In the new Swift 3 there is now a different initializer for NSNotification (now simply Notification; the NS prefix was dropped):

struct Config {
    static let ShouldCloseBrowserNotification = "ShouldCloseBrowserNotification"
}

let notification = Notification(
    name: Notification.Name(rawValue: Config.ShouldUpdateDialogNotification),
    object: nil,
    userInfo: nil
)
NotificationCenter.default.post(notification)

The name parameter does not look very nice now. But you can extend Notification.Name to make it look better:

extension Notification.Name {
    static let shouldCloseBrowserNotification = Notification.Name("ShouldCloseBrowserNotification")
}

let notification = Notification(
    name: .ShouldUpdateDialogNotification,
    object: nil,
    userInfo: nil
)
NotificationCenter.default.post(notification)

UIKit itself is structured in roughly the same way:

I had read mentions before that the Mac App Store is dead. About a month ago I hacked together my informer for Yandex AppMetrica and uploaded it to MAS. I started watching the charts (not for long, admittedly). In fact, there were 2 purchases at launch (I even know who both were from). The result surprised me.

Immediately first place in the Business category in the Russian Mac App Store. Of course, it is nice when your icon decorates the list of categories.

Still, just 2 purchases say that people really buy and download very few apps in the Mac App Store. Maybe free ones get downloaded more, but paid ones definitely do not. At least in Russia. It is nothing like the App Store for iOS apps. On top of that, the app reached 8th place in the store's overall top chart.

So it is not about the category. In other countries, apps are probably bought more often, but in Russia it is very little. Then again, piracy is much more widespread on macOS than on iOS, because there is no jailbreak hassle involved. That is probably why people here do not buy very often.

The secret is simple. Go to iconfinder.com, find a decent flat icon. It is usually in fairly muted tones. Download the SVG, open it in Sketch. Add gradients and shadows to the elements, and you get a contrasty, punchy icon. At least it is better than it was :)

Over a couple of evenings I made a simple macOS informer that shows app stats from Yandex AppMetrica. It lives as an icon in the status bar:

• Shows a list of all apps from AppMetrica.
• Displays the number of users, sessions, and crashes for today.
• Automatically refreshes stats in the background.

An example of using a block (closure) as a class property in Swift.

class ChatViewController: UIViewController {

    private var someClosure: (() -> Void)?
    private var anotherClosure: ((arg: Double) -> Bool)?

    func executeClosures() {
        if self.someClosure != nil {
            self.someClosure()
        }

        if self.anotherClosure != nil {
            let boolResult = self.anotherClosure(arg: 2.0)
        }
    }

    func addSelfClosure(closure: (() -> Void)!) {
        self.someClosure = closure
    }

    func printSomething() {
        self.addSelfClosure() {
            print("closure called")
        }
        self.executeClosures() // prints: closure called
    }

} 

CompareShots version 1.2 has been released.

I released it because one of the users emailed me asking to hide the logo and text after an image is selected, because otherwise, if the image is not full-screen, they stick out from behind it or show through. While I was at it, I decided to level up the app a bit more. At last, my subscription to various new libraries came in handy. Now you can draw on top of images. With different colors and brushes of different sizes. One evening, and this beauty was ready :)

I finally got around to writing about Assassin's Creed Unity, which I actually finished a few months ago; family matters left me no time to write a post while the impressions were still fresh.

The game starts with a rather vague prologue about the Templars and their Grand Master Jacques de Molay. As everyone knows, he was burned at the stake, but the prologue itself is not particularly connected to the game's plot. Somewhere they mention some grand plan of the Grand Master that the French Templars are supposedly going to carry out centuries later, but overall it makes for a pretty unclear opening.

The game itself follows a young man named Arno. His father was murdered when he was little, and the head of the Templar order took him in. One fine evening that man is murdered, and Arno, who happens to be at the scene, is accused of it and thrown into the Bastille. Then the revolution begins, and his assassin cellmate invites Arno into their Brotherhood. Along the way Arno tries to find out who was behind the murder. On top of that, he is in love with the daughter of his murdered adoptive father, who, ironically, is also a Templar.

The locations and scenery in the game are, of course, beautiful. Paris is gloomy, but beautiful, with many landmarks.

You can climb every landmark. Quite often, you can even get inside. It's always interesting to explore familiar places you've seen in real life.

They changed the gameplay quite a lot in this installment. Unfortunately, they completely removed the assassin brothers I liked so much: you can no longer mark a target and sic an assassin on it. There are many places to run and jump, you can enter a lot of buildings and pass through them, go up floors, and pick locks. Parkour and running feel a bit clunky in places and slow in others, but overall there is nothing fundamentally new; compared to the Ezio games, it feels more simplified, where you could jump or pull yourself up with the hookblade.

The city has several districts, each with its own difficulty, scenery, and inhabitants. In some places there are riots in honor of the revolution, while others are still calm.

During the story there are certain glitches in time (after all, we are still reliving an ancestor's memories through the Animus), where we hide so the system cannot track us. As a result, you get to run around Paris in other time periods. Climb the Eiffel Tower or see the Statue of Liberty before it is sent to the USA.

The combat system changed a lot. Now it is not so easy to stand against a crowd of enemies. In the early games you could just hold block and nobody would touch you; you only had to counterattack in time. Here everything is harder: it is easier to defeat the hero, every enemy has a power level (difficulty), and fighting even a couple of strong opponents is already pretty hard.

There are many different locations. Besides districts, there are lots of interiors. Palaces, for example. Lots of catacombs and dungeons.

I really liked the new investigation mini-missions. You arrive at a crime scene, collect clues, question witnesses, and expose the murderer. Great stuff.

There are a ridiculous number of missions in the game, by the way. All sorts of completion-meter stuff like collecting every chest, and there are several types of them. Rebuild your headquarters, buy and open taverns, increase their profits; all of this is also split into districts, so you can tackle it district by district. In general, you can spend more time on that than on the story itself. Many of them are rather repetitive and even routine. I liked the ability to buy weapons, clothes, and armor, of which the game has plenty. Changing the character's look and leveling him up through weapons and armor is always interesting.

The key story missions are certainly interesting. What sells them is that they can be completed in several ways: go in head-on, use some trickery, enter one way or another. You can also fulfill extra conditions so that, for example, people will help you by rushing the guards, delaying them and giving you a chance to escape.

Overall, I liked the game more than I disliked it. But somehow it does not reach the level of part II, Brotherhood, and Revelations in terms of story. They stuffed it with a lot of grindy completionist fluff. The plot is vague and the storytelling is not built especially well. Of course, the graphics are beautiful, the gameplay changed a lot, and in some places it became better while in others it became questionable. We'll see what happens in the next entries.