It’s been a couple of week since my last update. I’ve had my head down working through an extensive ideation phase for the next Swift Starter Kits release, implementing a far more focused and featured foundation for new apps.
Throughout the process, my thinking has changed about what this project needs to be. The previous two releases each had a different focus, starting with an authentication revamp of the kit using Firebase, to a fully modularized component kit acting as a TestFlight demo and UI test bed.
I’ve since done an about face, ripping out all dependencies and rethinking my strategy.
The first time customer experience of Swift Starter Kits is slow and cumbersome, requiring two large external SDK integrations. Once those are set up, you’ll be dealing with Firebase bloat…forever.
I was sick of it. I want something minimal, without throwing away all the work I’ve done until now.
A few weeks later, the experience is head and shoulders better than it used to be. The kit is now offline first, modular, and focused on native utility experiences. All the authentication, login, signup screens still exist, but users can pull them in as needed when the usecase is right.
The largest conceptual difference to this kit iteration is focus on being “offline first”. I aim to provide a feature complete toolkit that stores data locally, that can be wrapped with API calls as needed. Things are simpler, and focused on integrating individual SwiftUI screens in a cohesive architecture.
Here’s what’s left for this upcoming release:
- Updating marketing page copy to reflect the new experience.
- Recording product videos (This was long overdue).
- Update S3 package download link.
