0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.
0:00:02Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note and iOS development, Apple and
0:00:06the like.
0:00:07I'm your host, David Smith.
0:00:08I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia.
0:00:10This is show number 186, and today is Monday, June 2nd.
0:00:14Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:18All right, so I am coming to you from San Francisco, specifically my hotel room after
0:00:24just walking out of a rather remarkable keynote.
0:00:29it was not exactly what I expected,
0:00:31and in a very good way.
0:00:34I think it was interesting going into a keynote like that
0:00:38with not-- I wouldn't say I had low expectations,
0:00:42but I didn't really know what to expect.
0:00:44I didn't know if it would be a hardware-focused event,
0:00:46software-focused event, just minor updates, huge things.
0:00:50Who knows?
0:00:51And it turned out it was pretty huge.
0:00:54And if I'm honest, it's still all kind of seeping in,
0:00:56and that's the way that I tend to do this.
0:00:58If you've been listening to the show for a while,
0:01:00you probably have heard me do this,
0:01:02where it's right after lunch, right after the keynote,
0:01:05I'll tend to do a short kind of first impressions post.
0:01:08And then later in the week, I'll do another one.
0:01:10I like doing one now.
0:01:12Before, I fully formed all my thoughts.
0:01:13They're a little bit more rattled.
0:01:15But everything I know now is not under an NDA,
0:01:18or in any way restricted from me to talk about it,
0:01:21because it was just in the public keynote.
0:01:23So I can just kind of speak freely
0:01:24with what I think about, rather than having
0:01:26to be a bit more thoughtful later on.
0:01:28and the week.
0:01:29So first thoughts, first impressions.
0:01:32It's big.
0:01:35It's huge.
0:01:38I don't really know how to undersell it.
0:01:41I felt like a little bit I was being played
0:01:43while I was watching the keynote, though.
0:01:45Because the first two sections, the Mac and the iOS section,
0:01:48felt fairly-- I wouldn't say meh.
0:01:51But in that vein, it wasn't large, categorically shifting
0:01:57changes to the platforms.
0:01:59Some of the things that are kind of cool--
0:02:01so starting with, I guess, in chronological order,
0:02:03talking about Yosemite, it's slightly freshened up UI.
0:02:07Nothing huge there.
0:02:08Some widgets in Notification Center.
0:02:11The continuity thing is kind of cool in terms
0:02:13of having a connection and an awareness
0:02:16between your device and your laptop
0:02:20is just powerful and cool in a lot of ways.
0:02:22And I'm glad to see some of those kinds of things going on.
0:02:25And I think you'll be able to do some really cool things
0:02:27as a developer with that.
0:02:29Like, it immediately comes to mind for me,
0:02:31as a podcast developer, to be able to-- you're
0:02:34listening to a podcast, for example, on your phone.
0:02:36You sit down and you pick up where I left off,
0:02:38and that is a smooth and defined handoff,
0:02:41rather than the user having to manage that, or things
0:02:44like that that is kind of cool.
0:02:46So that's kind of an interesting thing on the Mac.
0:02:48It was fairly minor, I'd say, on the Mac,
0:02:51at least compared to, I think, what
0:02:52some people had expected, including myself.
0:02:55in terms of potentially it being a major overhaul of the UI
0:02:59system, of the fundamental way that apps are built,
0:03:03these types of things.
0:03:04None of that happened.
0:03:05It was very much the next evolution in that.
0:03:09And that's great.
0:03:10I'm not particularly a big Mac developer.
0:03:12I do some of it.
0:03:13But mostly, that's not really my focus.
0:03:15Most of my focus is definitely on iOS.
0:03:17And on iOS, we had a couple of good--
0:03:22they're slow playing us.
0:03:23They show up first.
0:03:24and it's like interactive notifications.
0:03:26Cool.
0:03:27OK, that's nice.
0:03:28And it's nice that there's a third party capability for that,
0:03:31it seemed, based on what some of the things they were saying.
0:03:35Spotlight is, I guess, kind of nice.
0:03:38Be able to have a bit more powerful search,
0:03:41a slightly better keyboard, audio and video chat
0:03:44type of things.
0:03:46Cloud Drive, which seems kind of a weird document model
0:03:52that they're kind of moving to, or it's still siloed by app,
0:03:54but they're accessible in a central location.
0:03:57It's like, OK, that's cool.
0:03:58They have these variety of different things.
0:04:01Then they got to, I think, the thing that made me most nervous
0:04:04as a developer, of course, is the-- when they started
0:04:08to talk about HealthKit.
0:04:10And based on what they said there,
0:04:11it sounded not so scary as somebody who makes an iOS
0:04:17fitness tracking thing.
0:04:19It wasn't so much that Apple was taking over the space so much
0:04:21just giving some increased visibility to it,
0:04:24as well as just emphasizing what's going on there.
0:04:28And kind of having a way to aggregate data rather
0:04:30than necessarily to just like-- they
0:04:32didn't release their own pedometer or something
0:04:34like that, which would have been a bit awkward potentially
0:04:37for me.
0:04:39They said they're doing some stuff with home sharing.
0:04:41I'm not trying to just summarize it necessarily.
0:04:44But those are kind of the things that I remember
0:04:46from the keynote.
0:04:48And then things took a turn.
0:04:51So that's probably about an hour into it.
0:04:54And I was like, oh, this is cool.
0:04:55It's a standard keynote.
0:04:56This kind of feels like the talk rather than the tick.
0:04:59It's kind of a minor step forward.
0:05:02And then they said, OK, now we got some stuff for developers.
0:05:06And they made a pretty bold statement,
0:05:08I think, when they first started talking
0:05:09about the developer stuff.
0:05:11They said, I think it's the largest release and rollout
0:05:14that we've ever done.
0:05:15And Apple is perhaps known and kind of famously
0:05:18loves to hyperbolize things.
0:05:20And so I was like, oh, sure it is.
0:05:22It's going to be the biggest, baddest, amazing thing I've
0:05:24ever seen.
0:05:26And then I'm pretty sure they followed through and came
0:05:29through on that promise.
0:05:30What they delivered is kind of huge.
0:05:33There's a ton of things that they're
0:05:36doing both in the App Store in terms of inter-app
0:05:40communication, extensions, widgets.
0:05:43There's a whole new language called Swift.
0:05:45It just kind of blew my mind.
0:05:47And it was kind of fun seeing the reactions
0:05:50to fellow developers in that scene, seeing
0:05:53these same things.
0:05:54It's like, whoa, these are all the things
0:05:56we've been asking for for years.
0:05:58And it's like, all of a sudden at once,
0:06:00you're really going to just dump them all on us at once, which
0:06:04maybe I would have gradually sold them out
0:06:08over the last few releases, but I'll take it.
0:06:10I think on my App Store improvement checklist,
0:06:14the series that I did on the show a little while ago,
0:06:17they seem to have done maybe a handful of them.
0:06:20It's hard exactly how to count until I get my hands on it.
0:06:23But at least a handful of those things are addressed now,
0:06:25which is kind of cool.
0:06:26Be able to have some better searching,
0:06:30showing if an app's an editor's choice,
0:06:33to show that on the app in the badge,
0:06:35and doing some things around in-app purchases,
0:06:38and family sharing and things.
0:06:40There's some stuff that I think they're doing there
0:06:42that is definitely an improvement.
0:06:43It's not as far as I would like to see it go eventually,
0:06:46but it is definitely a step forward.
0:06:48And I'll take that.
0:06:49As someone who makes my living in the store,
0:06:51anytime they're making progress and don't
0:06:53seem to be completely just letting things kind of fall
0:06:58fallow, I'm pretty happy about that.
0:07:00I like the new search interface.
0:07:03It's not perfect, I think, but it's certainly
0:07:05better having this kind of more continuously scrolling list.
0:07:08I think it's designed to encourage a bit more
0:07:11exploration by customers, replacing the Nearby Me tab
0:07:17with this poor little tab that every couple of releases
0:07:20just gets replaced with something else and never seems
0:07:22to really stick.
0:07:24So that was replaced, and that was kind of cool.
0:07:27But then they started just dropping bombs.
0:07:31It's like all of a sudden, probably Craig was up there
0:07:35and just sort of dropping bombs on us.
0:07:36He's like, OK, so we now have an extension framework.
0:07:40So you can now have inter-app communication in kind of the way
0:07:44that we've, for so many years, been asking for,
0:07:47where you could define something that you can offer up
0:07:53to other applications.
0:07:55And they can then act on them.
0:07:56So you can say, I can handle a URL.
0:07:58I can handle a document.
0:08:00I can handle a text.
0:08:01I can handle a picture, whatever it is.
0:08:02And you have the ability, through the UI activity
0:08:05share sheet type of thing to then expose
0:08:08that behavior to someone else.
0:08:10Evan, like I said, this is all pre-NDA.
0:08:12I don't really know all the details of that.
0:08:14But it seems at least promising that that is something
0:08:16that they're heading towards.
0:08:18And even in its most simplest form
0:08:21is something that is going to allow
0:08:23us to do some really cool things as developers.
0:08:27Widgets in Notification Center I think is great.
0:08:31There's a lot of just little cool things that I think
0:08:33a lot of applications would benefit from by having
0:08:35a more persistent place that you can put things that isn't badges.
0:08:39For example, the classic one for me is obviously in Podometer++.
0:08:43If you want to look at your step counts,
0:08:45you can just have them in Notification Center all the time.
0:08:49I have enough to badge the app.
0:08:52It's just data that's up there.
0:08:54I can give you more detailed things potentially than just a number,
0:08:57in terms of where you are in your goal, these types of things.
0:09:01Maybe even do some graphs and charts or things.
0:09:03You can extend and export the experience of an application
0:09:07outside of it, which is awesome and kind of revolutionary.
0:09:12At least, revolutionary for the platform, not necessarily
0:09:14revolutionary in general.
0:09:17Yeah, and there's just a lot of things
0:09:22that they're starting to allow that-- it dovetails pretty well
0:09:26into episode 185, the last one I did,
0:09:29where I was talking about my perspective now
0:09:31on trying to find opportunities within the App Store
0:09:35and see where Apple is heading and see
0:09:36what they're focused-- putting their weight behind
0:09:39and trying to get in the way of that.
0:09:40And there's a lot of things.
0:09:44There's a lot of waves breaking or whatever metaphor
0:09:47you'd like to use.
0:09:48There's a lot of things going on.
0:09:49There's a lot of opportunities I think
0:09:51this summer is going to create for developers.
0:09:54And honestly, at this point, I am a little overwhelmed
0:09:57by what exactly I'm going to do.
0:09:58There's obviously some obvious simple low hanging fruit things
0:10:01that I'll do to my existing apps.
0:10:03But I think there's a ton of opportunities.
0:10:05There's a lot of things that if you executed well and got it,
0:10:09you know, sort of were an early trailblazer on some
0:10:12of these technologies, I think there's a lot of things that you
0:10:15could do to get noticed in that.
0:10:17And there's just a whole new realms of applications
0:10:21that previously just were not possible that now are.
0:10:24And any time that happens, like maybe you
0:10:25could use a land rush.
0:10:26You could call it that if you want
0:10:27to go a couple more on the negative side.
0:10:29Or you could just call it a really ripe opportunity.
0:10:31So I'm pretty psyched.
0:10:32And then, of course, the last biggest bomb of all, like, oh,
0:10:36and by the way, here's this new language.
0:10:38It's called Swift.
0:10:40It's like a objective C without the C, which is kind of crazy.
0:10:45And if I'm honest, I don't know too much about it
0:10:47at this point.
0:10:48I'm sure there's some things I'll be learning over this
0:10:50next week.
0:10:51My initial reaction when I saw that was like, that's cool.
0:10:54I'm glad that they're doing that.
0:10:56And maybe that's something I'll look at in the fall
0:10:59or in the winter or something like that.
0:11:00I don't expect to be spending too much time trying
0:11:02to learn it this summer.
0:11:04I expect it's just going to be too much to try and balance
0:11:07learning all of the new APIs and all the new applications
0:11:10and all these types of things that are now part of the system
0:11:13to then balance that with also trying to learn a new language.
0:11:17Because at its core, Objective C is at least something
0:11:21that I know well.
0:11:22And so that's just maybe a cautionary note
0:11:25as I'm thinking about it myself is
0:11:27that be careful about diving too much into Swift
0:11:29unless you have a lot of overhead that you can burn
0:11:32through and a lot of runway or whatever you
0:11:35want to think about it.
0:11:37My suspicion is maybe I'll go to the introduction
0:11:40to Swift session or see those types of things.
0:11:43But I'm not going to focus too much on probably learning it.
0:11:46There's a lot of APIs.
0:11:47There's a lot of really cool fundamental things
0:11:49that I'm going to be focused on making sure that I know how
0:11:52to do using my existing Objective C skill set.
0:11:56And also, to be fair, Swift is a brand new language.
0:11:58And that is not to say that I don't think Apple
0:12:01was thoughtful about it.
0:12:02And it's fully formed and well developed.
0:12:04But that is always going to be a little bit scary,
0:12:08being one of the first people to implement a new language when
0:12:13there's not necessarily going to be user-facing benefit
0:12:15to that.
0:12:15That benefit is going to come to you in terms of your ability
0:12:18to more safely and more efficiently write code,
0:12:22hopefully.
0:12:23Maybe they say that it's much faster, which maybe is true.
0:12:25And if that's the case, down the road,
0:12:27It'll certainly improve my implications
0:12:29as I move towards it, potentially.
0:12:31But in the meantime, I've got a full plate as it is.
0:12:35So yeah, so that's the keynote.
0:12:39And those are my first reactions.
0:12:41It's big.
0:12:41It's one of the bigger years.
0:12:43And it's kind of cool in some ways as a developer
0:12:46that last year, I feel like the-- WWDC last year
0:12:51had much more of a-- when you looked at iOS 7,
0:12:54you saw the aesthetics of it.
0:12:57And so much of my time and energy last year
0:12:59was spent on design and visual types of things
0:13:02and interaction types of things, which is not to say isn't fun
0:13:06or interesting, but my heart really is with development.
0:13:13And so seeing them rolling out and expanding the development
0:13:17things in really dramatic ways is exciting,
0:13:19because the next year, I think rather than being as worried
0:13:22about pixels, I'm going to be thinking about bytes and code
0:13:26and things like that that just make me super excited
0:13:29as a developer.
0:13:30And so I'm pretty psyched.
0:13:31I think it's awesome.
0:13:34It's like it's Christmas morning,
0:13:35and we just opened up all our toys,
0:13:37and we got way more things than I think anyone was expecting.
0:13:40No hardware, nothing like that.
0:13:41This is just about the code.
0:13:43And that's really cool.
0:13:45All right, so that's it for this little first impressions post.
0:13:49Like I said, I'll probably have another one later in the week,
0:13:52after I've had a time to kind of digest things, talk to people
0:13:54I'm out here in San Francisco and see what's going on.
0:13:57But those are some of my first impressions.
0:13:59It's big, it's huge.
0:14:00Open up the developer portal and get going.
0:14:03All right, as always, we have questions, comments, concerns,
0:14:05complaints, underscore David Smith on Twitter,
0:14:07David at developing perspective dot com.
0:14:09And otherwise, we hope you have a great week.
0:14:10If you're out in San Francisco, if I run into you,
0:14:12definitely say hi.
0:14:14And otherwise, have a happy coding.