Fatbobman's Swift Weekly #080
Shorter Validity, Longer Shelf Life
Shorter Validity, Longer Shelf Life
Last Monday, my blog experienced a brief outage due to an expired HTTPS certificate. Thankfully, within five minutes of the issue, an attentive reader notified me about the problem. After contacting my cloud service provider, we discovered the outage was caused by a bug in their automated SSL certificate renewal system. Following two hours of troubleshooting, the issue was resolved, and my website returned to normal operation.
Currently, my blog uses an automated renewal SSL certificate provided by my cloud service provider, valid for 90 days. However, following the approval of the SC-081v3 proposal, the validity period for SSL/TLS certificates has officially been reduced to just 47 days. Although it will still take some time before this measure becomes mandatory, we can reasonably expect that major cloud service providers and tech giants will proactively adopt the new standard, effectively forcing website administrators and ordinary users to adjust to this new reality.
This drastic reduction in certificate validity not only increases workloads for system administrators and users alike, but also directly affects consumers’ preferences when choosing service providers. For example, the image CDN service I currently use still lacks a free and reliable auto-renewal solution and fails to integrate smoothly with Let's Encrypt's automatic renewal mechanism. If the provider does not offer an effective solution in the coming months, chances are high that I will have to switch providers.
Although shorter SSL/TLS certificate validity periods might have legitimate security justifications, certificates are not the only things facing accelerated lifecycles. The hardware and software surrounding us are also being updated and replaced at ever-faster rates. Even today’s most popular intelligent electric vehicles, constrained by battery life and chip performance, have significantly shorter operational lifespans compared to traditional fuel-powered cars, increasingly resembling the upgrade cycles of consumer electronics. This trend may not be the future most consumers desire.
Interestingly, as our digital world sees ever-shortening validity periods, certain products in the physical world, particularly fruits, seem to be gaining unusually long shelf lives. Due to rapid advancements in modern warehousing technology and global logistics networks, buyers and distributors increasingly favor new varieties of fruits that last longer in storage and transport. Consequently, farmers have been pushed to abandon traditional varieties in favor of these sturdier, "durable" alternatives. These fruits, growing ever more visually appealing and resistant to spoilage, unfortunately, have gradually lost the unique taste and distinctive character we fondly remember from childhood. It is becoming increasingly difficult to experience that simple yet genuine flavor again.
In our rapidly changing world, whether it’s the shortened validity of certificates or the lengthened shelf life of fruits, both reflect how technology and commerce continually reshape our daily lives. As developers, we deeply appreciate the necessity of agile iteration and rapid updates; yet as consumers, we continue to value products that withstand the test of time. Amidst constant change, preserving our right to choose and our insistence on quality remains both precious and essential.
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Originals
My Hopes for Xcode
With rapid advancements in AI, it appears that the era of low-code or even no-code development is imminent. However, over the past year, rather than diminishing, various tools for professional developers have emerged continually. Can Xcode still capture developers' enthusiasm? What changes does it need to stay competitive and relevant? In this article, I will outline several key improvements I hope to see in Xcode.
【Tip】How to Test Core Data Code in VSCode/Cursor
Recent Recommendations
SwiftUI Colors – Exploring Overlooked Features
In SwiftUI, Color is more than just a literal color value. It conforms to the ShapeStyle protocol and shares a rendering pipeline with Shape, which gives it unique capabilities not commonly found in other frameworks. In this article, Gabriel Theodoropoulos showcases several often-overlooked but powerful features of Color, such as hierarchical color levels, built-in gradients, color mixing, and both inner and drop shadows. With just a few lines of code, you can achieve rich visual effects. When building visual hierarchy or polishing interface details, consider reaching for these built-in tools first.
Crafting a Better Snapping Experience for Sliders
Apple introduced a new camera control button on the iPhone 16, enabling users to zoom the camera more smoothly via physical input. As the developer of the third-party camera app PhotonCam, Weichao Deng set out to replicate the smooth zooming slider experience from the native iOS Camera app—featuring discrete scale markers, white-highlighted key stops, and a snapping interaction that gently locks the slider to key values. In this post, Deng walks through the implementation details and the algorithm powering that experience. If you're designing sliders with snapping behavior, this article offers practical insights and techniques.
Thinking of WWDC
A thoughtful and personal warm-up for WWDC, best read with a quiet mind. Daniel Steinberg reflects on how developers are becoming more sidelined at WWDC—from limited access and shifting priorities to the overhead new UI changes could bring. He also shares what he's keeping an eye on: App Intents, SwiftData, SwiftUI, Swift 6, and Swift Testing. The piece ends with a call for Swift to grow beyond Apple’s walls, suggesting the creation of an independent foundation and community-led developer conference.
Alerts in iOS: Simple but Tricky
System alerts are one of the most common UI components in iOS. They may look simple, but are filled with subtle design decisions: button order, roles, color usage—getting these wrong can confuse users. In this article, Nikita Ermolenko walks through proper .alert usage in SwiftUI, closely referencing Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and calling out common mistakes. This is a highly practical UI guide that not only encourages developers to follow the platform conventions, but also highlights SwiftUI’s current limitations in achieving consistent design.
Swift Reduce: Combining Elements Into a Single Value
A fundamental part of Swift’s functional programming toolkit, reduce helps you transform a collection into a single value. While its most common use is summing numbers, its power extends much further. In this article, Antoine van der Lee explains both reduce and reduce(into:) through clear examples, demonstrating their use in building dictionaries, counting occurrences, and flattening nested arrays. An essential read for those looking to deepen their understanding of Swift’s expressive capabilities.
Tools
XcodeBuild MCP
Developed by Cameron Cooke, XcodeBuild MCP is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server designed to provide a standardized interface for Xcode operations, specifically for AI assistants and automation clients. It supports project builds, deployments, simulator control, and more—eliminating the fragility of traditional CLI scripting and enabling agents to interact with iOS/macOS projects reliably and efficiently.
Swift Regex
Created by Kishikawa Katsumi, Swift Regex is a developer tool that converts traditional regular expressions into Swift’s native RegexBuilder syntax, complete with real-time preview and evaluation. In a recent update, it added debugging features that let developers step through Swift Regex operations to analyze backtracking behavior—especially useful when fine-tuning complex regex in Swift-native contexts.
更短的有效期和更长的保质期
在上周一，我的博客的 HTTPS 证书出现了短暂的失效。好在失效后五分钟，就有热心网友提醒了我。联系云服务商后发现，是对方处理 SSL 证书自动续签的代码出现了故障。经过两个小时的排查，问题得以解除，网站恢复了正常。
目前博客使用的是云服务商提供的 90 天自动续签证书。随着 SC-081v3 提案 的通过，SSL/TLS 证书的有效期被正式缩短为 47 天了。虽然全面实施仍需时日，但可以预料，各大云服务商与科技巨头必然会提前“积极响应”，迫使广大网站管理员和普通用户被动接受这一现实。
证书有效期的大幅缩水，带来的不仅是系统运维人员和用户工作量的增加，更可能直接影响人们选择服务商时的倾向。比如我现在使用的图片 CDN 服务，至今未提供免费且有效的自动续签方案，也不能轻松整合 Let's Encrypt 自动续签机制。如果未来几个月它依旧无法给出合理方案，我大概率将不得不挥手告别。
SSL/TLS 证书缩短有效期也许有其安全上的合理性，然而不止证书，我们周围的软硬件也在以越来越快的速度更新迭代。即便是当前最火的智能电动车，也因电池寿命和芯片算力的限制，实际使用寿命远低于传统燃油汽车，逐渐向消费类电子产品的更新节奏靠拢。这种趋势，也未必是普通消费者真正期待看到的未来。
耐人寻味的是，在数字世界的“有效期”越缩越短的同时，现实生活中许多本应新鲜短暂的商品却反而拥有了更长的“保质期”，尤其是水果。得益于现代化仓储技术和全球物流网络的飞速发展，采购商与经销商们倾向于耐储存和耐运输的新品种，反过来迫使果农放弃传统品种，种植更加“持久耐用”的水果。这些水果外观越来越精美，耐储存能力越来越强，却也渐渐失去了童年记忆里独特的风味和模样，想要再次品味那种单纯的美味，已变得越来越困难。
在这个快速变迁的世界里，无论是更短的证书有效期还是更长的水果保质期，都折射出技术与商业如何重塑我们的生活。作为开发者，我们深谙敏捷迭代与快速更新的重要性；而作为消费者，我们依然渴望能拥有一些经得起时间考验的东西。在不断适应变化的同时，保有选择的自由和对品质的坚持，也显得尤为珍贵和重要。
如果您发现这份周报或我的博客对您有所帮助，可以考虑通过 爱发电，Buy Me a Coffee 支持我的创作。
原创
我所希望的 Xcode
随着 AI 能力的快速提高，低代码甚至无代码的时代似乎即将到来。然而，过去一年间，针对专业开发者的各类编程工具并未减少，反而层出不穷。无论是 AI 辅助编程的突破，还是协作、跨平台能力的持续提升，都在证明着专业开发者仍是不可或缺的重要群体。反观苹果生态，作为最重要的开发工具，Xcode 近年来却未能带来真正令人振奋的改变。在这篇文章中，我将分享自己对未来 Xcode 的几点期望。
【小贴士】如何在 VSCode/Cursor 中测试 Core Data 代码
近期推荐
探索 SwiftUI Color 特性 (SwiftUI Colors – Exploring Overlooked Features)
在 SwiftUI 中，Color 并不只是字面意义上的颜色。它符合 ShapeStyle 协议，且在底层与 Shape 共享渲染管线，这让 SwiftUI 的 Color 拥有了其他架构中少见的能力。在本文中，Gabriel Theodoropoulos 展示了 Color 视图中一些常被忽略但非常实用的特性：多级颜色、内建渐变、颜色混合和内外阴影。只需简洁的代码，即可实现丰富的视觉效果。在构建视觉层次或提升界面细节感时，不妨优先考虑这些内建特性。
🪜 打造更自然顺手的滑块吸附体验 (Crafting a Better Snapping Experience for Sliders)
苹果在 iPhone 16 上引入了相机控制按钮，使用户能够以物理方式实现更顺畅的相机缩放体验。作为第三方拍照应用的开发者，Weichao Deng 希望在 PhotonCam 中还原类似 iOS 相机 App 的缩放滑块体验： 滑块轨道上标示离散的缩放比例，其中关键比例以白色高亮显示；当黄色滑块靠近这些关键比例时会自动吸附（snap），且需要更大幅度的拖动才能脱离吸附状态。在本文中，Deng 分享了他为实现这种吸附体验所采用的实现方式和背后的算法。如果你也在设计带有吸附交互的滑块组件，文中所提出的思路或许值得参考。
关于 WWDC 的一些想法 (Thinking of WWDC)
这是一篇兼具情感与思考的 WWDC 热身文，适合静下心来读一读。Daniel Steinberg 在文中记录了他对 WWDC 的观察与感受——从大会中“开发者”的角色逐渐被边缘化，到传闻中的新 UI 可能给工作带来的额外负担；也谈到了他目前关注的技术栈：App Intents、SwiftData、SwiftUI、Swift 6 和 Swift Testing 等等。文章最后，Daniel 呼吁让 Swift 从苹果的附属品中走出，设立真正开放的基金会与开发者大会。
iOS 弹窗：简单背后的细节陷阱 (Alerts in iOS: Simple but Tricky)
系统弹窗是 iOS 中最常见的 UI 组件之一，看似简单，实则暗藏诸多细节：按钮顺序、角色设定、颜色规范等，稍有不慎就可能导致用户困惑。在本文中，Nikita Ermolenko 深入结合苹果的 Human Interface Guidelines（HIG），详尽讲解了如何正确使用 .alert，并指出了常见误区。这是一篇实用性极高的 UI 细节指南，不仅提醒开发者关注平台规范，也揭示了 SwiftUI 在设计一致性方面仍有改进空间。
Swift 中的 reduce 用法 (Swift Reduce: Combining Elements Into a Single Value)
作为 Swift 工具箱中的利器，理解 reduce 的用法能让你写出更简洁、更具表达力的代码。reduce 用于将集合中的多个值“归约”为一个值，最经典的用途是求和，但它的能力远不止于此。Antoine van der Lee 在本文中讲解了 reduce 与 reduce(into:) 的用法，并通过示例展示它们如何在构建字典、统计出现次数、扁平化嵌套数组等场景中发挥作用。
工具
XcodeBuild MCP
由 Cameron Cooke 开发，XcodeBuild MCP 是一个基于 MCP（Model Context Protocol）协议的服务器，专为 AI 助手与自动化客户端设计，提供标准化的 Xcode 操作接口。它支持项目构建、部署、模拟器控制等关键任务，旨在消除传统命令行调用中的不确定性与易错性，使 AI agents 能够更稳定、高效地与 iOS/macOS 项目交互并执行自动化开发流程。
Swift Regex
由 Kishikawa Katsumi 开发，Swift Regex 是一个将传统正则表达式转换为 Swift RegexBuilder 语法的工具，并支持实时测试和结果预览。在最近的 更新 中，该工具新增了调试功能，开发者现在可以逐步执行 Swift Regex，深入分析匹配过程中的回溯行为。对于使用 Swift 原生正则进行开发与优化的场景尤为实用。
活动
2025 Swift 全国中学生展示活动
Swift 全国中学生展示活动是“中国高校计算机大赛—移动应用创新赛”的子模块，由浙江大学和苹果公司联合承办。该活动是面向全国中学生的科技类活动，旨在激发中学生对编程的热情，培养中学生使用 Swift Playgrounds 或 Xcode解决问题的能力和面向未来的创造力。
本活动分为“创意组”、“探索组”与“挑战组”三个组别，每个团队可在活动官方网站进行 线上报名，提交学生证明进行身份验证。团队队员应是 6 至 12 年级的中学生。
更多内容请查看 活动详情。