To infinity and beyond with SwiftUI
At 10Clouds we pride ourselves on being early adopters of new technology and on testing it on real-life products rather than fictional scenarios. That’s why we decided to create a new app, Falcon Tracker, which showcases SpaceX rocket launches and has a simple, user-friendly interface. It’s the work of a whole team of passionate people in the company, including developers, a 3D modeler, UX and UI designers and project managers. We wanted to show you how it all works and what we predict for the future of SwiftUI.
Testing SwiftUI in the production environment
Earlier this year, we attended The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where SwiftUI took center stage. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with it, SwiftUI is a new declarative framework for building user interfaces for all Apple’s Platforms. If you’re interested in reading about it in more detail, have a look at our blog post on the subject. We decided that we wanted to quickly take SwiftUI for a test-drive and what better product to test it on than SpaceX, which we’re all huge fans of here.
SpaceX — making history with reusable rockets
Many of you will have heard about SpaceX — its a company which works on the design, manufacture, and launch of advanced, reusable rockets and spacecraft, and gained worldwide attention for several historic milestones. It is currently the only private company able to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first did in 2010. Later, in 2012, it made history again when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station. Its rockets are called Falcons, which provided the inspiration for our name.
A strong community with a powerful API
The SpaceX community is strong and has a number of fans among us here at 10Clouds. We were impressed with the awesome API that’s been created for tracking SpaceX flights. That’s why we made full use of this and coupled it with stunning design and a highly functional user interface in Falcon Tracker.
The features of Falcon Tracker
We’re proud of the range of features that our app offers, including a mission list, information about individual rockets, rockets in AR, live streams of rocket paths, reminders and more. Below are just a few screenshots to give you a flavor of the product.
Our predictions for the future of SwiftUI
SwiftUI is a revolutionary piece of technology in Apple’s world. But it is also the first release and as in Swift, it doesn’t cover all the use cases yet, and will probably change a lot in the first two years. Keeping in mind that businesses usually want to support at least two versions of iOS, and building custom designs is still quite challenging (although it’s getting easier) I wouldn’t recommend using it in the production app this year. But according to the Human Interface Guidelines, having a code that works on all Apple’s platforms is something that’s difficult to ignore, and most likely in two years’ time, we’ll all be writing in SwiftUI.
Looking at creating your own project in SwiftUI?
What to find out more about our work on SwiftUI or a range of other platforms? Why not drop us an email on hello@10clouds.com or visit our website: www.10clouds.com
