Snapp Technology
Hi folks!
New week, new workgroup - this time it’s the Windows Workgroup. We can see the trend continuing, and it seems positive. Swift’s reach keeps expanding beyond Apple platforms, making cross-platform development more accessible.
Apple released iOS 26.3 Beta 3 along with matching betas for iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS. This beta brings Transfer to Android APIs and a Notification Forwarding framework for third-party smartwatches in the EU. There’s also a new Limit Precise Location API that lets apps reduce location data granularity shared with cellular carriers on select devices.
Don’t forget - the age rating questionnaire deadline is January 31, so make sure you complete those updated App Store Connect questions to avoid submission issues. Looking ahead, mark your calendars for the SwiftUI activity on February 10 in Cupertino and Xcode 26 coding intelligence documentation on February 5.
Articles
AI/ML
AI App Development: What I Learned in One Month
Building with AI agents moves fast—but what are the hidden costs? Five critical lessons from the first month of serious AI-assisted development.
SwiftUI
Reverse masking in SwiftUI using blend modes
Need to cut transparent holes through surfaces in SwiftUI? Implement reverse masking using blend modes and compositingGroup().
Rendering Markdown in SwiftUI
SwiftUI supports Markdown out-of-the-box since iOS 15, but can you color text directly without AttributedString? Discover built-in formatting and its surprising limitations.
Swift
DebugReplaceableView and Swift 6.2’s Multiple Type Erasers
Why are Xcode Previews faster on iOS 26? Swift 6.2’s multiple type erasers enable DebugReplaceableView to hot-swap views without full rebuilds.
Copy-on-write teaches you EVERYTHING about Swift Internals 🐮
Trace isKnownUniquelyReferenced() from Standard Library through AST, SIL, and LLVM IR all the way to Swift Runtime—uncovering how CoW optimizations actually work at every compiler layer.
Concurrency
Non-Sendable First Design
Should you start with non-sendable types before adding isolation? Explore a simpler approach to Swift Concurrency design.
visionOS
I Spent Way Too Long Getting Blender Animations into Vision Pro
Struggling to get Blender animations working in Reality Composer Pro? The specific export sequence that fixes broken skeleton bindings—plus an addon to automate it.
Framework
Supporting JPEG-XL compression in Apple ProRAW Capture
Want to reduce 48MP ProRAW file sizes without sacrificing quality? Discover how to enable JPEG-XL compression in your camera app and navigate an undocumented AVFoundation API.