Podcast · Tech & Science

Empower Apps

Swift and iOS development conversations with Leo Dion — SwiftUI, architecture, testing, App Store strategies and building apps for Apple platforms.

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 43 min
Latest: 9 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026 · 44 min

The More You Know with Stewart Lynch

Stewart Lynch stops by to chat about using AI to learn faster instead of just letting it write your code. We get into planning in stages before you build, why Markdown is the universal language of AI, and the tiny "donkey work" tools he vibe codes for himself. Guest Stewart Lynch Stewart Lynch 🇨🇦 (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Stewart Lynch (@stewartlynch.bsky.social) - Bluesky Stewart Lynch - YouTube Stewart Lynch | LinkedIn Stewart Lynch - All Social Links Createch Solutions Blog Related Links How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills - Anthropic Sosumi.ai - Apple…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E212 · 30 Sep 2026 · 54 min
Skynet Came and Automated Everything with Jared Sorge
Jared Sorge stops by to chat about Arborist, his native Mac command center for Git work trees. We get into running agents in parallel with work trees, when to drop from SwiftUI down to AppKit, and selling a Mac app outside the App Store with Sparkle, Stripe, and RevenueCat, and somehow end up talking about the iPhone Duo. Guest Jared Sorge Jared Sorge (@[email protected]) - Mastodon jsorge (Jared Sorge) Jared Sorge | LinkedIn Jared Sorge (@jsorge) • Threads Arborist - A native macOS command center for Git repositories and worktrees Taphouse Software Related Links Arborist Baseplate -…
E211 · 24 Aug 2026 · 49 min
Swift on Windows with Saleem Abdulrasool
Saleem Abdulrasool joins us to chat about bringing Swift to Windows. We get into server-side Swift, SwiftWin32, Swift's C++ interop, and how to get started yourself. Guest Saleem Abdulrasool compnerd (Saleem Abdulrasool) Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) - Fosstodon Saleem Abdulrasool (@compnerd) / X Related Links Porting by a 1000 Patches: Bringing Swift to Windows (2019 LLVM Developers' Meeting) - YouTube Swift/Win32 - A Windows application framework for Swift - GitHub Swift/COM+ - GitHub Swift/WinMD - Windows Metadata Parser in Swift - GitHub Swift/WinRT - Swift Projections for WinRT -…
E210 · 12 Jul 2026 · 51 min
Practical Agents with Donny Wals
Donny Wals returns to talk through a year of agentic coding. We go through how it's changed his architecture decisions, reviewing PRs he didn't write himself, managing tasks and context across parallel agents, and the gym-workout crash he fixed from his phone mid-set — plus where he still doesn't trust the agent: SwiftData migrations. Guest Donny Wals Donny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — Bluesky Donny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / X Donny Wals (@donnywalsdev) • Instagram photos and videos donny wals - YouTube Donny Wals (@[email protected]) - chaos.social Donny Wals | LinkedIn Related Links…
E209 · 4 Jul 2026 · 8 min
Independence Update
After almost 250 episodes, Leo gives an update on what he's working on and what he's interested in. From passive timer apps, static site generation, to sub repos and RSS feeds. Related Links WWDC 2026 & Celestra Celestra WWDC26: What's new in the Foundation Models framework WWDC26: Meet Core AI Bushel swift-build brightdigit/swift-build Introducing swift-build (blog post) Swift.org Nightly Toolchains At Least At Least brightdigit/SundialKit brightdigit/SundialKitStream brightdigit.com Website Upgrade brightdigit.com repo JohnSundell/Publish JohnSundell/ShellOut JohnSundell/Ink…
E208 · 25 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
Everyone Thinks They're Good at Prompting with Joe Fabisevich
Software development has changed a lot. On today's episode, Joe Fabisevich talks about building with AI without falling into the trap of "work slop," why prompting is a communication skill, where Apple fits in, and Broadcast — his new Swift logging library for developers and AI agents. Guest Build.ms Joe Fabisevich :verified: (@[email protected]) - Macaw-Social Joe Fabisevich (@mergesort.me) — Bluesky Github (@mergesort) https://www.threads.net/@mergesort fabisevi.ch Related Links Artifacts | Fabisevi.ch Supporting Markdown Search For LLMs AI (Without the Hype) Workslop Being A 1.5-10x…
E207 · 18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr
120% Likely with Cihat Gündüz
Cihat Gündüz returns to break down everything from WWDC 2026. We go through Swift 6.4's quality-of-life wins, Apple turning Foundation Models into a full agentic harness, Xcode 27's agent and built-in skills, Device Hub, and where we land on the iPhone Fold. Guest Cihat Gündüz (@Jeehut) / X Cihat Gündüz (@[email protected]) - iOS Dev Space Cihat Gündüz (@jeehut) on Threads FlineDev Related Links WWDCNotes My Top 5 AI Wishes for WWDC26 – FlineDev FlineDev/SiteKit: AI-first static site generator written in Swift QwenLM/Qwen3.6: Qwen3.6 is the large language model series developed by Qwen…
E206 · 9 Jun 2026 · 40 min
Platforms State of the Union 2026 with Peter Witham
Peter Witham joins us to talk about today's Platforms State of the Union. Is Apple Intelligence here? Is Liquid Glass here? Where's John Ternus? Guest Peter Witham - Developer, Podcaster, Streamer CompileSwift Podcast Peter Witham | LinkedIn Peter Witham - YouTube CompileDev - Twitch Peter Witham (@compileswift) • Instagram photos and videos CompileSwift | Facebook Peter Witham (@[email protected]) - C.IM Peter Witham - Compileswift.com - Twitter Related Episode Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos Actually Really Useful Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte v26.0 with…
E205 · 5 Jun 2026 · 48 min
Who's Wendy with Joannis Orlandos
Joannis Orlandos stops by to chat about WendyOS, an operating system for bringing Swift and AI to robots, drones, and edge devices. We get into running Swift on NVIDIA Jetson and Raspberry Pi hardware, the future of cross-platform Swift across Android, Windows, and Wasm, and somehow end up arguing about whether you should let LLMs format your code at all. Guest Joannis Orlandos Joannis Orlandos (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Joannis (Joannis Orlandos) Joannis Orlandos | LinkedIn Joannis Orlandos (@joanniso.bsky.social) • Bluesky WendyOS — The open-source OS for Physical AI Related Links…
E204 · 3 Jun 2026 · 16 min
Actually Really Useful
After ten months away, Leo's back. He covers Swift Craft 2026, the rest of his speaking year (Beer City Code, iOSDevUK), and his honest take on AI dev tooling. Plus updates on MistKit, SyntaxKit, swift-build, MonthBar, and a new watchOS app called AtLeast (in TestFlight now). He's open to work, offering free 30-minute consultations, and a live WWDC 2026 episode is coming. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Related Links Free 30-min consultation — Zcal Swift Craft 2026 — Folkestone, May 2026 Beer City Code — Grand Rapids, Aug 14–15, 2026 iOSDevUK — Wales, September 2026 AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It…
E203 · 31 Jul 2025 · 34 min
Milk Diary with Kaya Thomas
Kaya Thomas ( kayathomas.is ) comes back after half a decade to tell us about how motherhood inspired her new app Milk Diary ( milkdiary.com ). She talks about using new APIs like Foundation Models, SpeechAnalyzer, and AlarmKit to handle the complex stuff other feeding apps miss: intelligent scheduling and reminders, combo feeding that's actually easy to track, hassle-free tracking for twins and smart milk management. Guest Kaya Thomas Kaya Thomas (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Kaya (@kayathomas.is) — Bluesky kmt901 (Kaya Thomas) Kaya Thomas | LinkedIn Kaya Thomas (@kayathomas.is)…
E202 · 18 Jul 2025 · 39 min
Swift Testing with Rachel Brindle
Rachel Brindle, maintainer of Nimble and Quick, comes on to talk about what's new in Swift Testing and what the future of Swift Testing may hold. Guest Rachel Brindle Rachel Brindle (@[email protected]) - Hachyderm.io younata (Rachel Brindle) Rachel Brindle (@rachelbrindle) • Instagram photos and videos Related Links What's new in Testing, 2025 Edition nalexn/ViewInspector: Runtime introspection and unit testing of SwiftUI views Quick/Nimble: A Matcher Framework for Swift and Objective-C Quick/Quick: The Swift (and Objective-C) testing framework. pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing: 📸…
E201 · 4 Jul 2025 · 41 min
Deconstructing Xcode with xTool with Kabir Oberai
Kabir Oberai joins us to talk about xTool, Cross-platform Xcode replacement and how Xcode works under the hood to build apps. Guest Kabir Oberai Kabir Oberai (@[email protected]) - Mastodon https://x.com/kabiroberai Announcements macOS Virtual Machine App for Developers - Bushel SyntaxKit - More Friendly SwiftSyntax API Post Show Discussion with Kabir on Patreon BrightDigit Newsletter Related Links xtool | Documentation xtool-org/xtool: Cross-platform Xcode replacement. Build and deploy iOS apps with SwiftPM on Linux, Windows, macOS. cirruslabs/tart: macOS and Linux VMs on Apple…
E200 · 10 Jun 2025 · 26 min
Live from CommunityKit WWDC 2025 with Matt Massicotte
Live from CommunityKit, Leo is joined by Matt Massicotte to discuss everything announced today at WWDC 2025. Guest Matt Massicotte - @[email protected] massicotte.org | I write stuff here. Matt Massicotte (@massicotte.org) — Bluesky mattmassicotte (Matt Massicotte) Matt Massicotte | LinkedIn Matt Massicotte (@mattie) / X Announcements BrightDigit #110 - WWDC 2025 = EmpowerApps 200th Episode + Bushel Sale! 🙌 macOS Virtual Machine App for Developers - Bushel Related Episodes v26.0 with Peter Witham Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko Fear of the Main Thread with Matt…
E199 · 4 Jun 2025 · 52 min
v26.0 with Peter Witham
Before Leo heads to California, Peter joins to discuss Apple's crazy year and what we expect from WWDC 2025. Guest Peter Witham - Developer, Podcaster, Streamer CompileSwift Podcast Peter Witham | LinkedIn Peter Witham - YouTube CompileDev - Twitch Peter Witham (@compileswift) • Instagram photos and videos CompileSwift | Facebook GrfxGuru - Github (Peter Witham) Peter Witham (@[email protected]) - C.IM Peter Witham - Compileswift.com - Twitter Announcements BrightDigit #110 - WWDC 2025 = EmpowerApps 200th Episode + Bushel Sale! 🙌 EmpowerApps.Show LIVE with Leo Dion · Luma macOS…
E198 · 27 Mar 2025 · 49 min
Full Stack Things with Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko
Werner Jainek and Vojtěch Rylko from Cultured Code talk about their migration of Things Cloud to Server Side with Swift and what they learned along the way. Guest Things - To-Do List for Mac & iOS Things (@things.app) — Bluesky Things (@culturedcode) Things (@[email protected]) Werner Jainek (@[email protected]) Vojtěch Rylko Vojtech Rylko (@[email protected]) Vojtěch Rylko | LinkedIn Vojtěch Rylko (@vojtechrylko) vojtarylko (Vojtech Rylko) Announcements Join Bushel Beta Join our Patreon! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links Swift.org - How Swift's server support powers Things Cloud…
E197 · 14 Mar 2025 · 25 min
SwiftUI Fundamentals with Natalia Panferova
Natalia Panferova former Apple engineer of Nil Coalescing comes on to talk her new book SwiftUI Fundamentals. Guest Nil Coalescing Natalia Panferova (@natpanferova) / X Natalia Panferova (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Natalia Panferova (@natpanferova.bsky.social) — Bluesky Natalia Panferova | LinkedIn Announcements Join Bushel Beta Join our Patreon! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links SwiftUI Fundamentals Nil Coalescing Books Nil Coalescing - Blog Related Episodes The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman SwiftUI…
E196 · 12 Feb 2025 · 56 min
Swift on Android with Marc Prud'hommeaux
Marc Prud'hommeaux explains how you can get started building Android apps in Swift, what's the future of the Swift on Android working group, and what's FOSDEM. Guest Marc Prud'hommeaux (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Marc Prud'hommeaux | LinkedIn @marcprux.bsky.social — Bluesky marcprux (Marc Prud'hommeaux) | GitHub Announcements Join Bushel Beta Join our Patreon! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links skip.tools (@[email protected]) - mas.to skipapp-showcase skiptools/skipapp-showcase: Sample Skip app demonstrating SkipUI components for iOS and Android Skip Showcase - Apps on Google Play…
E195 · 25 Jan 2025 · 17 min
Moving Forward 2025
What a wild ride 2024 was - from big life changes to surprising shifts in Apple development, I'm sharing the story of what went down this year. After navigating job hunts, tech trends, and some unexpected wins (and losses), I've got some insights about where we're headed in 2025, plus some exciting opportunities for you Swift folks! Announcements Join Bushel Beta Join our Patreon! Newsletters | BrightDigit Now Hiring! macOS, watchOS, HealthKit and more...! Links Being Sendable with SwiftData Using ModelActor in SwiftData SwiftData CRUD Operations with ModelActor brightdigit/DataThespian:…
E194 · 31 Dec 2024 · 43 min
Fear of the Main Thread with Matt Masicotte
Matt Masicotte comes on the show to clear up all our misconceptions about concurrency in Swift 6. 😑 Guest Matt Massicotte - @[email protected] massicotte.org | I write stuff here. Matt Massicotte (@massicotte.org) — Bluesky mattmassicotte (Matt Massicotte) Matt Massicotte | LinkedIn Matt Massicotte (@mattie) / X Announcements BrightDigit 103 - 🎁 Early Black Friday Deals 50% off first year of Bushel Pro 25% off Patreon Membership - Use Code 64632 Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links [Pitch] Inherit isolation by default for async functions -…
E193 · 24 Dec 2024 · 23 min
Practical Year - Part 2 with Donny Wals
Part 2 of our chat with Donny - we discuss the job market, AI, Vision Pro, and of course Swift UI. Guest Donny Wals Donny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — Bluesky Donny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / X donny wals - YouTube Donny Wals (@[email protected]) - chaos.social Donny Wals | LinkedIn Announcements BrightDigit 103 - 🎁 Early Black Friday Deals 50% off first year of Bushel Pro 25% off Patreon Membership - Use Code 64632 Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links Practical Swift Concurrency - Make the most out of Concurrency in Swift 6 and beyond…
E192 · 19 Dec 2024 · 32 min
Practical Year - Part 1 with Donny Wals
Donny comes on yet again to give his thoughts on 2024 - Swift Data, Swift Testing and Swift Macros while we mourn the death of Combine. Guest Donny Wals Donny Wals 👾 (@donnywals.bsky.social) — Bluesky Donny Wals 👾 (@DonnyWals) / X donny wals - YouTube Donny Wals (@[email protected]) - chaos.social Donny Wals | LinkedIn Announcements BrightDigit 103 - 🎁 Early Black Friday Deals 50% off first year of Bushel Pro 25% off Patreon Membership - Use Code 64632 Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! Newsletters | BrightDigit Links Practical Swift Concurrency - Make the most out of…
E191 · 2 Dec 2024 · 44 min
Swift, Server Side, Serverless with Sébastien Stormacq
Sébastien Stormacq joins us to talk about AWS Lambda and Swift - what does "Serverless" mean, how deployment works, and how to get started. Guest Sébastien ☁ Stormacq 🇺🇦 (@sebsto) / X Seb @ AWS (@sebsto.bsky.social) — Bluesky Sébastien ☁ (Seb) Stormacq | LinkedIn Github - sebsto (Sébastien Stormacq) Sebastien Stormacq (@sebstormacq) • Threads, Say more Sebastien Stormacq (@[email protected]) - AWSCommunity.social Announcements BrightDigit 103 - 🎁 Early Black Friday Deals 50% off first year of Bushel Pro 25% off Patreon Membership - Use Code 64632 Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New…
E190 · 22 Nov 2024 · 40 min
Swift Toolkit with Natan Rolnik
Natan Rolnik from swifttoolkit.dev and I chatted about building tools in Swift, ArgumentParser, Swift Package Manager, and more. Guest Natan Rolnik Natan Rolnik (@natanrolnik) / X Natan Rolnik (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Natan Rolnik | Kodeco Natan Rolnik | LinkedIn Natan Rolnik (@natanrolnik) • Instagram photos and videos natanrolnik (Natan Rolnik) | Github Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! BrightDigit #100 - Top 10 Emails Ever! 🎉🚀 Newsletters | BrightDigit Swift LiveCoding - Adding…
E189 · 15 Nov 2024 · 31 min
Full Stack Lyriq with Adegboyega Olusunmade
Adegboyega Olusunmade joins to talk about building his Full Stack Swift app Lyriq and what did he learn along the way: the differences between building an iOS app and a server app to deploying a server application. Guest Adegboyega Olusunmade (@AdeOlusunmade) / X Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! BrightDigit #100 - Top 10 Emails Ever! 🎉🚀 Newsletters | BrightDigit Swift LiveCoding - Adding Screen Recording to Bushel How does Server Side Swift Workout in the Real World? - Leo Dion Links Doforlove &…
E188 · 8 Nov 2024 · 57 min
Ludicrous Types with Nick Lockwood
Nick Lockwood of SwiftFormat (not dash) joins the show to talk about the server side Swift conference, quirks of Swift you didn't know about, language design, and the future of Swift. Guest Nick Lockwood @nicklockwood (Github) Nick Lockwood (@[email protected]) Nick Lockwood | LinkedIn Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! BrightDigit #100 - Top 10 Emails Ever! 🎉🚀 Newsletters | BrightDigit Swift LiveCoding - Adding Screen Recording to Bushel How does Server Side Swift Workout in the Real…
E187 · 1 Nov 2024 · 38 min
Debugging Your Job Search with Jaim Zuber
Jaim Zuber returns after over 5 years to give us an overview of looking for a job in iOS development in 2024, how has it changed, what are some things you can do now, and when becoming a manager is the right call. Guest Jaim Zuber @sharpfive (GitHub) Jaim Zuber (LinkedIn ) @[email protected] (Mastodon) Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! BrightDigit #100 - Top 10 Emails Ever! 🎉🚀 Newsletters | BrightDigit Swift LiveCoding - Adding Screen Recording to Bushel How does Server Side Swift Workout in…
E186 · 30 Sep 2024 · 23 min
The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 2 with Ben Scheirman
Ben Scheirman is back for part 2 of our interview on SwiftUI Migration. In this episode we focus on navigation, data handling and Swift packages. Guest Ben Scheirman | Ben is an experienced software engineer from Houston, TX. Currently focused on Swift, iOS, Ruby, and Rust. Ben Scheirman (@[email protected]) - Mastodon subdigital (Ben Scheirman) NSScreencast: Bite-sized Screencasts for iOS Development Combine Swift Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! Links Episode #288: Modern UIKit: Stack…
E185 · 24 Sep 2024 · 43 min
The Great SwiftUI Migration - Part 1 with Ben Scheirman
Ben Scheirman of NSScreenCast comes on to talk about migrating apps such as a Nike's Sneakers app from UIKit to SwiftUI and all the little things you don't think about. This is part 1 of a 2 part interview. Guest Ben Scheirman | Ben is an experienced software engineer from Houston, TX. Currently focused on Swift, iOS, Ruby, and Rust. Ben Scheirman (@[email protected]) - Mastodon subdigital (Ben Scheirman) NSScreencast: Bite-sized Screencasts for iOS Development Combine Swift Announcements Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New…
E184 · 10 Sep 2024 · 46 min
The Case of the Crimson Test Suite with Daniel Steinberg
Daniel Steinberg comes in the podcast to talk about his latest book on Swift Testing as well as the state of Swift development in 2024. Guest Dim Sum Thinking dimsumthinking (@[email protected]) - Mastodon Daniel Steinberg | LinkedIn Announcements Come see me and Daniel at Server-Side Swift Conference. 26th-27th September 2024. London, UK use EMPOWERAPPS to get 15% off Need help with your projects this year? BrightDigit has openings. Join Bushel Beta Join our Brand New Patreon Page! Links The Case of the Crimson Test Suite The Case of the Vanishing Bodies The Curious Case of the…

About Empower Apps

Swift and iOS development conversations with Leo Dion — SwiftUI, architecture, testing, App Store strategies and building apps for Apple platforms.

Empower Apps is a English tech & science podcast from Leo Dion. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Leo Dion, Principal CEO and Swift Developer at BrightDigit
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 43 min
Latest episode: 9 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1437435392
Website: empowerapps.show

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