April 21st, 2025

For my next app, I’m rolling the dice. The existing APIs were fragmented, limited, and had crappy rate limits. So… I’m doing the thing you’re not supposed to do. I’m building my own backend and manually entering the data with CloudKit.

The data aren't terribly complex, and stitching together multiple APIs is a headache I just don't want to deal with. So I said, screw it. I’ll hand-roll my own database and manually input the info I need.

I'm either going to hate myself for this, or I'm going to feel like a genius. Ask me again in a few months.

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​Swift News - Video Version - Get my thoughts on the articles below.

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​Swift Reduce​

Antoine van der Lee introduced me to a new way to use .reduce in Swift by using the reduce(into:) variant. It's always fun to learn a new use case for a foundational topic.

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​try! Swift Tokyo Conference Videos​

This conference was only a week or two ago and they've already posted their videos on YouTube. So if you had FOMO like me, now you can at least watch the talks.

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​How to inspect .ipa files​

We've discussed before that you shouldn't store your API keys as string literals in your app. This article shows you why as it walks you through how easy it is to inspect an app's .ipa file. I recommend inspecting your own app's .ipa file to discover what sensitive information you might be leaking.

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​Are MVP's Dead?​

Number 9 in this tweet thread from Greg Isenberg says an MVP will need to be more complete due to the speed at which the idea can be copied via AI. Do you agree?

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​Apple Ads Ultimate Guide​

In this article Ariel from Appfigures walks you through how to get started with Apple Ads (formerly Apple Search Ads). Should you do Basic or Advanced? Search Match? Exact Match? Ariel's got you covered.

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​Use AI to improve productivity​

In this article, Bruno Rocha shows you how he uses AI to increase productivity as a software developer as well as why AI will not take your dev job anytime soon.

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Till next time,

Sean