUI view models, Xcode 27.2 JSON projects, App Store previews with Claude Code, Dynamic Type for custom fonts, iPhone Duo layouts, Maestro UI testing

Oct 30

This week I’ve been thinking about...
“You know, the first thing you think about is this, right? We thought about this years ago. We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work! Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical! It gives great demo, but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically terrible.”
Steve Jobs, Back to the Mac event, 2010
Yeah... And sixteen years later Apple ships a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen 😅
So the question is: do we need it?
I know two people who use touchscreen laptops and like them. One is my teammate who told me it felt very natural to work this way, and the other is my wife, who has one at work and says you get used to it quickly. I’ve caught her more than once trying to drag something with her finger on my MacBook screen 😬
So if you’ve already built that habit, I understand why Apple added it. For mobile developers it’s a cool feature, we can test our apps using a touchscreen right on the Mac. But a glowing Apple logo is a game-changer, because walking into a Starbucks full of glowing apples again just feels right ☺️

What’s New

Apple unveils groundbreaking MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch for the first time on Mac

Apple keeps shipping new hardware! The iMac and the 14” MacBook Pro have the new M6 chip, and the iPad mini has moved to OLED (still at 60Hz), and it starts at $699.

The primary launch is the new MacBook Pro with the 120Hz tandem OLED display, a touchscreen, the Dynamic Island, and a lighter body. Apple has also added the system gesture APIs so you can start to adapt your Mac apps for touch.

Releases

iOS 18.7.11
iOS 27.2

Must Read

What Should Go in a View Model in SwiftUI?

You can know several architectures and still not know which part of the code goes where. I agree with the idea that in MVVM a view model maps to a use case. The article collects good practices and a checklist of questions to decide what belongs in a view model.

Spoiler: nothing related to UI code 😉

Xcode 27.2: What Developers Need to Know

I think most of us have already moved to the new Xcode, and I love articles like this, where you get everything that changed in one short read. It covers the new JSON project format, its limitations, how it works for new projects, and much more.

App Store preview videos with Claude Code

I love this idea, I already used Claude to create my App Store screenshots. I recently watched a professional video editor hand all of his work to Claude through a DaVinci Resolve MCP, and the result looked better than what a junior editor would make! I’m sure Claude can handle your 30-second video of how the app works. In this article, you can see how one developer built the whole pipeline.

Quick Read

Dynamic Type for Custom Fonts in SwiftUI

Video

The iPhone Duo Layout Problem (And How to Fix It)

If you want to improve the experience for your iPhone Duo users, start with this video. It’s short but covers how ArrangementView handles every pose and the modifiers you need to customize it.

Toolbox

Maestro

I’m a big fan of end-to-end tests, and I still remember building pipelines with Appium. At work we’re now building our own custom solution because of company requirements, but I think Maestro fits most teams.