The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The week-long event showcases its new technology for software developers. As an attendee I was able to participate in hands-on labs with Apple engineers, and in-depth sessions covering a wide variety of topics!
Apple really knows how to put on an event! All the details were attended to and it was really a step above any other conference I’ve been to. Despite the show, it is still truly an engineering conference: after the big keynote on Monday, sessions and labs get down into the nitty-gritty of API design, memory management, etc. One of the coolest things was being able to meet and talk to other engineers who have started companies and are passionate about mobile development like me.
Related: MySwimPro Inaugural Hackathon
5 Things I’m excited about
- Wheelchair support for Apple Watch and HealthKit – Step counts and stand reminders for someone in a wheelchair doesn’t make sense and would be insulting – it’s been replaced by roll count and roll reminders.
- Universal Clipboard between iOS and macOS. EX: copy the text on your phone, paste it in the search bar on your computer!
- Richer Notifications – Notifications can now include more information like pictures, hotel availability, or traffic.
- WatchOS – Navigation and UX like it should’ve been the first time – plus quick launch times for up to 10 of your most-used apps.
- More flexible auto-renewing subscription models. EX: Now you don’t have to raise the subscription price for your early-adopters if you want to raise it for future users.
Dev stuff I’m excited about
- Storyboard improvements – Much easier to design for different size classes (iPad Pro vs Mini, for example).
- Debugging tools for memory management and thread sanitizing look extremely powerful.
- Screenshot tools – Generate all the localized screenshots you need in one go for iTunes Connect, so you don’t spend the whole morning on release day manually uploading 400 pictures.
- Behind-the-scenes performance improvements in UICollectionViews/UITableViews will benefit all apps recompiled for iOS 10.
- Much much *much* cleaner API for Core Data (iOS’s persistent store management framework). Auto-generated NSManagedObject subclasses, huzzah!
Thinking Critically
- UI redesign. Notification bubbles and card-looking-UI seems to have a lot of white/wasted space. How many notifications will you see on your lock screen now?
- Siri integration: How powerful is it really? Its utility is mostly tied to domains that already have huge, obvious winners in it: ride booking, payments. There *is* a workout domain, and we will be looking at that 🙂
- I want my new MacBook Pro/hardware now, plz 🙂
Closing Thoughts
It was exciting to attend WWDC alongside thousands of other developers from around the world! It’s also good to see Apple make an effort to increase diversity in the field by putting women and minorities up on stage, but it still seems like there’s a lot of work to do. I left the keynote feeling super pumped not because of any one initiative in particular, but for the overall sense of community and excitement I felt at the conference. 10/10 I would recommend!
Of course I got a swim in while I was in San Francisco!
Gettin a nice swim in with @Roman_Willets at the Bay Club! 🏊🏻 pic.twitter.com/CgfLBGpZGK
— Adam Oxner (@adoxner) June 15, 2016
If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to shoot me a message to adam@myswimpro.com.