Development

John Voorhees, MacStories:

The message from WWDC was clear: SwiftUI is the future, a unified approach to UI development designed to simplify the process of targeting multiple hardware platforms. It’s a bold, sprawling goal that will take years to refine, even if it’s eagerly adopted by developers.

And:

However, SwiftUI also raises an interesting question: what does it mean for Catalyst? If SwiftUI is the future and spans every hardware platform, why bother bringing iPad apps to the Mac with Catalyst in the first place? It’s a fair question, but the answer is readily apparent from the very different goals of the two technologies.

For non-developers, think of Catalyst (previously called Marzipan) as a development kit to make it easier for developers to port their iOS apps to macOS. But think of SwiftUI as more of a starting point to lay out apps that will run on all your Apple platforms.

John does an excellent job digging into the value of both Catalyst and SwiftUI, explaining each one’s place in the Apple universe. Both are important.

If I had to boil this all down to a single talking point, I’d say that Catalyst is the hero we need now, letting developers bring their iOS apps to the Mac, refreshing and enriching the Mac experience while we wait for SwiftUI to evolve and mature and for SwiftUI apps to become the norm on all platforms.

In a way, this model is similar to the early days of Mac OS X, when Carbon made it possible for classic Mac apps to run on OS X while we waited for developers to build and ship modern OS X apps.

A great read.

Interested in WWDC bu not able to make it out to San Jose for the big happenings? John Sundell has your back.

WWDC by Sundell is a clean, snappy web site that promises to closely follow the conference. And that coverage has already started. Check it out.

[Via DF]

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming an app developer, the Apple Developer Academy is now open for applications. You could be one of 400 lucky students to win a year’s free training in Naples, Italy, completely free of charge.

To me, that’d be the experience of a lifetime. Here’s a link to the online application.

chanind.github.io:

I don’t have to do anything to make my app work in the US or Singapore or Kenya or anywhere else, and I didn’t make the Chinese government angry, so it should just work in China, right? Sadly, it’s not so simple. If your app/website servers aren’t hosted from within China, then, for all intents and purposes, it’s blocked. I mean, it will probably technically load, but will be excruciatingly, unusably slow. And sometimes it will just not load at all for hours at a time. This is true for all services hosted outside of the firewall, even in Hong Kong.

Interesting read, full of insight and useful details for folks who want exposure in China.

If you’ve never taken the time to play with Shortcuts, dig into this archive. It’s a terrific resource for interesting shortcuts, but the process of downloading and running a shortcut is also a good learning experience.

To get started, first be sure you’ve got the Shortcuts app downloaded from the iOS App Store. Run it once, just to get the on boarding out of the way, then exit.

Next, follow the headline link on your iOS device, scroll down, pick a category, and pick a shortcut. One I particularly love is Music > Apple Music Wrapped, which creates a detailed report for the music you’ve listened to in any particular year.

Tap the “Get the shortcut here” link, which will bring you into the Shortcuts app, then tap the Get Shortcut button.

Lots of choices to make, interface to make your way through, all of which gives you a sense of what you can do with Shortcuts. It also shows the immense amount of work that Federico and the MacStories team put into this effort.

Once you jump through all the hoops, return to Shortcuts and tap the Library tab at the bottom of the screen. That’s where you’ll find the Apple Music Wrapped shortcut. Tap the ellipsis (…) to see all the steps that went into the shortcut.

And, apropos of nothing, my favorite artist of 2018 was Kevin Penkin. I listen to an awful lot of anime soundtracks.

Niko Kitsakis (via Michael Tsai’s blog):

People called good Macintosh software “Mac-like” because that’s what it felt like. If an application did not adhere to those seemingly unwritten rules, you would develop an itch in the back of your head. Something was off.

This “Mac-like” feeling was at the core of the classic Mac OS era. It’s what gave the Mac its legendary status and its place in history. And while the first versions of OS X broke with some conventions, things became better as OS X progressed. That is to say, until 10.7 came out and started a trend of questionable design decisions that has been continuing ever since.

This is a short-but-sweet post that lays out a specific example of the power of a properly constructed interface. The oldest “Save changes” dialog asked a question, but populated the response buttons with Yes, No, and Cancel. A look at the button only was not helpful.

This evolved into the use of verbs in response buttons, with Save, Don’t save, and Cancel.

The Mac design language was so powerful, and so widely adopted, that any app that did not follow the rules stood out like a sore thumb. Mac applications were instantly recognizable, and apps from outsiders tended to look ugly, in comparison, as those outsiders did not know the rules to follow.

Does the modern macOS and iOS app universe still hew to a common standard? Are Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines lost in the incredible complexity of application creation? Are we better off with fewer rules and less oversight on the things we create? Or might the pendulum swing back, with apps that are recognized as following the iOS and macOS HIGs?

Last week, we shared this example of image tracking using ARKit 2. Here’s another one:

https://twitter.com/nathangitter/status/1008397365018005504

Wonderful. I get that, perhaps, our AR future will be seen through glasses. But examples like these are useful even seen through the lens of your iPhone. To me, a relatively short AR transaction works just fine on an iPhone. And I do agree that a more immersive experience will require glasses or (way in the future) connected contact lenses.

Helluva thing. I believe Jim is filing adoption papers as we speak.

Apple:

Today Apple delivered a Health Records API for developers and researchers to create an ecosystem of apps that use health record data to better manage medications, nutrition plans, diagnosed diseases and more. The Health Records feature allows patients of more than 500 hospitals and clinics to access medical information from various institutions organized into one view on their iPhone. For the first time, consumers will be able to share medical records from multiple hospitals with their favorite trusted apps, helping them improve their overall health.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Title II, “requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers”. The goal is to make it easy for you to access all your health care records, for you to be in control. As is, it doesn’t feel that way to me. I couldn’t tell you how to access my health care records without contacting my doctor.

To me, this API is an incredibly important step towards that goal. Imagine having your records in your control, always accessible, sharable with any doctor you visit.

Add to that the emergence of a new sector of healthcare apps that help you manage your health care, and help minimize the chance of mistakes with your meds because of, say, a prescription conflict.

The tech world’s eyes will be on today’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.

The keynote runs from 10a to noon PT (1p to 3p ET).

You can watch it on your Apple TV (launch the Apple Events app) or via Apple’s live stream.

Coincidentally, my 2015 MacBook Pro trackpad died this morning. Hoping against hope for a new Mac announcement today, even a speedbump. Not looking good, as the store is still up, no signs of a refresh.

Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

Following the update of Apple’s official WWDC app for iOS, the unofficial app for macOS has been updated to version 6. WWDC for macOS allows both attendees and non-attendees to Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, which starts next week in San Jose, to access live-streams, videos, and session information during the conference and as a year-round developer resource.

Another very useful feature of the app is the ability to stream live videos and recorded sessions to Chromecast devices.

If you are at all interested in WWDC, this is an incredible resource. Download the app, or access the source code (it’s open source) on the official product page.

Bravo, Guilherme.

Daniel Eran Dilger, Apple Insider, takes a look back at past World Wide Developer Conferences and the various technologies Apple revealed. This is not nostalgia, but more an exploration of Apple’s evolving strategies, both in timing and in impact.

One bit in particular:

Recall that several years ago, Android phones essentially had a monopoly on 4G LTE service, a truly compelling and vast jump in data speed over what iPhone 5 could do at the time. That advantage lasted for years, but today is irrelevant.

Qualcomm is now trying to resurrect this in advertising the potential for 1.2Gbit mobile data on its Android chipsets–something that isn’t even available in practice from typical mobile networks. But that marketing hasn’t stopped Apple’s iPhones from being the most popular devices around the world–even with a substantial price premium.

If novel features like voice search and AI were really compelling features that drove significant numbers of buyers to new hardware, Google’s Pixel 2 and Andy Rubin’s Essential phone would not have been total duds. The reality is that mainstream buyers consider factors like longevity, reliability and brand experience, and that gives Apple a reprieve from chasing down every short-term tech fad and brief feature advantage its competitors can offer.

I thought this was a terrific read, start to finish. The WWDC keynote is this coming Monday, June 4th.

First things first, not sure “so buggy” is the right note here. Might be that, or might be more a combination of “so important” and taking advantage of a feature or bit of code that has been put out to pasture or has been replaced.

That said, this post from Worth Doing Badly is an interesting read, developer or not. The list of apps is long and familiar and, if you are a dev, there’s some depths to plumb.

Microsoft developer blog:

Starting later this year, consumer applications (not including games) sold in Microsoft Store will deliver to developers 95% of the revenue earned from the purchase of your application or any in-app products in your application, when a customer uses a deep link to get to and purchase your application.

That’s a huge drop from the 70/30 split they had up to this point.

When Microsoft delivers you a customer through any other method, such as in a collection on Microsoft Store or any other owned Microsoft properties, and purchases your application, you will receive 85% of the revenue earned from the purchase of your application or any in-app products in your application

Note that this structure does not include games, which stick to the 70/30 split.

Does this apply any pressure to Apple to make a similar move? Windows is not quite a direct competitor to iOS, but the Windows market is massive.

Regardless, I like this move. Anything that helps improve the lot of the indie developer.

One thing Apple can do to one-up this move that would be even better for indie devs? Create a free tier, where up to, say the first $1,000 in sales goes 100% to the developer. Just a thought.

First, if you haven’t already, take a look at this Mark Gurman article which started it all, titled Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad & Mac Apps to Create One User Experience.

At the core of the article:

Apple is developing the strategy as part of the next major iOS and macOS updates, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Codenamed “Marzipan,” the secret project is planned as a multiyear effort that will start rolling out as early as next year and may be announced at the company’s annual developers conference in the summer. The plans are still fluid, the people said, so the implementation could change or the project could still be canceled.

True? Not true? It’s a rumor (from last December), but one that got a lot of traction.

Yesterday, John Gruber posted the piece linked in the headline, Scuttlebutt regarding Apple’s cross-platform UI project, which brings some new, well, scuttlebutt to bear:

This “Marzipan” rumor got a lot of people excited. But Gurman’s report is so light on technical details that the excitement is based mostly on what developers hope it could mean, not what’s actually been reported. The less specific the rumor, the easier it is to project your own wishes upon it. And, oddly perhaps, we haven’t seen any additional rumors or details about this project in the four months since Gurman’s original report.

I’ve heard a few things, from first- and second-hand sources. Mostly second-hand, to be honest, but they’re all consistent with each other.

Click over to Daring Fireball to read said scuttlebutt. Interesting and, because it’s John Gruber, there’s a level of credibility that takes it beyond typical rumormongering.

34 days until WWDC.

Apple:

Apple today announced it will host its 29th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose from June 4 through June 8. The McEnery Convention Center will be home to the world’s most creative developer community, who come together every year to share unique perspectives and learn about the future of Apple’s breakthrough products and services.

Every year, WWDC provides an opportunity for millions of developers to learn more about how to create new experiences across Apple’s platforms for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac and HomePod. A broad range of robust developer APIs, including SiriKit, HomeKit, HealthKit, GymKit, MusicKit, ResearchKit, and CoreML, give developers new ways to help users take command of everything from their health and homes, to how they get around, shop and learn. Last year at WWDC Apple debuted ARKit, and since then, developers with apps in every category on the App Store have embraced inventive ways to engage customers with virtual experiences overlaid in the real world.

Looking forward to this!

First things first, this set of rankings is based on data from GitHub and StackOverflow. Read the post for the details on how this data was collected.

There are plenty of other ways to assess the popularity of programming languages, but this seems a reasonable approach.

It’s notable that Swift has tied Objective-C. As the post says:

Finally, the apprentice is now the master. Technically, this isn’t entirely accurate, as Swift merely tied the language it effectively replaced – Objective C – rather than passing it. Still, it’s difficult to view this run as anything but a changing of the guard.

Pass this along to your dev friends.

Craig Hockenberry:

Whether you’re a developer who’s working on mobile apps, or just someone enjoying the millions of apps available for your phone, today is a very special day. It’s the ten year anniversary of the original iPhone SDK.

I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this release changed a lot of people’s lives. I know it changed mine and had a fundamental impact on this company’s business. So let’s take a moment and look back on what happened a decade ago.

First things first, this is a great look back at a moment in time. The iPhone shipped, but there was no SDK, the secret (VERY secret) sauce that let developers build apps that sat on the shoulders of Apple’s iPhone software designers.

Craig tells the story of that first wave of folks who found ways to pry the mysteries of iPhone OS mechanics from the clues of the native apps built by Apple, dumping the classes of those apps and working out how they did what they did.

This is the work of the giants on whose shoulders future iOS developers now stand.

Craig’s writeup resonated with me very strongly. Back then, my partner, Dave Wooldridge, and I were running a publishing company called SpiderWorks, shipping eBooks for developers before eBooks had quite hit the mainstream. SpiderWorks was bought by Apress and, as part of the deal, I convinced Apress to publish a book on iPhone programming I had been contemplating.

They agreed, and Jeff LaMarche and I signed an NDA with Apple to get a pre-release version of the iPhone OS (what it was called back then) SDK.

The core of the book, Beginning iPhone Development, was a series of 20 or so apps, each of which showed off a piece of the SDK. Jeff and I brainstormed the concepts, and he did all the heavy dev lifting, with my focus on writing and re-writing to crystallize the concepts, make sure the story was clear enough for beginners to follow without too much head-scratching.

The biggest problem we ran into was the combination of an NDA (which prevented us from discussing the SDK details with ANYONE) and a rapidly changing code base. Each new SDK Apple shared with us caused all our apps to break, which meant rewriting the code and the explanatory text that showed how it all works.

Madness.

Ultimately, the book was ready to go, and it shipped within days of Apple publicly releasing the SDK and officially lifting the NDA.

That experience was one of the most grueling, and thrilling, experiences of my life. I wouldn’t change it for anything.

[VIDEO] Developer Peder Norrby is using an iPhone X with ARKit and face tracking to create some pretty cool special effects. Watch the video (embedded in the main Loop post) for details. See also the trompe l’oeil Wikipedia page, which shows off the original artistic effect, which fools the eye into thinking it is seeing 3D.

Here’s a painting (Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874) that really pulls this off:

Norrby is planning on releasing his work as a free app and making his source code public. Nice.