Vision Pro & visionOS
It is not an exaggeration when we say that the entire technological world is talking about Vision Pro. The new AR/VR headset that Apple presented at WWDC has been filling the headlines of (not only) technology articles, proving that Apple has fulfilled the wishes of many fans who wanted a revolutionary new product. Take a look at what Paul Hudson thinks about the new Vision Pro from a Developer's Perspective.
Apple's new headset will be running the new visionOS for which Apple released the SDK documentation in late June, and it’s ready for you to take a look. This means everyone can now start creating cutting-edge spatial computing apps for the infinite canvas of Apple Vision Pro. But before you do so, read about why David Smith is so incredibly excited to get started developing for visionOS, and what it actually means to be in the first wave of developers building for a newly released OS.
Xcode 15 & Swift 5.9
Now let's talk about changes that will affect our developer's life far before Vision Pro is released: the new Xcode 15 and Swift 5.9 updates. There are so many cool new features in both Swift and Xcode. The one that caught our interest most is Xcode Bookmarks, a new feature that allows you to save quick links to code you want to revisit. Doing so allows you to save code landmarks and organize tasks you have to fulfil. You can also bookmark a search query.
Another very cool new feature comes with the new Swift 5.9 and its Swift Macros, which help you avoid writing repetitive code in Swift by generating that part of your source code at compile time. Learn how to start with Swift Macros here, then check out more Swift 5.9 updates — like if and switch expressions, noncopyable structs and enums and more!
SwiftData
One of the most notable updates from WWDC23 that caught the attention of many developers is definitely SwiftData. Users of Core Data have waited for SwiftData for a long time. What is SwiftData, and why should you care? Learn all about SwiftData, a new framework introduced at WWDC 2023 that provides a Swift-like API for working with persistence in iOS apps and simplifies Core Data usage.
WWDC 2023 Wrap-up
This year's WWDC was one of the busiest in recent years. A lot of great things were presented; some will make your life as a developer’s easier, so don't forget to visit the official WWDC highlights where you can find a collection of essential videos across every topic.
Other Highlights
There’s a lot of great new content not necessarily connected to WWDC that we’d like to share as well — starting with Swift Concurrency Continuations API.
With the introduction of Swift Concurrency and the async/await API, Apple greatly improved the process of writing asynchronous code in Swift. It also introduced the Continuation API, which you can use in place of delegates and completion callbacks. Learning and using these APIs greatly streamlines your code.
Familiar with having to investigate an issue that your app’s users reported, but that no one on your team was able to reproduce? Dealing with performance problems of your app, like hangs/freezing UI, slow code, unnecessary threading/concurrency, CPU/memory exceptions and so on? Worry no more — and find out how Performance Trace Profiles in iOS can help you with debugging these issues.
Last but not least, learn how Paul Hudson screwed up on one key accessibility behavior in his apps and courses, and how he’s planning to fix that.
