Issue 304

9^th June 2017

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

So of course, Apple continued their tradition of announcing new OS versions and although iOS 11 isn’t too radical a change, there are certainly a few things to look forward to (more on that later). I’m also pretty psyched about Mac OS High Sierra’s new apple file system and auto-play blocking. 🙌🏼

One of my favorite keynote moments was the AR presentation. I’ve been really interested in AR and computer vision lately, and I can’t imagine all the new creative ways developers will use ARKit. In addition, I’m excited to see Apple push forward in this space with the introduction of the Core ML and Vision APIs.

Xcode 9 also looks to be a fantastic update with a brand new super speedy source code editor and (finally!) wireless development/debugging! Amazing. Looks like It’s going to be a great year for Apple development! 😎

<p>Vicc Alexander</p>

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News

So what goodies did iOS 11 bring us? Paul Hudson has a great round up here and includes code samples for all of the major new features. There’s also a nice list of minor points at the end of the article. We’re going to have a busy summer!

Full disclosure, Paul is also this week’s sponsor but that had no influence on this article being picked for inclusion in the newsletter. It was just a really good round up of all the developer features of iOS 11!

Xcode 9 has got to be one of the best Xcode releases in a while. So many great updates. A few of my favourites include refactoring across Swift, C, Objective-C, and C++ files, auto-detection of AppKit, UIKit, and WebKit method calls that are not made on the main thread, and of course, deployment over WiFi. The crazy thing is that these are only a few updates from a vast majority of improvements! For the entire line-up of features, check out the doc! 💻

What else did WWDC bring us? A huge set of changes to the App Store Review guidelines! 📖 Along with some quite shocking improvements like “Apps that provide a programming interface may now (in some cases) download and run code from the Internet.” which I never thought we’d see! Unfortunately, some of the humour has also been removed, which is a shame. I’ll take the new rules though!

Tools

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use library for image masking / quick eraser tools, then look no further. Not only is Tiny Crayon completely free, but the documentation is spot on. 👌🏼 You’ll find examples both in Swift and Objective-C. Definitely recommend checking this out, especially if you’re working with images. 🖍

Code

This is something I’m particularly excited about! With the growing buzz surrounding Snapchat’s world lenses, and Facebook’s recent AR announcements, I’m pretty sure this is just the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, the AR demo at WWDC blew me away. Although there are a few limitations to the technology, I definitely see this as a stepping stone towards something bigger. Can’t wait to dive into this myself! 🏊🏼

Andrew on why and how a closure got its name. More importantly, he believes that by understanding why certain features are named the way they are, one can actually develop a better understanding of said feature. Definitely worth checking out.

Design

Apple’s App Store was long overdue for a facelift, so I’m excited it’s finally happening. I’m specifically stoked about the reintroduction of the Today tab. It’s a lot more beautiful, user-friendly, and focused on discovering new apps is refreshing. There’s even editorial in the store now which is fantastic! With that said, there’s a new subtitle field and a 170-character promo text section that can be updated instantly (no review process required). Exciting stuff.

One of my favorite things about WWDC is the Apple Design Awards event. Always nice to see Apple celebrate design. One app that stood out to me on this year’s list is Mushroom 11. Aside from the crazy landscapes, original sound score, and beautiful graphics, I discovered that the creators did their homework. Turns out that they met up with a chemist and biochemist to get a closer look at how mushrooms actually behave. They then took this knowledge and used it to influence the main character’s behavior within the app. Pretty awesome if you ask me. 🍄

Business and Marketing

Earlier this week, Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, talked about the reasoning behind the upcoming change regarding app store ratings. Starting in iOS 11, developers will no longer have to forfeit their existing ratings everytime they push out a small bug fix (unless they explicilty want to). I definitely see this as a step in the right direction. It was painful receiving really great reviews only to end up losing them to a minor improvement release. Thanks Apple!

Videos

As always, the WWDC videos are available to watch and so whether you attended or couldn’t make it here’s how to catch up with all the content that was talked about during this week. I can’t wait to binge on these over the weekend. 😆

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And finally...

Nothing says 1997 like those background images. 😆