Talks
Adapting Your App to Any Screen Size
Presented at the inaugural /dev/world on tour event in Sydney, this talk looks at our job now that iPhone apps are about to get resized.
At WWDC26, the message from Apple couldn't have been clearer: Stop designing for fixed devices and orientations, and prepare for your app to run on screens of varying sizes and aspect ratios.
This talk explores what was said directly in the sessions about app adaptability, what iOS 27 itself hints at, how this is handled on other platforms, and concrete ways to modernise your app with SwiftUI code examples and suggestions for adapting to wider displays.
By the end, you'll have a feel for where things might be heading, along with a practical starting point for adapting your own apps today.
A recording of the talk will be available later.
Presentation slides are available for download here.
Live Activities on iOS
This talk is about the relatively new feature of Live Activities on iOS. It covers what they’re good for, why I enjoy using them so much, and when a Live Activity is more suitable than, say, Push Notifications or Widgets.
The talk also dives into the UI required to power Live Activities, how this is achieved in your app’s Widget extension, and finally how to manage the lifecycle of a Live Activity from starting, through updating and ending them and the ways this can be achieved - both locally on device and remotely through APNS.
Finally the talk leaves you with some quick tips and tricks for implementing your own Live Activities.
A full version of the talk was delivered at the /dev/world conference in Melbourne, in August 2025. A recording of that talk is available on YouTube.
This talk was also delivered in two parts at separate Sydney CocoaHeads meetups. Part 1 in February 2025 (available on YouTube), and part 2 in October 2025 (available on YouTube).
Swift Result Builders
Delivered in October 2023 at the Sydney CocoaHeads Meetup, this talk covers result builders in Swift.
It starts with a brief introduction to Domain Specific Languages (DSL's), talks about the evolution of result builders in Swift (from the evolution days when they were called function builders), and goes through an example of creating a simple result builder that slowly gains more and more capabilities.
Unfortunately, a recording of the talk isn't available due to technical issues on the night (this is my fault since, well, I should've known better).
So, you built an app?
Delivered in April 2023 at the Sydney CocoaHeads Meetup, this is a talk in two parts about launching an app. The first part discusses all the things you might want to consider before considering an iOS app "complete" in 2023, followed by the second part which is all about what to consider between finishing the code for your app and actually launching it – things like a website, marketing pages, App Store metadata, contacting the press, etc.
Inspired by my recent efforts in the lead up to launching Glucomate.
A recording of the talk is available on YouTube.
SwiftUI 101 and Gotchas
Delivered remotely in September 2021 at the Sydney CocoaHeads Meetup, this talk goes through a list of tips and tricks about SwiftUI that I've learnt after spending the time trying to figure it out.
A recording of the talk is available on YouTube.
Map Memory Management
Reducing the impact of MKMapView's memory footprint when your app is in the background.
Presented online at the Sydney CocoaHeads meetup in October 2020.
The slides can be downloaded by clicking here, and accompanying source code can be found on GitHub here.
Updating Your App for iOS 13
At /dev/world/2019 in Melbourne, Australia, I spoke about the changes necessary to get your app ready for iOS 13. Using the example of Petty, a side project of mine, as an example application.
The talk didn't stop at iOS 13, also covering indepedent watch apps in watchOS 6, and bringing the app to the Mac with Catalyst API's.
A recording of the talk is available here, and you can download the Keynote slides here.
Supercharge Your App with Siri Shortcuts
My first conference talk, at /dev/world/2018 in Melbourne, Australia, was about Siri Shortcuts - an extension of the SiriKit API on iOS allowing developers to integrate parts of their app with Siri.
This talk covers what Siri Shortcuts are, how and why they make sense to adopt in your app, and includes an example of how to implement Shortcuts and Suggestions in your iOS and watchOS app.
A recording of the talk is available here, and you can download the Keynote slides here.
Parallel Testing in Xcode 10
A shorter talk at the CocoaHeads meetup in Sydney, this talk covered the basics of the new parallel testing features in Xcode 10, and is largely based off of this blog post.
Sadly, the talk was not about bacon.
Playgrounds Conference Lightning Talk ⚡️
My first speaking opportunity was at Playgrounds in Melbourne, Australia. Here I presented a 5-minute lightning talk on the topic of creativity.
You can read more about the contents of the talk in the summary blog post I wrote about it.