WWDC is upon us, and while hearing about the design of new Trash icon in OS X Yosemite is entertaining, the real substance of the talk for me is the new iOS 8 dev features. While this update isn’t as radical as last year’s iOS 7 update, there is a lot of great new tools coming out that will allow developers to make new and innovative applications. Below you’ll find the highlights from iOS 8 developers page and what they bring to the table. There are a lot of topics, but I’d like to highlight the two most interesting pieces first. Let’s run through the list!
The Top Two
The most dramatic updates to iOS 8 highlighted in today’s announcement are App Extensions and Swift. They are tools that change how developers will go about building applications.
App Extensions – “An app extension (or extension) lets you extend custom functionality and content beyond your app and make it available to users while they’re using other apps”
People will now have ways to make the iOS experience there own. By leveraging Extensions this opens up the platform for users to customize how they would like their operating system to function. While Android has had this to some extent, there users typically weren’t aware of the functionality. Apple is going to put it front and center, and provide a mix and match style that will resonate with consumers.
For App developers, this is going to make interacting with your everyday user much easier! Frequent users of your app don’t have to load up the full application to access the simple parts they interact with the most. We’re going to see an increase in clients wanting extensions built into all their applications in order to increase brand interaction.
Swift – “Swift is an innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast.”
No one saw this coming. A completely new programing language that can create iOS and Mac applications! While I’m looking forward to reading Apple’s 500 page tutorial on how it works, I have to be a little sceptical as to what its future will be. Apple is making a lot of promises with this, but it could change iOS development from this point on.
For App developers, this tool is going cause a lot of heated discussions in the coming months. I don’t think that this is going to replace Objective-C anytime soon, but it does have real power behind it. In two years time, this has the potential to be the rule, not the exception. The syntax at a glance looks simple to understand, so I think we’re going to see an influx of developers in our community as a result. The lower the barrier for entry language creates the potential for more people to pick it up. Right now the barrier of entry language for Objective-C is high. I know a lot of Javascript developers that wouldn’t touch it, but Swift? They might be ok with the syntax since it will look very familiar. I have the feeling that the iOS world is about to get a huge influx of web developers in the next year because of Swift. We’ll have to give this some time to settle, but it will affect the iOS community for better or worse in the years to come.
Quick Thoughts On Other New Features
There are a bunch of other new features with iOS 8. While not as groundbreaking as the last two topics, they still warrant a quick chat. These features are either upgrades on existing frameworks or Apple implementations of mainstream third party libraries.
HomeKit – Control your home from your phone! This isn’t a new concept and a lot of developers have already implemented this functionality on their own. Nothing too innovative here, but it will bring that functionality into the spotlight. We’re about to see a lot more applications and devices in this space as a result.
CloudKit – The power of the CLOUD! While developers will be happy to see this new option available, I don’t think its going to lead to many innovative ideas.
Manual Camera Controls – This is a welcome update to the AVFoundation library. Having more controls for the camera will make building this functionality in Apps faster and give even more diverse options for the end user.
PhotoKit – Having better ways to access and modify photos on the user’s phone is a great! Working with the camera roll has been a pain in the past, and this hopefully will give an easier way to access that functionality.
Touch ID – While 99% of applications will not need fingerprint identification, it is a cool way to login into an app. It also has the added bonus of feeling like James Bond.
Handoff – Being able to start a process on one device and continue it on another is a nice feature. I can see a lot of application leveraging this, especially universal games. Users will love this and developers will build it. Pure convenience.
HealthKit – There are a lot of health applications out there, and having a central place to aggregate all the data will be a great tool moving forward. For now FitBit and Up, are going to be quite happy. However, I have the feeling that this will become a bigger topic of discussion once we hear more about the new iPhone 6 and possible iWatch.
SceneKit – Game Developers rejoice! You will now have a basic platform to build 3D games. While SpriteKit was a great addition in iOS 7. It didn’t bring much to the table for 3D specific games, this could change that.
SpriteKit – Originally introduced in iOS 7, SpriteKit is getting some quality of life upgrades. I have the feeling this completes the original feature set that Apple wanted to get in last year, but they didn’t have the time to do so. This will make 2D game development even easier and maintainable.
Metal – Games on iOS 8 now have a way to directly access the hardware with Metal. Previously everything was done through OpenGL, but not anymore. Metal is going to allow developers to build amazing looking graphics that are more inline with traditional portable consoles. Expect the Infinity Blade of the next generation device to look amazing.
So That’s iOS 8
Overall, I think Apple is giving some great new tools for developers. From new frameworks to programing languages, there will be a lot of change coming in the next year. While the official iOS release won’t be available until the fall, we can expect some ground breaking new apps on the horizon in 2014.
