What did developers think of WWDC?
the news from Apple’s annual developer conference unpicked by those who know
The keynote that opens Apple’s annual World Wide Developer Conference is streamed live on the web, making it a fixture in the Silicon Valley media calendar.
Sessions from the five-day event are also posted (at bit.ly/mfwwdc19vids) for everyone to see. But the real target audience is the 5,000-odd members of Apple’s Developer Programs who win the annual lottery for a $1,599 (£1,265) ticket to attend in person, plus the 350 students awarded Apple scholarships. We asked for some of their reactions to WWDC 2019.
Exploding head
A long keynote with plenty of technical detail left some members of the public nonplussed, but developers were enthusiastic. Kyle Lee, a selftaught Swift coder who teaches others as Kilo Loco, thought the cartoon graphics set the right tone: “Apple was spot-on with the exploding head theme – so much awesome technology all at once.”
Jose Reyes, also based in California and an iOS developer, said: “This WWDC was very much Apple at their utmost… incredible innovation in all areas.” Kelly Guimont, meanwhile, who co-ran App Camp for Girls and hosts The Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast felt that this was “a big year for Apple.”
Diane Hamilton is co-owner of Binary Formations in Richmond, Virginia, making macOS and iOS apps. “This year’s WWDC brought back signs of Steve Jobs’ commitment to quality and design over meeting self-imposed deadlines,” she told us. “I’m excited about the possibilities for our apps.”
Julian Schiavo, a 15-year-old iOS developer who’s won scholarships to the last two WWDCs, was really happy with how this year’s event went. “Apple’s been trying to make things easier and better for developers.”
One example much discussed in the run-up to WWDC was Catalyst (originally Marzipan), the initiative to bring UIKit, the interface-driven framework used to make iOS apps, to macOS development. Because UIKit is more widely used than AppKit, the macOS framework, and seen as easier to get into, Apple hopes it’ll increase the number of Mac apps.
Ish ShaBazz, a developer and mentor in southern California, is looking forward to bringing his iOS apps to the Mac, while wondering
if it will “help iOS app prices rise to sustainable levels or devalue Mac apps.”
WWDC scholar Will Bishop, a 17-year-old Apple Watch app developer in Adelaide, thinks Catalyst is a great step forward, and is hoping to see “some of my favourite iOS apps on macOS”. Though he did express concern that “developers will check the ‘Mac’ box without creating a Mac-like app.”
Apple’s Craig Federighi was keen to point out, during the keynote, that where Apple had been accused of this with its own Marzipan apps, it was due to design decisions rather than the framework.
Tweeting after WWDC, Jose Reyes was more optimistic: “Catalyst apps are going to be better than AppKit apps.”
But we found developers even more energised by SwiftUI, unexpectedly demoed by Josh Shaffer, who heads Apple’s iOS UI frameworks team. “I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since 2014, when Swift was announced,” said Ish Shabazz. SwiftUI was it, and thought it “completely stole the show.”
With UIKit, coders design the graphics that appear on screen and how they respond to the user. SwiftUI is declarative, meaning the code simply says which components to display. They automatically work in default ways, which can be modified as necessary. As Kyle Lee explained, this means much less code that’s easier to read.
Multi-platform
“SwiftUI, and the broader movement towards declarative programming, is the biggest shift in iOS development” since Apple opened the platform to apps in 2008, said Jose Reyes.
Dylan McKee, co-founder of Nebula Labs in Newcastle upon Tyne, found SwiftUI “a super-exciting advancement”.
Ish ShaBazz believes “For those who adopt it, it will change the workflow as we create apps and dramatically lower the barrier of entry for folks who are just learning.” He went on to say it should be “far more conceivable for an independent developer” to release an app on multiple Apple platforms.
James Thomson, in Glasgow, is the developer of PCalc, the calculator app available for all Apple OSes. “SwiftUI pretty
“I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since 2014, when Swift was announced” Ish Shabazz Developer
much changes everything,” he told us – but not yet. “Apple has put a stake in the ground and said this is the future. AppKit and UIKit are not the future. But that doesn’t mean we all stop writing our existing apps and throw everything away. You can adopt SwiftUI incrementally.” He hadn’t changed his immediate plans, but would “look into writing something small in SwiftUI.”
In Amsterdam, Janina Kutyn, an iOS developer previously at Apple, offered a litmus test: “What are the things that I can implement with two lines of code using UIKit, but will give me a headache if I use SwiftUI? That’s what will tell me whether or not my projects are ready for it.”
Scholar Will Bishop thought SwiftUI would ultimately “get more people involved in making apps,” but expected developers to wait until it was old enough to “support the last three major OS updates.”
Howard Oakley, MacFormat contributor and developer of macOS command line tools, pointed out that SwiftUI will only be available in macOS 10.15 Catalina, which is also the first version incompatible with 32-bit apps, drawing a hard line between past and future that some users wouldn’t be ready to cross.
Relying more on the framework means SwiftUI apps can easily support system-wide user options like Dark Mode. Ish ShaBazz said: “This is a gigantic step forward in the support of inclusive apps.” Kelly Guimont joined him in noting the prominence of accessibility options in iOS 13 and praising macOS Catalina’s Voice Control.
A WWDC keynote video showed user Ian Mackay, who’s quadriplegic, working across Mac apps as easily as with a mouse – “one of the coolest things I’ve seen,” said ShaBazz.
Sam Miserendino Student
Guimont thought these initatives showed that “Apple is absolutely committed to making sure everyone can use their products.”
Student angle
As the freshest sets of eyes on Apple’s ecosystem, the scholarship recipients were excited about WWDC but also analytical.
Sam Miserendino, an 18-year-old student at New York’s Columbia University, developed Questlin, an app that links student volunteers to non-profits. He found WWDC an amazing experience with great networking opportunities. He felt that being among adults representing massive companies was eye-opening, but added: “People aren’t always helpful in a way that’s accessible to those just getting started, and a lot of the programming isn’t relatable. I would love to see more events specifically for scholars.”
Julian Schiavo praised the Scholarship Kickoff, where “scholars could chat to Apple engineers about their work and how they started at Apple – it was incredibly interesting.” Miserendino added that he got to meet Apple marketing executives and social policy chief Lisa Jackson, and “really saw Apple making an effort to reach out to groups that don’t see enough representation.”
Overall then, the software announcements seem to have analysts and students alike fired up for the next stages in Apple’s development.
“I spent 20 minutes discussing machine learning models for fluid dynamics with someone from France”