5 Things from WWDC22
As always at WWDC there are a lot of amazing new announcements to improve quality of life for both developers and users of Apple products.
Let’s take a look at 5 exciting new things from this year’s WWDC.
Lock Screen
In addition to revised notifications and Now Playing controls, users can now place widgets on the Home Screen to get access to glanceable information without having to unlock their phone or open an app.
Users can now create multiple custom lock screens with different colours, fonts and dynamic backgrounds.
WeatherKit
Apple acquired the popular Dark Sky weather app back in March 2020, leaving developers wondering what would replace the retired Dark Sky API and now we have the official answer. Developers can now use a native, privacy-focused solution instead of relying on 3rd party providers.
Even at this early beta stage, the documentation shows the API is very comprehensive, covering a range of weather data, alerts, forecasts and celestial information.
Although regular use of the API has a pricing model attached, members of the Apple Developer program can use up to 500,000 calls a month before being charged.
Dark Sky API will officially sunset on the 23rd of March 2023, but Apple provides migration documentation for developers.
More information can be found here:
https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/
SwiftUI
There are lots of new SwiftUI frameworks and api’s that will improve the quality of life for developers.
Charts is going to be a gamechanger for when needing to integrate any type of chart into an app. Previously adding charts into your app required writing your own or bringing a package in that often required a bit of work to get right and usually just ended up with a headache after.
With a wide variety of options it’s going to be easier than ever to visualise your dataset the way you want it.
Finally we are getting custom layouts that will allow you to design your layout how you like it instead of having to fully rely on x/y/z stacks.
Share sheets are also now supported and it will let you use all of the Share extensions available on a user device. Share sheet support is powered by the new Transferrabe protocol, which introduces a new type-safe API for transferring app data.
Freeform
A note-taking app that has collaboration features. Users will be able to add notes, drawings, images, and more. All the collaborators can see each other’s cursor with real-time updates. This should help particularly with the ever increasing remote team collaborations.
Apple Pay
A few new things were announced about Apple Pay today that help both merchants and consumers.
Contactless payments with merchants using just iPhones, no extra hardware is needed. This is a big one for merchants that allow for a low barrier to entry for sales where we are less dependent on physical cash.
Apple Pay Later allows you to make a purchase and split it into 4 separate payments across 6 weeks with no interest or fees. There are a lot of other companies on the market doing the same thing, this should be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.
This just touches the surface of what was announced today. What are you most excited about?
For the full video of what has been announced and a more in depth look, check out the videos below.
Keynote
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off with exciting reveals, inspiration, and new opportunities. Join the worldwide developer community for an in-depth look at the future of Apple platforms, directly from Apple Park.
Platforms State of the Union
Take a deeper dive into the latest tools, technologies, and advances across Apple platforms to help you create even better apps.
