2020

  1. Comparing iPhone OS 1.0 with iOS 14 using tree maps

    If you followed the recent Apple events, you probably saw a picture of the A14 and M1 dies… that got me thinking about what you would see if you could pass iOS under X-Rays… In my previous article about the evolution of the programming languages from iPhone OS 1.0 to iOS 14, I analyzed iOS based on the number of binaries and their programming languages. As I pointed out in this past post, the size of the binaries were not taken in account. In this new article, I look at iPhone OS 1.0 and iOS 14 from a size perspective using tree maps.
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  2. Evolution of the programming languages from iPhone OS 1.0 to iOS 14

    In my previous article about Apple’s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 14, I counted the number of built-in apps in iOS using Swift and SwiftUI. Several readers asked if I could provide a percentage rather than an absolute number. In this new article, I will answer this question by measuring the total number of binaries in iOS. I will go one step further and also count the number of binaries using other programming languages: Objective-C, C++ and C. Finally to be as complete as possible, I ran this analysis on all major iOS releases, from iPhone OS 1.0 to iOS 14. This will provide a detailed overview of the evolution of the different programming languages over more than a decade of iOS development.
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  3. Apple’s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 14

    Swift was introduced a couple of years ago at Apple’s 2014 WWDC. Over the years I analyzed iOS to measure how many built-in applications were using Swift. iOS 9 released in 2015 included a single application written with Swift: Calculator. Since then this number has grown with each iOS release: iOS 10.1, iOS 11.1, iOS 12.0 and finally iOS 13.1. iOS 14 is now available so let’s check how this number evolved since iOS 13. Apple announced SwiftUI during WWDC 2019, a year ago. In this article I will also try to measure which built-in apps are using this new UI framework.
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  4. Introducing Clatters for iOS

    Assiduous readers of this blog might have noticed a significant drop in the number of articles last year. Couldn’t I find any interesting subject? Was I getting lazy? Hell no! Today I am pleased to release Clatters for iOS and iPadOS. Clatters is an app to easily monitor in one place your brand, product or any other keyword on your favorite social networks - Reddit, HackerNews and even comments on the iOS App Store.
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