{"id":33792,"date":"2021-10-01T17:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T21:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=33792"},"modified":"2021-10-19T19:49:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T23:49:20","slug":"ios-15-shortcuts-and-swiftui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/01\/ios-15-shortcuts-and-swiftui\/","title":{"rendered":"iOS 15 Shortcuts and SwiftUI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federico Viticci<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Shortcuts experience in iOS and iPadOS 15 is hindered by a variety of severe UI and performance bugs that have made this update the least stable and reliable one in recent memory. I believe Apple is aware of these bugs and is actively working on fixing them, but that doesn’t change the core problem: the Shortcuts app shipping with iOS and iPadOS 15.0 is buggy, crashes often, and gets in the way of power users with SwiftUI-related issues that prevent interactions with the editor.<\/p>

I don’t want this section to read like a feedback report, so I’ll keep it short, but I also think it’s important to point out that the Shortcuts team should have done a better job with app performance and stability this year. For instance, due to a widely reported SwiftUI bug<\/a>, it’s often impossible to click UI elements in the editor unless you close and reopen it. This bug is so<\/em> bad, it has made it extremely challenging for me to work on long shortcuts this summer since I’d have to close and reopen the editor (thus losing my position in it) every 30 seconds. I’m astounded this bug shipped to customers.<\/p>

Alas, there’s a lot more. Sometimes, drag and drop for actions just refuses to work or drops an action in an entirely different spot in the editor. The ‘Run Shortcut’ action – a fantastic tool for power users that lets you use shortcuts as functions<\/a> – is somewhat broken at the moment and doesn’t always recognize input. The magic variable output of Choose from Menu blocks no longer works. Sometimes, the share sheet sees no input passed from other apps. When I run shortcuts that contain Files actions with the editor open on my iPad, the app crashes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As my professional and personal technology experiences increasingly revolve around the software-as-a-service model, I have recently been thinking a lot about the lack of stability as a priority. We are on the receiving end of a firehose of changes, redesigns, new features, and reimplementations of existing products. Yet the threshold for problems that will prevent a product from being shipped seems to be getting stricter.<\/p>\n

What Viticci describes is an application that Apple shipped — in a production release of its most popular operating system — in an entirely unusable state. It is not a solitary case, nor is Apple the only software vendor to rush something out the door. But stuff like these Shortcuts problems — some of which are UIKit problems — and Siri regressions are profoundly disruptive to frequent users.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A painful reckoning for Shortcuts & SwiftUI. I don’t think Shortcuts can afford to rewrite its UI every year anymore, it’s too critical a tool for its users and the consequences of it going wrong (like it has, this year) are devastating. SwiftUI was a misguided leap of faith<\/p>\n

The newly-rewritten multiplatform Shortcuts app was always going to go one of two ways: a poster child for SwiftUI, or a cautionary tale. I’m really curious what, if anything, broader-Apple will learn from the experience — how it’s developing SwiftUI, and how it’s positioning it<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Thomas Clement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

SwiftUI still has a long way to go, especially on macOS.<\/p>\n

Certain basic things are still broken or simply impossible to do. The bridging with AppKit can be impossible to work with so there’s just no good solution sometimes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We’re in ‘year 3’ of SwiftUI, and my base advice remains unchanged — it is great for auxiliary non-critical UI layouts (inspector sidebars, settings windows, and panels), watchOS apps, and rapid prototyping. Beyond that, it just does not meet the bar for complex, reliable apps<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

There’s a clear analogy, and lesson to be learned, between ‘SwiftUI is the future’, and ‘iPad is the future of computing’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n