This Week in Mobile: Facebook Bots, Android N, and Apple's Paid Search?

Everyone was tuned into F8 right - the first of the big three developer conferences for those in the app development space.  While chatbots on Messenger were center stage, AccountKit provides a frictionless way to allow your users to log into your apps, and ReactNative was made open source, following in Microsoft's steps with Xamarin. Choosing your cross development platform language has never been more difficult. So what else is going on? 

Android

Google released a new Android N Developer Preview with a new 3D rendering API and launcher shortcuts. 

Are you a fan of Android Development Patterns? Well, season 2 of these bite size Android tip videos is now underway. It can't hurt to check it out. 

EventBus In Android: Lessons Learned, goes through one developer's experiences in integrating it into his app. 

I've often wondered if it's faster to use code or XML layouts to define a UI. Here's a Performance comparison of building an Android UI with code (Anko) vs XML Layout.

Crazy about Android Studio? Here are 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About It.

Here are some projects worth checking out over the week: 

• folding-cell-android: an expanding content cell inspired by folding paper material

• CompactCalendarView: provides a compact calendar view much like the one used in Google calendar.

iOS

It's WWDC time! You can register your interest from now until April 22. If you are chosen, you'll have to pay the $1,599 for your ticket. It's well worth it as you can be on the cutting edge of iOS development, giving you a better chance of getting your app featured on the store when iOS10 launches. It all kicks off on June 13. 

There are some rumours going around about Apple bringing some changes to the App Store search. Chief among these is that the possibility that Apple will introduce a paid search option. Would you pay to appear higher in the search listings? Worth checking out John Gruber's opinion on it too.

In Hipster Swift, Hector Matos introduces a number of time-saving tricks for Swift development - things that aren't as obvious as you'd expect.

Sharpen your Core Animation skills in this short tutorial.

Thanks to iOS Dev Weekly I found this amazingly good masterclass on code signing and provisioning profiles. We all find this confusing right?  

If you have some spare time this week, see if these projects can help your current apps: 

• EasyPeasy: Auto layout made simple

• DisplaySwitcher: Custom transition between two collection view layouts

• NumberMorphView: A label view for displaying numbers which can transition or animate using a technique called number tweening or number morphing

• Spots: View controller framework that makes your setup and future development blazingly fast.

General

Burnout is a very real danger for developers everywhere. It's not always about crazy hours though. In Avoiding the Trap, Jamis Buck talks about how to recognize burnout. 

Is your code getting you down? Leading you to frustration and inaction? Maybe you should give you codebase a spring clean after reading The Life-Changing Magic of Deleting Code.

Anonymous apps were all the rage last year, but do they ever really gain traction? David Byttow points out The Inherent Problem with Anonymous Apps. 

The chatbot rage is just starting, and people are hinting at The End of App Stores. In fact, it's quite likely that The Future is Without Apps. 

Looking to build your own chatbot? Start prototyping now with this useful Sketch template.