Issue 661

17^th May 2024

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Did you catch Google I/O this week? It’s Always Interesting to see what the Android Inventors have been up to during the past Annual Interval. 😂 This 17-minute recap will get you up to speed if you missed it, but it’s safe to say it had a theme. Mobile features didn’t make the big headlines this year but were still present with Android Studio getting AI-powered code assistance, a new on-device Gemini model, and updates to Jetpack Compose.

But why am I talking about that here? Well, with Tim Cook saying they are working on generative AI features that’ll debut “later this year” and Greg Joswiak dropping huge hints when announcing the conference, it’s easy to see how WWDC could be similar to I/O this year.

I thought it might be fun to think through what that could mean, but to keep this short I’ll limit myself to three thoughts:

First, Siri. It’s an obvious target for an upgrade and generative AI is well suited to the task. My only worry is that it will need to be meaningfully ahead of the competition to overcome the bias of negative opinions people have about current generation Siri, and the competition took a huge step forward earlier this week. 😬 I still hope this happens, though.

Secondly, will we see a Copilot-esque feature in Xcode? One thing I would bet on is that if there is any AI in Xcode, it will be strictly on-device. I find it hard to believe any large company allows its source code to be transmitted to someone else’s server with every keypress, but I find it beyond belief that Apple would. If something like this ships in Xcode 16, I’d also be curious to know what training data it uses. I still worry a little about GPL training data in Copilot, so I hope it’s not based on OpenAI’s Codex as Copilot is. I also can’t see Apple using internal Swift code as training data, can you? There are lots of difficult questions here, so I’ll be fascinated to get more details if this feature ships.

My final thought is a long shot. It’s not a prediction because I don’t think it’ll happen. It’s more of a hope, and I’m including it here because I think Apple would do a great job with it. I’d love to see a painting app that uses generative AI to work with your brush strokes to create art. It wouldn’t generate images from text but would use AI models to help you improve your sketching and painting skills. There are many ways that an app like this could work and differing levels of assistance it could provide so I won’t speculate on anything more specific, but this is my long-shot hope. This is by far the least likely to happen, mainly because if it existed it would have been announced at last week’s iPad event alongside the new pencil. I don’t care, though. It’s on my list!

Let’s see how wrong I am in a few weeks! 😬

Dave Verwer

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News

David Smith:

Every single time I’ve left WWDC I’ve felt inspired, motivated and eager to get started on the next season of development. Sometimes this has been because of the announcements made on Monday morning, but more often it is because of the people I have met and spent time with. There is something joyously affirming about being with folks who value the same things you care about. A reminder that you aren’t alone or silly in wanting to do your job in a certain way. Of course not everyone attending WWDC thinks this way, but enough folks do for it to feel unifying.

I don’t know why I haven’t been back to WWDC since the change to Apple Park, but this is exactly what I got from the conference in years past, too. I should go back next year. Thanks for writing it up so effectively, David!

I’m very pleased to see the accounting error Jeff Johnson was experiencing last week is fixed and anyone affected will be automatically compensated for any miscalculated revenue. 👍

Tools

Aryaman Sharda launched a new site to allow debugging and monitoring of your AASA file. Find out when Apple last indexed it, and copy simctl openurl commands to use with the iOS Simulator. There’s more information in the launch blog post if you want the full story.

Code

This tip from fatbobman on leaving spacing alone is a good one. I’m not saying there are never reasons to override it, I’m just saying that this is why you should think carefully before doing so.

It’s not often that you’ll need the APIs in Accelerate but when you get a use case for them, the speed increases and concurrency efficiency you can get from them can be phenomenal. Lucas van Dongen dives into two areas of the framework: Visualising audio samples and video conversion for some impressive performance gains.

For full disclosure, Stream is a long-time sponsor of this newsletter.

I’ve linked to a few TipKit posts already, so what makes this one from Jordan Morgan different? I’ve not seen anyone demonstrate the rule-based presentation of tips before. That’s what! 😂

Design

When I first read about the “Blinkist trial”, it sounded like something that’d work because I could feel that I would be more likely to start a free trial if I knew I’d get a reminder before it converted to paid. Thanks to Filip Němeček for showing us that it works by revealing some impressive numbers!

And finally...

Someone proud of a detail they thought of in their forgery would point this out.

Great detective work! 🕵️‍♂️