App Clips: great in theory, niche in practice
Five years after App Clips launched with iOS 14, they're still niche. The real-world scenarios and the rough edges in practice.
Event sourcing: who actually uses it, who’s just posturing?
Event sourcing is a conference darling. In real projects, who is actually using it, and who quietly walks away?
WidgetKit: the real design rules for Home Screen and Lock Screen
Widget design isn't app design. I've shipped widgets in three apps and learned something new each time. Timeline, relevance, and sizing calls.
90% of webhooks are wired wrong: the retry/ack logic that actually works
Webhooks from a payments provider, an email service, a CRM. Test your handler against five minutes of downtime and it almost certainly…
HealthKit integration patterns: practical notes from 3 apps
I've used HealthKit in ByteBreak, Dentii, and Snoozio. Notes on authorization, background delivery, and interpreting the data.
Distributed transactions without the saga pattern
Saga pattern is complex, sometimes overkill. How to get distributed-transaction-like behaviour with simple compensating actions.
Building an offline-first app on CloudKit
How to build an app that keeps working without the internet and auto-syncs when it comes back. What I learnt across two…
Skip idempotency in your REST API and the invoice goes out twice
Payments, orders, message sends: idempotency is non-negotiable. How to wire it up, and the subtleties you cannot skip.
SwiftUI NavigationStack: 7 things that change from NavigationView
NavigationStack replaced NavigationView in iOS 16. Here are the seven differences that matter most during the migration.
CQRS: 3 places it actually helps, 5 places it’s overengineering
CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) comes up in every architecture debate. Where does it actually add value, and where is it just…
MVVM vs The Composable Architecture: when to pick which
TCA is a popular recommendation in the iOS community. After 12 apps on MVVM, I tried it. Here's a realistic comparison.
Event-driven architecture: hype, or real use cases?
Every big conference talks about event-driven. Where does it actually earn its keep in real products, and where is it just complexity?