Next week I will be publicly releasing my new iOS 9 developer course - it’s a complete overhaul (and re-record) of the previous course, and adds a bunch of new topics, including an Uber app clone, in-app purchases, iAds, version control, classes/objects and more.
I wanted to write here to answer questions about the new course, before they come up. If you have any questions that aren’t answered here, leave them in the comments and I’ll update the post.
Why didn’t you just update the iOS 8 course?
I struggled with this decision for a long time. I value hugely the community that exists around the iOS 8 course, and the answers to current and past discussions add a huge amount of value to the course (not to mention the reviews!). Losing all of this would be a major blow.
As long-term students will know, I’ve already updated/re-recorded most of the iOS 8 videos multiple times as Swift syntax has changed and developed, and haven’t charged for any of these updates (something very few course providers do).
When Swift 2/Xcode 7 was announced, however, it was clear that a whole new course would be needed - a bunch of basic commands and constructs had been changed, along with a number of processes and menu locations in Xcode.
While in theory it would have been possible to update the iOS 8 videos, I also wanted to take the opportunity to improve on some of the apps in the course, changing the way they were put together, adding and removing certain sections, and of course adding the extra content. This would have been difficult while keeping the current structure intact, and a lot of the discussions would become irrelevant (and many previously correct answers would now be wrong).
Finally, supporting and updating such a big course with almost 100,000 students to the extent that I want to takes a huge amount of work, and asking a small amount to keep this going seems both reasonable and the best way to keep me incentivised to keep producing, supporting and updating quality content!
What will happen to the iOS 8 course?
The course will continue to exist on Udemy and will be sold for a reduced price. A lot of the syntax does remain the same from Swift 1 to Swift 2, and the apps have already been updated to Xcode 6.4 (the last version with Swift 1). I hope this will provide a discounted way for students who can’t purchase the new course to get into iOS development.
However, I will switch my active support in the forums to the new iOS 9 course on its release. I want to avoid discussing how to fix apps using syntax and tools which are now outdated (soon Xcode 6 will likely become unavailable which will further confuse things). My support on the new course will be just as vigorous as on the old course (with every discussion getting a response within 48 hours, usually much quicker).
If anyone is unhappy with this for any reason, the usual Udemy refund policy applies, but I would ask you to carefully consider whether it is worth $10 to get a whole new set of videos, new apps and other content, a year’s support and a year’s web hosting. I’d love to keep you all in the great iOS development community we have created if at all possible!
I bought the iOS 8 course in the last 30 days - can I get a refund and still get the new course for $10?
Technically, yes, but again please consider if all the new features are worth the price. If you choose to get a refund on the iOS 8 course, I would ask you to wait for the full release of the iOS 9 course and purchase it in the usual way.
What about your other courses?
I will continue to update the content of my other courses in the way I have done in the past. At some point, each course will likely get to the point where a completely new course is required. This has happened particularly quickly with the iOS 8 course because of the rate of change of Swift. On the other hand, the Web Development course is still largely intact, so it makes sense to update it for now rather than re-record the whole thing. I don’t have a particular ‘new course’ schedule in mind, but will let you all know when I do.
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As I say, I will add answers to more questions as they come in. I am phenomenally proud of the community of students we have built around this course, and I hope we can continue to grow it as iOS 8 gives way to iOS 9.
These are hugely exciting times to learn to code, and I look forward to continuing the journey with you all.
Happy coding,
Rob
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