Planet of the Apps is a series of interviews with app developers about making, marketing and maintaining apps in the App Store.

Indie developer and podcaster Casey Liss used to hate SwiftUI, Apple’s controversial UI toolkit for crafting apps. A lot of developers have a deep and abiding animus for SwiftUI, including Liss himself. But after using SwiftUI to create his latest app Callsheet, a movie and TV database app, he’s now a huge fan.

“So much of SwiftUI, I love,” he said in a wide-ranging and surprisingly-interesting interview. “I went from nothing to a fully functional app … in the span of a couple of weeks… It was stunningly fast.”

July 7, 2011: Three years after its launch, the App Store passes 15 billion downloads.

This represents a major milestone for Apple. The App Store offers more than 425,000 apps, which give the iPhone and iPad incredible capabilities and add to the devices’ wide appeal.

The iPhone 12 lineup accompanied what was arguably the biggest iOS update in years, and, as we all know, new features open the door for new apps. That, too, presents opportunities for aspiring app developers to make it big in the ever-expanding app market.

Apple moved back a deadline to prevent iPhone and iPad developers from posting software updates to the App Store built with out-of-date tools. Developers now have three more months to upgrade.

Apple warned developers today that it’ll soon automatically reject any iPhone or iPad software submitted to the App Store if it wasn’t written with the iOS 13 SDK.

Apple posted a Transporter application to the Mac App Store to make it easier for creators to send content to the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Books or the iTunes Store.

Previously, this was a Java-based command-line tool, so an app should be much more user friendly.

You are ready to embrace macOS Catalina. Then start saying your goodbyes to a list of 235 apps that won’t work with Catalina.

A third-party software developer running a beta version of Catalina discovered the list. Developer betas help software designers determine whether their apps will work with an operating system update before it launches.

The latest early-release version of iOS 12 was made available to developers today — but it disappeared shortly afterward.

This afternoon’s release of iOS 12 beta 7 was met with widespread complaints that it runs slowly. Apple seems to have pulled the OTA version within an hour or so.

Apple wants developers to stop selling iOS applications and start renting them instead. The reason is simple: this forces users to pay more for software.

Apple held a secret meeting in New York City last year to convince developers to give up charging users a one-time fee for apps, and go instead to reoccurring charges.

Want to make mad bank? Learn to program iOS apps. The career website Dice compiled average iOS developer salaries, and the numbers are a touch breathtaking.

The results are broken out by geographical area, with cities that have the highest costs of living also offering the most generous salaries. But even the lowest paychecks are enough to get that Porsche you’ve been wanting. Or a home and family. Whichever.