Many people report problems with this. I tried all the suggested solutions and nothing worked.
What worked is:
“pod cache clean --all”
“rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Cocoapods”
“sudo gem install cocoapods”
get a new copy of the projects from the downloads area…
and it works.
Every single time cocoapods is involved, it’s the problem.
Noticed that build.log had recorded an error message about “iPhone 8” not being a valid target; added iPhone 8 simulator, refreshed everything, and it works again?
Same issue on my side, for whatever reason the projects in the book don’t work if you don’t have the iPhone 8 in your simulator list.
To add it (and fix the problem), as @aeberbach mentioned, you need to go on XCode => Window => Devices and Simulators => Simulator tab and add the iPhone 8.
It would be nice if this would be fixed in a subsequent version of the book though.