Top 4 Takeaways from WWDC 2019
What’s up guys! Avi here from TheCodex starting a brand new blog. I thought I’d start it off with my experience attending and watching WWDC 2019 this past week.
Without a doubt, this has been one of the best WWDCs since the launch of Swift at WWDC 2014. From creating a new framework known as SwiftUI through which developers can build apps even faster, to unveiling a brand new Mac Pro that looks like a cheese grater but can be configured to run 28-cores and have 1.5 terabytes of ram (yes you read that right), let’s dive into my top 4 takeaways from WWDC 2019:
1. ARKit 3
One of the coolest new announcements made by Apple came with the launch of ARKit 3. I had the opportunity to play their new AR bowling game and the 5-minute experience of competing against a friend to try and push a ball in front of us with our iPads blew my mind.
Apple’s new take on ARKit 3 puts people first through their new feature, “People Occlusion”. Through this feature, you can track up to three faces and allow AR content to realistically move in front or behind individuals. Collaboration was also in the keynote and in the conference. Multiple people can now work and play in the same AR world, building new Minecraft worlds or join multiplayer experiences together.
Furthermore, with ARKit 3 comes detailed motion tracking through “Motion Capture”. Developers can now utilize an individual’s pose and movement as inputs in their own AR applications. This opens the gates for pose detection, video analysis and more through 3D-modeling of the body.
Through ARKit 3, Apple has developed several fantastic features that developers are bound to try and implement, building more functional apps and increasing the adoption of AR around the world.
2. iPadOS
In previous years, iOS has dominated the operating system for the iPhone, iPad. But all of that changes with this year’s WWDC. Apple launched brand new operating systems, specifically designed for differentiating the iPad from the iPhone and helping it compete as the “laptop-killer” against other machines.
iPad OS comes with a plethora of new functionalities and features. Starting right off the bat with the home screen, Apple launched a brand new update to the home screen with widgets and better multitasking features. The new widget, known as the “Today View” allows users to quickly customize at-a-glance information such as weather forecasts or top headlines.
Moreover, the new iPadOS comes with a brand new file management system. You are now able to plug in a thumb drive into an iPad, accessing and managing files between the two devices with ease. There’s a brand new drawing interface for the iPad, better updates to the Apple Pencil and an amazing floating keyboard that can be positioned anywhere on the screen.
All of these features are Apple’s move to distinguish the iPad as just a “larger iPhone” and make it a more competitive device against laptops/tablets like the Microsoft Surface. I personally love the new update and can’t wait to see productivity jumps across the board.
3. MacOS Catalina
First thing first, I absolutely love how beautiful the background image is for the Catalina islands. What’s even better is the slew of new updates coming to your Mac this fall.
Most notably is the fact at how easy developing Mac Apps is going to become. iPad apps are now going to “run natively alongside your existing Mac apps.” This will allow developers to quickly port their iPad apps over to Mac with relative ease, boosting the number of apps in the Mac App Store and make the Mac ecosystem more engaging.
Not only can you port iPad apps to the Mac, but also you can now use your iPad as an external display with Sidecar. This was definitely a highlight for me watching the keynote. There’s a couple of extensions in the App Store that currently do this, but Apple’s native solution of using your iPad as a second display is going to be great and I can’t wait.
Numerous applications on your Mac are also getting beautiful design updates. Reminders was rebuilt from the ground up, Notes is getting a new gallery view and Photos has a new “immersive, dynamic look” that will now showcase your best shots and memories. Find My Friends and iCloud’s find my iPhone features are now being combined into a brand new app called “Find My”. Clever right? Now you can track both your friends and devices all in one app. Let the stalking being :)
With the new OS comes the death of iTunes. Instead, Apple has broken up iTunes into 3 new dedicated applications: Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts. I think this is a great step forward to focusing on Apple Music as a core service while also realizing how clunky and old iTunes had become. To all my iTunes fans out there, I’m sorry but it’s time to say goodbye.
Catalina is going to give you the power to build some amazing things and have a beautiful experience on the Mac. If you’re a developer, you can download the Beta through Apple’s Beta Software Program.
4. SwiftUI Framework
SwiftUI is game-changing. Hundreds of lines of code, delegate methods and data sources and custom UI components can now all be simplified to just a couple lines of code with SwiftUI.
So what exactly is the SwiftUI framework that everyone’s been talking about? SwiftUI is Apple’s new framework that enables developers to quickly build user interfaces across all of Apple’s current platforms. From dynamic type and automatic animation to adaptive layout and smart refresh, there are a plethora of new features in-built with SwiftUI. Enabling a developer to write a Table View with just 8 lines of code demonstrates how SwiftUI is all about improving developer productivity.
SwiftUI apps can easily be built and tested through Xcode’s new interactive development tools. You can drag and drop components and elements into an app, allowing Xcode to automatically generate the code for you. Just like Swift Playgrounds automatically refreshed when changes were made, Xcode will now automatically refresh to reflect your changes with SwiftUI in real-time.
There are a lot of questions still in the air about SwiftUI. Should it be used in every case of iOS development? Is it still using UIKit underneath, acting a layer that simplifies the developer’s experience? But for now, SwiftUI seems extremely promising and extremely cool. I’ll definitely be posting some tutorials in the future developing apps with SwiftUI and revealing truly how simple it is to create your own iOS apps with it.
Conclusion
WWDC 2019 was an amazing experience. Developers around the world are excited for all the new tools that are coming with iOS 13 and you should be too! Dive into this new Apple ecosystem as soon as you can and start exploring all the new features and technologies that have been created.
If you’re interested in learning more about iOS development, definitely check out our Swift and iOS Development videos on YouTube, or our courses on TheCodex. Thanks for reading!
