The Apple documentation is I believe correct although in places it isn't as explicit as I would prefer. This short article aims to explain what you can and cannot do in the background and the behaviour you will see. This information is relevant for iOS 7. [Update: If iOS 8 is different I will try to revise this post at a later date.  iOS 8 behaviour appears the same in my initial testing and I couldn't find any significant changes documented and there was no CoreBluetooth talk at WWDC 14.] If you think anything is inaccurate please let me know I don't want to mislead anyone and my testing hasn't been extensive.

Not Quite Enough for Peer to Peer Applications

My summary of the situation is that you can't do quite enough to support peer to peer in a viable way unless you have an app that you expect to be run on a regular basis anyway because the background modes (except for iBeacon detection) do not persist through a reboot of the phone or a flat battery. This means that the user will fall off your peer to peer application framework.

iBeacons can awake apps that have not been running since a reboot but iOS devices can only themselves perform as iBeacons in the foreground.

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Apple introduced access controls to Swift with the release of Xcode 6 Beta 4 and accompanying documentation (revision history).. The approach they have taken contrasts strongly with that taken by languages like C++, C# and Java in that the controls do not limit access based on the class hierarchy but instead limit based on the file and module.

Even variables declared private can be accessed from other classes and functions that reside within the same file. This allows properties and functions to be declared private but still accessible to free functions and operators defined particularly to operate with that class. It avoids some of the complexity that has C++ having "friend" classes and functions.

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I should probably have written this sooner as it has been 10 days since Beta 3 was released, but I've only just noticed that there is a bit of traffic still coming in about Swift Arrays from my earlier posts about the array semantics in the first Swift betas. The short version is that I'm very happy with the new Swift Arrays in Beta 3 which have full value semantics (optimised with copy on write under the hood). The syntax for declaring arrays has also changed which is fine although I didn't have a particular problem with the old syntax. Be sure to update the Swift iBooks (delete and download again) as there are some significant changes.

The copy() and unshare() functions are gone because unshare has essentially become the default behaviour (although contents changes not just length changes now trigger the copy so copy is not needed either).

Semantic Changes

1. Arrays are no longer reference types. You can treat every assignment, argument pass and function return as if it were a copy.
2. Changing the contents of an array is no longer permitted when the array is declared constant with let.

In this example you can see the copy-on-write (CoW) behaviour using the identity operator (=== which I wouldn't recommend you doing in real code to affect behaviour on the CoW status but it enables us to observe the CoW). In the example it doesn't make any difference if a is declared with let or var but b must be declared as var otherwise you will get a compile time error because the contents change.

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Just seen the announcement on the developer forum from Chris Lattner (link for registered developers and another).

If you want to know about the array issues in Beta 1 see the threads above or my last two posts.

I don't know and I don't really care if it was always the plan or is a result of feedback. I think this is very good news.

I think that this means that it will be copy on write behaviour so that if you aren't changing the array you get pass by reference performance and only pay the call by value price when a mutation will occur. It may even be smart enough to know when the caller isn't going to access the array again and allow it to pass and mutate the original. We'll see in beta 3 (or maybe later).

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UPDATE 2: I've added a new post about the changes in Beta 3 (I like them)

UPDATE: Apple have indicated that the array behaviour in Swift is going to change - see this post

My previous post suggests an explanation for why the behaviour of Swift Arrays is as it currently (in the very first Swift release) is as it is. In this post I intend to explain the behaviours, show the problems and give examples. Many examples are based on those found in this thread on the Apple Developer forums. Feel free to add comments if I've missed any categories and I'll incorporate them if they form a different case.

The relevant part of the documentation covers most of the behaviour and apart from the issues specifically mentioned in the Bugs section at the bottom these are descriptions of the specification not just the implementation.

Is it Value? Is it Reference? No its Confused!

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