A few days ago, the Blender Foundation announced that it is developing a native version for iPad Pro with specialized optimizations for Apple Pencil. The initial version will focus on basic object manipulation and sculpting features, with later versions adding Grease Pencil and storyboarding capabilities. It’s particularly worth noting that this is not a feature-limited iPadOS version like some professional software, but a fully-featured Blender iPadOS native application.
The project is currently still in the early development stage. Developers who want to get an early taste can compile the current code in Xcode and experience it ahead of time. Megabits has also shared a detailed installation tutorial video on YouTube.
Whether it’s the Blender iPad version currently in development or Xogot (the iPad version of Godot game editor) that launched on the App Store a few months ago, these powerful professional applications with complex desktop UIs are making their way to iPad. This indicates that iPad’s hardware performance can now fully meet the operational requirements of these applications. Development teams clearly believe that investing effort in this challenging porting work will yield worthwhile returns.
A few years ago, Apple hoped that iPad could enter more professional fields, but limited by the scarcity of professional software, the vision of “Your next computer is not a computer” didn’t progress as smoothly as expected. This year, iPadOS 26 has significantly improved multi-window capabilities, providing a look and feel similar to macOS at the system level. This might encourage more professional application development teams to be interested in providing native versions for iPad.
Previously, except in certain professional fields, iPad was more often used by professional users to address edge-case scenarios when using a MacBook was inconvenient. As iPad’s hardware and software capabilities continue to improve and its ecosystem becomes increasingly complete, it may no longer serve merely as a supplement to desktop devices, but instead carve out its own unique ecological path in professional fields.
Original
Core Data Migration Incident Analysis: The Hidden Traps We Overlooked
Compared to some open-source frameworks, Core Data and SwiftData, despite having Apple’s official endorsement, often leave developers helpless when exceptions occur due to their “black box” nature, making it difficult to quickly locate problems and find effective solutions. This article documents an app startup timeout incident caused by Core Data model migration, shares the solution, and deeply analyzes the underlying causes.
Recent Recommendations
Uncertain⟨T⟩
In programming, we tend to value certainty—especially in strongly typed languages like Swift. But in the real world, uncertainty is everywhere: GPS drift, network latency, sensor noise… these fuzzy yet trustworthy signals are hard to represent using traditional boolean logic or type systems. In this article, Mattt introduces the Uncertain type, a way to model and reason about uncertainty in a type-safe manner—bringing Swift one step closer to the complexity of the real world.
How to Create and Combine SwiftUI Views Without Getting Lost in Deep Nesting and Complex Layouts
As SwiftUI projects grow, UI components tend to become increasingly complex and deeply nested—leading to so-called “fat views.” So how can we structure our views to make them more elegant, safe, maintainable, and efficient? In this article, Matteo Manferdini walks through real-world examples to show how to build highly configurable and readable UI components using SwiftUI’s built-in layout containers, style modifiers, and ViewBuilder parameters.
A Peek into My Debugging Process (With Real Examples)
Debugging isn’t just about fixing bugs—it’s essential to understanding code, system behavior, and building robust apps. In this post, Pol Piella shares how he resolved three real-world production issues, including a SwiftUI crash, a performance regression, and a misfiring permission alert. Pol emphasizes that “the key to debugging is location,” and only by using the right tools and a systematic process can you truly solve problems efficiently and save time.
SwiftUI + Core Animation: Demystify All Sorts of Groups
drawingGroup(), compositingGroup(), and geometryGroup() are commonly used—yet easily confused—modifiers in SwiftUI. Despite their similar names, they behave very differently under the hood. In this article, Weichao Deng breaks down their implementation details and usage caveats through the lens of Core Animation, aided by Xcode’s view debugging tools.
Understanding how things work isn’t just about “using them better”—it’s about knowing where to look when things go wrong.
All the Ways SwiftData’s ModelContainer Can Error on Creation
Compared to Core Data, SwiftData provides much less context when database loading fails. Scott Driggers replaced fatalError with a custom loggedFatalError and implemented a logging mechanism to gain more insight into crashes. In this article, he walks through several real-world failure scenarios, analyzing common root causes and sharing practical fixes—such as model version mismatches, low disk space, and concurrent migration conflicts.
Migrating to Swift Actors
Since their introduction in Swift 5.5, actors have become an essential building block of Swift’s concurrency model. Yet many developers still struggle to grasp their role and value. In this article, Saafo first contrasts actors with traditional locking and dispatch queue strategies, then shares how to gradually refactor existing classes into actors and bridge the async/sync divide—all based on real-world migration experience.
Mastering Swift 6.2 Concurrency: A Complete Tutorial
Swift 6.2 introduces significant concurrency improvements, including several tools designed to help developers migrate and debug more effectively. In this comprehensive guide, Mathis Gaignet outlines key additions such as default main thread isolation, the semantics of nonisolated(nonsending) and @concurrent, the strict concurrency and Sendable inference system, and SwiftUI-specific pitfalls. He also explains how to detect main-thread blocking using Instruments.
Tools
TrackWeight – Weigh Objects Using Your Trackpad
An imaginative macOS app that turns your MacBook trackpad into a digital scale! Built by Krish Shah, this open-source project gained thousands of stars within days of launch.
macOS trackpads only register pressure events when capacitive contact is detected—meaning your finger (or another conductive object) must remain in contact during the measurement.
Xcode Project Renamer
Renaming an Xcode project is notoriously painful and error-prone. With Marko Tadić’s Xcode Project Renamer, it becomes a one-line task:
./rename.swift "$OLD_PROJECT_NAME" "$NEW_PROJECT_NAME"The script traverses the project directory and updates all filenames and contents accordingly.
Stewart Lynch also demonstrates the process in this video, including how to install an optimized CLI version (xp-renamer) via Homebrew:
brew install stewartlynch/formulae/xp-renamer⚠️ The only thing not renamed automatically is the project’s root folder—you’ll need to handle that manually.
iOS Backend Selection Cheat Sheet
Do you need a cloud backend? Should you self-host? Go with CloudKit, Firebase, or something else? Leo G Dion created this comprehensive cheat sheet to guide backend decision-making for iOS apps. It visually maps out use cases, technical requirements, and cost considerations—ideal for early-stage planning. The chart also highlights which solutions support running Swift on the server.
Want to learn the reasoning behind this chart? Check out the companion article: Choosing the Best Backend for your iOS App.