Those Who Swift - Issue 272
Weekly note ✏️This week brought two interesting pieces of news that, at first glance, seem unrelated. One is about trust and identity in the AI era. The other is about trust and community in the Swift ecosystem. Anthropic has started rolling out identity verification for certain Claude users. Depending on the situation, users may be asked to provide a government-issued ID and a selfie through a third-party verification provider called Persona. Anthropic states that the data is used for safety, abuse prevention, and regulatory compliance, and that verification images are stored by Persona rather than directly by Anthropic. The company also says this information is not used for model training. The timing is interesting. Over the last year we’ve seen multiple discussions around privacy, data leaks, account verification, and surveillance concerns across various platforms. As AI tools become more powerful and gain access to more capabilities, providers are naturally moving toward stronger identity controls. Whether users will accept that trade-off is another question entirely. Some developers are already looking at alternative models and providers that require fewer verification steps and collect less personal information. On the Swift side, there was much more cheerful news. Swift Package Index is joining Apple. For years, SPI has been one of the most valuable community resources for discovering packages, evaluating maintenance quality, and helping developers make better dependency decisions. What started as a community project by Dave Verwer and Sven Schmidt has become such an important part of the ecosystem that Apple decided to bring it under its umbrella. This is a great example of how community efforts can grow into essential infrastructure. Documentation, open-source libraries, newsletters, podcasts, and package indexes are all created by people who care enough to invest their time before anyone else sees the value. Apple recognizing that contribution is a positive signal for the entire Swift community. As AI services move toward stricter identity checks and ecosystem platforms become more centralized, where do you draw the line between convenience and privacy? Would you consider switching to another LLM if it required fewer verification steps?
Swift Around the Web 🌐UIPortalView: From Live Mirroring to Liquid Glass-Style EffectsArtem Mirzabekian uses _UIPortalView as a way to peek behind some of iOS’s most interesting visual tricks, especially where live mirroring starts to feel more like composition than ordinary view rendering. • The article shows why portals are different from snapshots: the source stays alive, updates in real time, and can be projected into overlays, lenses, reflections, or warped slices Read more.📍Level: IntermediateSwift 6.4: What’s New In ConcurrencyAntoine van der Lee’s overview is useful because it focuses on the small Swift 6.4 concurrency changes that are easy to miss, but likely to show up quickly in real code. • The biggest additions include async defer, cancellation shields, async Result, typed throwing Task initializers, and warnings for ignored throwing tasks Read more.📍Level: IntermediateCoding 👨💻Actors In Swift: The Problem They Solve And How It WorksOmar Elsayed breaks actors down from first principles, which makes this feel more like a mental model repair than just another concurrency explainer. • It clarifies what actors actually protect, how cross-actor access works, and why await is required even for synchronous actor methods across isolation boundaries Read more.📍Level: AdvancedSwiftUI’s New Item Based Presentations In iOS 27Sagar Unagar highlights one of those SwiftUI changes that looks small, but quietly fixes a long-standing state smell. • Alerts and confirmation dialogs can now be driven directly from optional item state Read more.📍Level: IntermediateApple 🍏Updated Apple Developer Program License Agreement Now AvailableApple has revised Attachment 12 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement to spell out terms for iOS apps in Brazil. • The update covers alternative distribution, alternative payments, out-of-app offers, and the Core Technology Commission. Read more.📍Changes To iOS In BrazilApple is opening up iOS in Brazil under a new agreement with CADE, and the change is much bigger than a policy footnote. • Starting with iOS 26.5, developers in Brazil can use alternative app marketplaces and external payment options for digital goods and services. Read more.📍Design 🎨WWDC26: SwiftUI Group Lab 2nd - Q&AArticle turns another dense SwiftUI lab into something you can actually come back to after WWDC. • It covers practical SwiftUI topics like navigation, layout, geometry, identity, overlays, and UIKit interop. Read more.📍Level: AdvancedLiquid Glass In SwiftUI: How To Modernize An iOS App TemplateBeniamin Marcu frames Liquid Glass as a structural redesign problem, not a quick visual polish pass. • Start with navigation, surfaces, and shared components before touching colors Read more.📍Level: AdvancedOther cool stuff 🧰Swift Package Index Joins AppleTed Kremenek, Dave Verwer, and Sven A. Schmidt announce that Swift Package Index is now part of Apple, with the goal of building a more robust package registry for the Swift ecosystem. • Swift Package Index will keep operating as it does today, with no immediate changes for package consumers or authors. Read more.📍Level: BeginnerSwift Conditionals: if, switch, guard and Pattern MatchingDivyesh Vekariya’s article is aimed at fundamentals, but it does a good job showing where Swift’s conditionals stop being familiar syntax and start becoming expressive language tools. • It walks from optional binding into Swift’s much more powerful switch, including ranges, tuples, value binding, and whereclauses. Read more.📍Level: BeginnerTutorials 📒How To Use Ollama Models In Xcode 27Amos Gyamfi shows how Xcode 27’s new Chat Provider path opens the door to both local and cloud-hosted Ollama models inside the coding assistant workflow. • The setup is straightforward for local models: install Ollama, run a model, then point Xcode’s locally hosted provider Read more.📍Level: XXXVideo 🎥Swift Macros Demystified: Build A Freestanding Expression MacroStewart Lynch takes one of Swift’s more intimidating features and makes it feel much more approachable by building a freestanding expression macro step by step. • The video is focused on understanding, not just copying code Watch here.📍Level: IntermediateThanks for reading Those Who Swift! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. 👇
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