iOS 8 SDK – Tuning your iOS apps for Better Performance

Ever since Apple unveiled its 8th major release of the iOS mobile operating system – iOS 8 on September 17, 2014, mobile Application developers have started working out on major App redesign while introducing performance enhancements & user interface improvements in their newly launched iOS Apps. This is because the performance of your mobile App, be it good or bad, greatly impacts your ROI, affecting the bottom-line of your business.

Here we shall discuss major tips & tricks that will help you optimize your iOS App performance for iOS 8 mobile operating system. With these tricks, you would not only be able to track the performance of every user action including your App’s response times but also optimize your session & finger-swipe like touch-based gestures in real time.

As per recent statistics i.e 30th March, 2015; iOS 8 is found to be installed on 78% of Apple devices with newer features and additional changes. That’s the biggest reason why IOS developers across the globe are looking forward to pay attention to improving their App performance especially on iPhone and iPad. In order to keep up with the new design elements, UI enhancements and richer user experiences, iOS developers are upgrading their forte to design Apps that are relevant to customers.

I have compiled some quick iOS App performance optimization tips & tricks that will also help you detect issues like speed loopholes and other functionality problems that are hindering your App from performing the way you desired.

1.    Blocking the main thread is a big no-no

Never block the main thread while you develop Apps for the iOS 8 platform. Often, I’ve seen iOS developers blocking the main thread with a time-consuming operation that runs for a considerably greater period of time. For e.g downloading images or other resources, which in turn makes your iOS App unresponsive as long as the operation you’re carrying out isn’t completed. If that’s the case, you must consider moving the long running tasks to a background thread so as to avoid slow rendering of your App. Always optimize your App images to an extent that it can easily load on every Apple device.

2.    Test thoroughly before you Launch

You can use device-centric data to figure out how your iOS App is behaving at the device- level by putting a close check on usage metrics including database, CPU and memory. Testing your App on all Apple devices especially on the iPhone & the iPad should be done even before you finally launch your iOS App in the App store. Also, tracking the end-to-end user interactions is necessary to gain visibility into individual events that will help you identify the exact pain points where you need to optimize your App. Once you know them, it will be even better if you can also monitor cross-functional performance for iPhones, iPads and iPods.

3.    Take Advantage of IOS 8 special features – Design unified storyboard for Universal Apps

While developing an IOS App, you might want to create separate storyboards for the iPhone and the iPad. But the good news is that in iOS 8, you can work on the same storyboard to create user interfaces that work excellent in different orientations on all Apple devices, may it be iPhone or iPad. You simply need to adjust all your UI components for different size classes that refer to declaring the canvas size while defining user interface layouts. The best thing about unified storyboards is that you can now create a common user interface that will adapt itself to the space it is contained within, on all Apple devices for which you have defined the size classes. There are two types of size classes – compact and regular and either one can be oriented horizontally or vertically.

{{cta(‘64903444-bfb9-4a02-9999-a36abc52e876’)}}

4.    Focus more on Adaptive UI

Lot of changes have been made to the iOS UI kit to enable the creation of Apps with awesomely designed responsive UI that can adapt automatically by responding to different resolutions (screen sizes), orientations and devices. This also includes unified storyboards, adaptive view controllers, adaptive presentations, and adaptive text and tables.

We hope this blog helped you identify and solve problems concerning IOS 8 App performance while also ensuring five star rating & reviews of your iOS App on Apple’s App store.

So what are you waiting for? Upgrade your iOS App performance to get the most out of iOS 8 and let us know your customers’ first impressions!!