The Develak Journal
The Develak Journal collects the iOS development guides our independent studio writes from shipping 34 apps on the App Store: Swift and SwiftUI, App Store submission, App Store Optimization and localization, explained step by step.
Every guide opens with the short answer, then walks through the details, the checklists and the trade-offs we met in our own apps.
Latest guide Guides 9 min read
A practical guide to iOS app localization with Xcode String Catalogs: plurals, InfoPlist permission strings, dates and units, right-to-left layouts, pseudolanguage testing, App Store metadata and translation workflow.
Guides 9 min read
An honest 2026 comparison of SwiftUI, Flutter and React Native for iPhone apps: performance, Apple frameworks, UI fidelity, time to market, hiring, maintenance and Android reach, with a decision checklist.
Guides 10 min read
The complete 2026 checklist for submitting an iPhone app: App Store Connect setup, privacy policy and support URLs, privacy manifest, account deletion, subscriptions, screenshots, age rating, TestFlight and the rejections to avoid.
From the guides
Short answers to common iOS questions, straight from our guides. Each one links to the guide that covers the topic in depth.
An .xcstrings file is an Xcode String Catalog: a JSON file, introduced in Xcode 15, that stores every localizable string of a table with all its translations, plural forms, device variations, comments and translation states. It replaces the older .strings and .stringsdict files.
From the guide: How to localize an iOS app into 40+ languages with String Catalogs (.xcstrings)
Yes. SwiftUI has shipped every year since 2019, covers iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Vision Pro, and is the framework Apple uses for its newest features and design language. For the rare case it does not cover, SwiftUI and UIKit work together in both directions.
From the guide: SwiftUI vs Flutter vs React Native in 2026: which should you choose for an iPhone app?
Apple says that, on average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours. First submissions and apps with new in-app purchases can take longer, so keep a few days of margin before a launch and use manual release to pick the exact day the app goes live.
From the guide: App Store submission checklist (2026): everything Apple checks before approving your app
Yes. String Catalogs are a build-time format: Xcode compiles them into the classic .strings and .stringsdict resources inside the app. You need Xcode 15 or later to build, but the app’s deployment target is not affected.
From the guide: How to localize an iOS app into 40+ languages with String Catalogs (.xcstrings)
For most apps, users will not notice a difference. Flutter compiles Dart ahead of time and draws its own UI, which gives very consistent animation, and React Native’s New Architecture removed much of the old bridge overhead. Performance problems in either usually come from the app’s architecture, such as heavy work on the UI thread, rather than from the framework.
From the guide: SwiftUI vs Flutter vs React Native in 2026: which should you choose for an iPhone app?
Yes. Every App Store app must provide a privacy policy URL in App Store Connect and make the policy accessible inside the app. If the app collects nothing, the policy says so and explains how services such as iCloud sync are used, and the App Privacy answer is “Data Not Collected”.
From the guide: App Store submission checklist (2026): everything Apple checks before approving your app
We design, build and publish native iPhone, iPad and Mac apps in Swift and SwiftUI, with the same care as our own 34 apps.