Everyone else is doing it so here is my post on WWDC.
As a long time Apple developer I have always followed the events of WWDC. Some years I am working in other areas and I don’t follow as closely as others. This year I am in the middle of a few projects for iPhone/iPad/Mac so I was watching intently for things I could use.
I’ve done this long enough that I know that anything announced can’t be used for at least a few month until the new frameworks and platform updates are released. When doing consulting work I am usually required to support a few older OS versions so even after the frameworks are released they are often not available to use. On my own personal projects I will jump in and require the latest OS if it’s compelling enough. Apple device users tend to update quickly and my philosophy is that people who don’t update are probably not a large group of app buyers anyway.
Right now I am working on several mapping app projects (Peakist being one.) I prefer to work in SwiftUI when possible as it’s just easier when it does what you need. I am comfortable falling back to using UIKit when needed but it is cumbersome so I was hoping for improvements to MapKit with SwiftUI. I dared not actively wish for this as Apple moves very slowly and rarely gives you what you want in a timely fashion. I was very happily surprised when the keynote mentioned MapKit related items like offline maps and topographic map styles. However, when I went to bed that night thinking of how I would refactor my apps to use these new things it dawned on me that perhaps Apple didn’t expose these features to developers. The next morning I dug into the docs and videos and my fears were correct. While Apple has given Map app itself the ability to download maps for offline use there is no public framework for developers to do so. More frustrating, personally, the topo map style is not available outside Apple’s own use for the Map app on the watch.
Still the improvements to MapKit with SwiftUI for non-topo map projects are compelling. In some quick experiments I was able to replace my UIKit map bridge containing 100s of lines of code with a handful of lines of SwiftUI code. That’s a huge win and I will use this for future projects.
All the other improvements to the platforms look great as well. I haven’t dug into what is and isn’t accessible for developers but I’ll get there when I need some new features.
The headset looks like impressive technology but I think Gruber eloquently summed up what I was thinking when he talked about whether it makes a “compelling product” It looks like an amazing toy at a minimum and I would like to try it but I don’t see a reason to buy it. Yet.
If it was under $1k I might feel differently but the current price is too high for something that I feel currently has limited use. I’m not saying it’s too expensive for what it is. Sure there is an Apple premium I suppose but it’s just more costly than I can justify to play with. This is all likely to change once use cases emerge and more software is available. I suspect this will be similar to the watch where apple tossed out all sorts of ideas at launch and it eventually settled into a fitness/notification device.
I’ve yet to use a VR headset that doesn’t quickly make me nauseous so I most defiantly would not purchase one without trying it. I sounds like some of the things they have done here will help with that but time will tell.
I think it’s clear from many of the improvements and new frameworks that Apple is increasing their dogfood-ing of SwiftUI. Things many of us have asked for are being added and they look like great implementations. I’m sure holes remain, and I’ve found a few myself, but things are improving.
The big win for me this week has been Mastodon and finding more interesting people to interact with. I’ve had great conversations with people working in the same areas as me and look forward to continuing discussions in the future.
Sure there are the usual negative borderline trolls abusing the #wwdc hashtag but for the most part it’s been a very positive experience. I do understand some of the concerns about the walled garden, patent locked software, climate change and how many animals were harmed in the production of this toy for the rich and powerful. I get it but this is still impressive technology and let us just geek out for a bit. For some of the concern trolls I offer the words of the dude:
So as the WWDC week winds down, I’m watching the videos and reading the docs longing for the time when I can make use of the new tools. Right now I have to ship a few things so I need to suppress my immediate disappointments with missing features and the lack of ability to use what is provided in beta frameworks. Still it’s inspiring to see the new things coming and I continue on with current projects with a bit more enthusiasm.
