WWDC Aftermath or Blues

With over a week to inspect and reflect @amos_gyamfi, @stefanjblos and me look back and share what we think thusfar.

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:45

Welcome, everybody. We're hosting a space with Stefan, emos me. Basically, the title of the space says it all WWDC aftermath, and blues. So it's all just a little bit after the WWDC week, and we're just coming to grips with everything that's been announced for us as iOS and Mac developers, and just trying to figure out our bearings. And yeah, just reflect a little bit on on the things that, that we've been able to play with for like, two weeks now. And Emma's, just to get things started. I'm just wondering what was like your experience thus far? Because you've been very active with with some of the API's that that Apple has released? And yeah, I just, I'm just curious what your thoughts on F on things are right now?

Amos Gyamfi: 1:37

Yeah, I think after the WWDC the following anyway, it was really grateful for because I was able to get enough time to just test most of the technologies I'm just interested in. I didn't do any of the labs also yet. But just started to watch most of the sessions I'm just interested in, for example, I have used the Swift charts. And then, for the past months, we have been also looking more into INDOXXI. So I was looking for 2021 Doxie video, but then found later like, they have two videos for 2022. So I ordered them, which were really useful. And then. So those are the things I have been just working on. Just going deep into Swift that's also doing most of the things for looksee.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:37

So talk talking about Swift UI charts, or Swift charts. What's the actual name of that? API? I think it's Swift. Just swift charts, right?

Amos Gyamfi: 2:45

Yeah, yeah. The actual name is swift that yeah, it

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:48

keeps coming confusing me, because all the sample codes, and it was really part of the whole swift UI announcements at felt, for me at least. But what are some of the resources that you're using to really learn about the Swift UI stuff, because I know somebody dropped in, in the audience that that might be involved with that a little bit as well. But

Amos Gyamfi: 3:08

yeah, I try and documentation is really good. It starts you with the basics. So you can just go through and then just copy code, copy, paste most of the code, and then just try to see how to visualize them. And then I have also checked the GitHub repo from majority. It also has some really, really cool patients and very cool examples as well, where you can just start from,

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:37

and that's, that's the one, basically, initially trying to recreate the charts that was shown during the videos of Apple, and then find the looks of things. It's progressing a little bit beyond that as well, which is good.

Amos Gyamfi: 3:51

Yeah, for me, it is really cool resource, like, you can just go in and check out what's going on there. And then see what people are just building. It's really nice.

Jeroen Leenarts: 4:03

Cool. And but you also mentioned doc, see, because documentation is not immediately the most exciting aspect of our jobs, I guess, an important one still. But what's so exciting about doc see for you right now then,

Amos Gyamfi: 4:20

for me, my main aim was to convert some of the already existent tutorials from stream into an interactive dot c, tutorial. So I was looking for videos for 2021. And then I found like, they also made some two new videos. So it is all about it is not a big improvement. It is just adding some sidebar navigation to the Doxy archive, like if you export a return after creating an interactive tutorial, you can just export it and then host it on your website or GitHub. So they just added some little improvement to into into that. And of course, what I was just looking into,

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:15

yeah, because I know you've been really busy with with Doxie documentation and making sure that you create something that looks really good, right?

Amos Gyamfi: 5:23

Yeah, it looks really nice. Like the code. I like the code previews and then like, you can also if you have the gifs you can also add it to the preview as well and the status of everything looks really nice. Yeah, I even said one tweet today. It looks like people are more just interested in it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:48

All right. I want to move it to Stephen now a little bit and see what his thoughts are on our what is like the stuff that really has him firing on all cylinders in regards to Apple software development.

Stefan Blos: 6:05

Okay, so first of all, Hey, everybody. I, I wish I could, I couldn't be more more excited about about certain SDKs and everything. But I have to confess that, like, for me, the the week of Octopussy, I was really invested in everything and trying to get up to speed and play with the Xcode beta and everything. But I have to say that starting from then, things started to slow down, I watched a few more sessions, I took some notes, I played a little bit with some of the SDKs. But overall it like it, the fact that there's still like regular work we need to do came back to me. I think it's probably probably how many of us are feeling right? The the initial week is always very exciting. But then you realize it's an entire year of content that we have. So there's other things that need to be need to be done. So I didn't have too much time. Like Amos already mentioned that the doc see things, I played around with that a little bit more, because one thing they did was they improved the hosting aspect. So you, they made it more easy to get get sites hosted, for example, like on static, static sites, for example, a GitHub GitHub pages that has been improved. looked at that, but But aside from that, there weren't these these huge announcements in that realm. So we've charted something I shed Charlie's tweet about, about looking for people who want to collaborate, and I think it's going very nicely. So I think it's a very exciting thing. But I didn't have time actually to play around with it. So I know, another nother person in the audience. Chris, he also played around with it quite a bit. And we're always happy to hear your, your experiences just just saying that. But yeah, it wasn't wasn't too much of time, unfortunately. So you really

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:12

sound like you're suffering the opposite, who lose a little bit like it's like, oh, boy, so much work that just, I left lying around. And now I need to catch up again. I am I such a bad manager for you that you're feeling like, oh, man, he saw my case and the need to get work done now or what's going on there?

Stefan Blos: 8:30

Come on. This is public. I mean, I can't say anything, right. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Of course. No, like, part of it is actually really like I suggested the title of blues, because I feel like that that's, that's part of the of the thing, right? I mean, it's exciting to hear about the new things that are released and are announced. But, like, then comes the realization that well, most of them, we can only like really use are really have in production, like September earliest. And if there's, like many apps need support for for lower versions as well. So it will probably be like next year, maybe. So I think that this fact, did, in fact, actually play a role there. So I wouldn't blame it on your management skills. But

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:29

horrible, by the way. No, no,

Stefan Blos: 9:31

I can't confirm that. No, but I think I think that's that's actually playing playing playing a role there. Because yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not that urgent to Trump on everything first minute. And like I said, if there's if there's other work that needs to be done, the priorities, right?

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:51

Well, I get where you're coming from, because it is true. You're like, one week completely focused on all the new stuff. And then you dig into that initially. And then of course, there's the realisation, okay, I can only truly use this in production, like, almost a half year from now. And also, there's other stuff that just needs to happen, right? But just to, to bring it back on the upbeat a little bit. Again, I'll share some of my experiences with with WWDC content. I don't know why but for some reason, I got really excited about the whole passkey thing. Because basically, the trailspace that we did like before, WWDC, I was like, hoping for something in regards to web authoring. And it seems at least on a technical level, Apple has given us something there And now it's just a matter of discovering September and onwards, what the actual adoption will be with, with this technology. I did get to play around a bit with pasties and webauthn. And I also did a presentation on that, at the, at the Dutch coconuts meetup last week, hopefully there will be a video available of that presentation soon because it was live streamed, but the network on site was so bad, that live stream basically failed. And we have like the first 20 minutes. And then like the last five or 10 minutes of my talk and stuff that was in between what the actual content was, that's missing. But we do have a good capture, recorded locally. And I know, Marco, who does the video for that meetup organization. He is basically editing it. And hopefully it'll be available by the end of this week, and maybe sometime next week. And I'll be sure to share that on my on my twitter as well. But in regards to the technicalities of this web authoring and passkey stuff, I really liked it. It's and the silly thing is it's not really new technology, because past keys has been a part of iOS in some capacity for over two years now. And the only real new additional thing that they added on top of that bit of technology that was already available, is the whole QR code thing. But then trying to figure out how to get this QR code stuff running. It's a bit of a hassle because there's not a really a clear guideline or documentation available. As far as I could find up till now about how you are supposed to generate one of those QR codes, what's the exact API that you implement service sites beyond webauthn, because web often has a standard is pretty well defined. And it's pretty easy to implement. Because, for instance, Tim Condon from fiber, he was able to hack together a basic implementation of web auth. And that is in no way ready for production. In like, like two days, that's also shows how onpoint he is with his developing skills. But it was it was quite interesting to dig into depth as well, a little bit to just see it working in practice, and also in a way, written with Swift, that was very easy for me to understand what was going on under the hood. So and that might be able to present about that at a meet up, actually. But yeah, the moving bits in this is the standard web often passkey is the basically the the name, that webauthn standard in an additional standard has given to this feature. So passkey is not some sort of terminology that Apple has invented, it's passkey is something that we're gonna see on Microsoft and Google platforms as well. And then it's just a matter of all platform providers have it implemented. And now let's hope for all the service providers to also start adopting this. And then maybe sometime down the line, we can get to a situation where we don't have to remember or store so many passwords anymore. There are some caveats, but I think they're being taken care of with follow up specifications, because how do you transfer these pass keys beyond Apple devices to other ecosystems? But yeah, all stuff that that has a lot of question marks in my mind. And I basically decided to park that topic for a little bit. And other stuff that I'm really excited about from from WWE was really the the new language features and the improvements that were made to Xcode. So basically, the improvements to the tooling that we aren't going to be using day to day for for a year into the future, at least till the next version of Xcode is released. But I think you can tell a little bit more about Xcode beta right now, right, Stefan?

Stefan Blos: 14:41

Yeah, I've played around with it. And like, from my experience, it's, like remarkably stable, that didn't have a lot of problems. I mean, it crashes from time to time, but I mean, it's the first beta. So that's to be expected. Right. But I feel like I feel like there's been a lot of like, it doesn't, it doesn't have this huge design overhaul or something. But I still feel like the improvements they made are very developer focused. I mean, it's a development tool. So yeah, that makes sense. But like, it will definitely make it easier for us to discover things to work quickly to, for example, like, Discovery wise, there's, there's things like getting feedback from beta as you don't have to go to app store connect to that. There's a there's a tool now directly inside Xcode to do that. So that's a very cool addition. That's going to be very helpful for people who, who work with betas and get feedback from that. Like there's a new feature for getting, getting to know which, which callers a function has. I mean, there has been something available like that. But it hasn't been too great and not very discoverable. So I think they made some very good improvements for that. And then some little things like you see the scope, like the current scope, the current, the current class, you're in the current function you're in, you always see that on screen, it's always shown at the top of the of the code editor. So I think it's been, it's been these captures, where I wherever that when I jumped back from the, from the beta to the stable version of Xcode, I was really, really missing that. And I mean, that's, that's always, always a good sign for the new features that are now part of Xcode. So, yeah, I've truly enjoyed that. And you've also been using the new Xcode when you when you do your experimentation with Swift charts, right?

Amos Gyamfi: 16:46

Yeah, I have been using I just switched between the beta and the previous version of Xcode. Yes. So I have been using the beta version, think the neck that next week, I returned to Finland. So I also liked the design of the previews. Now, we have the ability to view the different. Like, you, we can just view on different orientations at the same time. And also just test for accessibility, like dynamic sizes, like previewing on different different devices, which is really, really cool. Yeah, so I like that aspect as well. And then, if you screw up to like, what you just mentioned, like, the current class also always stays at the top, like, which makes, it makes it really, really cool when you have to navigate through long code. So I like it as well. But I haven't got enough time to just experiment with it in more detail. So maybe in the following weeks, I will be digging more deep into that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:05

All right. So sounds like this, this new feature in Xcode, that the the structure of your file sticks at the top of the screen is very welcome. Especially if I hear Stefan saying that he's really missing it when he switched back to the old version of Xcode. But have you been able to look at some of the new language features? And was the new things that have been announced in Swift 5.7? Or has that not been a part of the stuff that you've been working on?

Amos Gyamfi: 18:37

I haven't looked into it myself. But I watched this. What is new in Swift UI from hacking with Swift? So I have watched the video and just, I was just working along with it. And then this trying to implement most of the things. So that is the main thing I have done so far. But I haven't gone more deep into that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:04

Yeah, yeah. And because one of the things I'm really trying to come to grips with is all the little small details that have been changed in Swift 5.7. And it really feels like it really feels like I've been, like, not even able to completely catch up with Swift 5.6. Yet. 5.7 is the new one in in XSplit, 14 and 5.6 is the current one. Because I'm just I'm just looking at these, these blog articles that appear on my on my timeline, and they go about, okay, what's the difference between some and any? I'm like, what? It's like, wow, this is like, this is like abstract stuff, man. So can you explain to me already what the difference is between some or any or anyone in the audience able to explain that to me, please grab the microphone and tell it to me and like a few lines and see if I can actually get what's going on with someone any, because I know it has to do with generics. And I know it has to do something with make sure that you don't have to, like, constrain your types or signatures that much anymore. But I'm really thinking, What is the use case of these things? Right? Because I'm like an old Java dude. And we had generic like 15 years ago. So it's not like, Well, my experience of generics is that it's something that too many people are too liberal and using everywhere. And then you get like, these API's that you look at you really think like okay, but what is the actual type that I'm dealing with here? It is, it is some type that is constrained to something else. But what is it actually in practice? And that's, that's some of the things that probably my personal baggage with Jaffa or I could actually say my personal yeah trauma with Java is maybe hindering me from like, full fully adopting these new language features in Swift. But yeah, it's just looking at all these language additions. It's like there's so much small stuff that wonder does stop changing the language on us every year. So any thoughts on that with you, Stefan? Or Emma's?

Amos Gyamfi: 21:23

I think I don't miss. Yeah, Chris is also here. I think that will be one of the most people who can explain that more.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:32

Yeah, but they're not their hands right now. So they're, they're probably afraid of me now did me confessing that I actually did Java development years ago. That's fine. It's perfectly fine language indeed. But it's different.

Stefan Blos: 21:57

Also, people really like to hate on Java. So for me, I think I think it showed a little bit that actually, actually the development speed of Swift is going down a little bit. So I feel like the changes that have been introduced, like, so many thing. I think they're more, they're getting more subtle, and more to a point where they are really improving the capabilities, especially for like power users, or people who are more proficient with everything you want to want to solve complex problems. But I feel like the overall structure of the language is staying mostly the same, right? So there's not a lot of things that have been getting deprecated, or things that are not working, as they did before. Like, for example, the one of the changes is the if flats equals a flat variable constant name, equals the same name and everything like for for basically unwrapping optionals. I mean, that has changed. But as far as I know, you can still use the old, old way of doing it. So I feel like that's, that's a very good thing to have that. I do think that when the language will become even more complex, I think it's like right now, I think it's still a language that's perfectly capable of being a first programming language, I think that's still fine. But there are becoming like they're getting more and more features are getting introduced. And I think like, it needs to slow down at some point. Because otherwise, it will just get too complex, and people will not, like really feel at home, learning the language.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:55

So you're basically saying that swift as a language might be getting a little bit too complex at some point.

Stefan Blos: 24:04

I think like the dangers there, right. I don't think we're there yet. I feel like I said, I think the development speed is slowing down. And they're targeting specific use cases. But I mean, things like, like async await is, is a huge one. It's an improvement, I think, of course, because it's making things easier. But then again, there's like a new level of how you can do like, concurrent tasks. Right. So I think, like there's there's always this danger for fast evolving languages. But I still we're not there yet. I think so. I think we're still fine.

Jeroen Leenarts: 24:43

I think there are some features in the Swift language that that yes, of course, those are a must adopt features like async await, because it just makes your your life as a developer, so much better in the sense that being able to reason about asynchronously in your code, and actually reasoning about it correctly. And I think there's also specific language features that are introduced in the language, of course, with an obvious goal. But those features Yes, you can use them as a developer. And sometimes they can be beneficial. But most of the times, they're actually introduced to be able to do something in an other area, for instance, to enable specific use cases in Swift UI that you can actually deal with a with a few structs in a specific way that it's like when you're writing swift UI view code. That is like very developer friendly. It's convenient for you as a developer to reason about and that these new language constructs in In some way, allow swift UI to hide some of the complexities so that you don't have to deal with specific things. Or that it actually just cleans up the, the syntax that you need to write. Because that's one of the things with with any and some, it just basically takes away some of the brackets in specific use cases, which just cleans up the way a situation few struct would look right. And I think just figuring out what the balance is there, you know, when is the language feature something that is very bespoke? And specific to very nice use cases? And when is it something that you should generally consider as adoptable at something that is like really day to day, you wouldn't run into much trouble if you have to explain why you coded it that way to somebody who's unfamiliar with those language concepts, right? Because that's always the concern I have with any code at all right? It's like, okay, I write something now I understand it now. But do I understand it like a week or a month from now, and can I right now, and in the future, explain it in a way that, for instance, I can understand it again, but also that my colleagues or other people working on that code base, if it's open source can also still come to grips with it and understand what's going on in this code. And I really ran into that with with Java, sorry, for dragging that language back in. But if you just look, I worked with Java from Java, version three, to like Java, version seven, or eight. And just the amount of complexity that was introduced in the Java language. Along those years, some features were good, some features were like, really, you just wouldn't use them day to day because either they were just too complex, or they were just too specific, that any regular bit of code, you wouldn't be using them. And I'm really wondering what the outcome will be for, for swift in this industry crap, because as a language, I love the language, it's very convenient, I can really reason in it, I can work with it, I can think in it. And I can do all kinds of things. I use it for command line scripting, I tried to use it on the server side, and I implement iOS applications with it. It all just works for me. But I do look a little bit with a side eye to like, Okay, what's all this new stuff being introduced? And when is this going to be so complex that anyone coming into the fields of iOS development is like, just overwhelmed by all the stuff that that language just throws at them? Because you already see that with people right now compared to like, when we were dealing with like swift version three, it's like, the language has gotten so much more complex that people are much more overwhelmed if they if they tried to run through the 100 days of Swift nowadays, compared like two or three years ago. So I have some thoughts on that. And I think it'll turn out fine, because hey, what's the worst that can happen? That's like, we have Objective C, and then that we run into the situation that Swift is the new Objective C, right? That that is for sure. going to happen. Somewhere in the future, probably 10 years or later. But who knows. But I do think that's something of a cycle that you see with programming languages, they start people love it, because it's simple, it's easy. It's something you can adopt quickly. And then it gets more complex. And then at some point, it just gets too complex. And people start looking again for the next new, cool, small language. And that is something that I'm yeah, how would I say that? I would have put that, that that is something that I've seen a couple of iterations of on several platforms. And I think swift as a language is getting so mature now, because you have all these standards committees, and they started a few new ones, as well recently. And yeah, it just any language features. There's so many people now thinking about that, contributing to that, and that just the amount of people involved will slow down the adoption of new features on the language because, yeah, many people leads to much conversation, and also a slower adoption curve for new features, which, in my mind isn't a bad thing. But

Stefan Blos: 30:01

yeah, I agree. I think it's like it's a work of change if that's if the pace is slowing down there. I want to I want to switch gears a little bit because I mean, it's always fun to talk about programming languages, but I mean, the space is still called WPC after aftermath or Bluetooth but so like, is there anything you noticed where there was a lot of hype during during the DC week? That has been when and people were expecting this to be a huge thing that has been slowing down a little bit or vice versa, something that wasn't really talked about in the beginning, but with like people having time to play around with it, it's becoming more and more popular to you Do you have something in that realm? That's been? Yeah, just switching in popularity,

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:51

one of the things that I noticed is that the app intense API, Apple claimed it would be easy. And the fact that I'm getting online that is really, stupendously easy to work with App intense nowadays, you can get a lot of cool functionality. So on the platform integration level with App intense quite easily and quite quickly. So I think Apple is making true on that, on that promise. And then there was like this. Yeah, this little small announcement that Apple did, like, I think what after WWDC, like, really was like, oh, yeah, if you're using Cloud kit in your app, you can now just transfer it to another small detail. That was that was fairly well received online. And I wonder why didn't they make that a part of the WWDC keynote itself? Probably because it was a very unpopular situation that they got themselves into that they were finally able to resolve, because there must have been technical reasons why it was not possible. And they finally were able to sort of like, program their way out of that ditch, which is good. Sometimes, yeah, Apple starts moving if things start hurting for them. And I think this cloudkit, tying your app to your account was a really clear example of that. And I'm really curious to see what will come of all the new CarPlay stuff. And I understand our industry moves a lot slower. But just the samples and the way that these simulators now look with the new version of CarPlay, that's not only your head unit that is like typically in your center console, but that can now integrate like, with the entire display array that you can have in modern cars. Nowadays, it's it seems like your your your your car is some sort of Starship Enterprise nowadays with all the screens that you have everywhere. But that actually now CarPlay apparently, in the near future can drive all those screens, that that would be interesting, I think, would be a while until I get my hands on the car that can actually do that. But still, I was very intrigued with the direction that Apple is wanting to take there. And I'm looking forward to how this would look and work out in practice. Because I think it would be a cool way to to have like an interface which occurred that it's like, very strangely, not like really run by the car itself, but with a device that you plug into your car. So really looking forward to what, what the effects of that one would be anything that you can

Stefan Blos: 33:28

think of just just quickly jumping on that. Do you think that this is basically the either the first or the final version that we have that is rumored Apple car? I mean, because like, it's been like a really popular theory that will will build a car or is that really like the whole they're really just focusing on the software side?

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:51

I don't know. Because apparently Apple was, it was or is driving around actual automobiles that that are like automated in some capacity, not to the level as, as Tesla's doing. But yeah, basically out of lack of personal interest I've not been really following on on the Apple car, it's, to me, the Apple Car thing sort of felt like a meme. It was like, if there was like some fancy project that you wanted the company to do. It was something like Apple car or something. So I don't know, it's we'll just have to see, because I do think they had some big announcements in the sense of car play, that are much bigger than that people are actually seeing and expecting from the based on the actual announcement itself, it's going to be much bigger, I think, in practice, and yeah, it's just, it's just one of the things that's like, yeah, CarPlay it is car. So that's it needs a couple of years to really land in a car near you, I think because yeah, I'm actually getting my first car this summer that actually has CarPlay support just for comparison. So it took a while. But But yeah, and what I really liked is and also have to be worried a little bit is the whole weather kit announcement is I liked that they made the weather API that they bought with dark skies that the do result of that they make that available openly at a fee at some point. But I think it used to be that like a To Do app was like the the first app that you would make as an aspiring iOS developer. I think weather apps will get like a whole new next level influx of like, people rolling their own first iOS app, and it's going to be a weather app in some capacity. And then basically have the same feature set because it's all using the same API. It's just a matter of different visualization, I guess. But yeah, I like that fact that where the kid is now. So openly available, and I'm looking forward to see what kind of value that can add to app developers in their products, because I can imagine that in some cases, it's very useful to integrate with reasonably accurate local, very local weather information in your app. At least, I can't come up with a use case right now. But I can imagine that there's really interesting ways that you can integrate that in your app. And yeah, it's just the weather is something we're all having to deal with if you step out of your house, and it is something we live with every day. Yeah, that's true value that you can always start developing on on the bench somewhere in the park, right? If it's enough, shade screens are good enough nowadays.

Stefan Blos: 36:45

You know, allergies?

Jeroen Leenarts: 36:47

Yeah, that's true. That's true. But anything that you think that's like a really good, interesting, or maybe not as big of an announcement as Apple tries to make it seem?

Stefan Blos: 37:00

So I have a theory, because I was thinking about that. And that didn't didn't really find a clear winner of something that's been hugely popular over the past, like, two to three weeks. And the theory I have is that many of the things that were announced, like app intense, like swift charts, like the weather kit API, I think many of them are nothing that would like make a standalone app. Right. Okay. So a weather app file, right? You could you can do that. But there's plenty of them out there because there are other API's. But what it does is it offers developers who want to integrate that into their apps, maybe into existing apps, because a lot of apps are using charts. But it's allowing them to do that with a native API. But there's rarely going to be an app that is only using charts, for example, or an app. Like, okay, there's weather apps, but an app that only uses App and 10s. So I think many of the things they announced is nothing that a standalone app, or that justifies a standalone app. But many of the functionalities are going to be improving existing apps, and maybe maybe making some additional features possible. But but like I said, not not really not really accommodated for for standalone projects. And that's my my theory why there's there's no real like winner in the in the hype, hype category. I guess I think last year, for example, there's been like Richard Kidd, for example. And there's been this huge thing of, I think, like the Richard Smith, I think it was called right the project where you could customize the homescreen entirely, and there was like, there was a huge buzz around that. And I mean, that that was a feature that like just the fact that which kid is existing allows for a completely new use cases. And I think there's nothing there yet this year that that does that. And it's perfectly fine, right? Because I think we got a lot of tools that we can improve our existing apps with. But that's my theory, why I think there's no real, like, crazy hype around one of the SDKs. And if if I had to choose between, between them, I think that swift charts has been at least in my bubble, the most popular one.

Jeroen Leenarts: 39:42

Plus, you mentioned, which is good, because the cool thing about which kit is that you can now on iOS 16 Put widgets on your homescreen. So I think for end users, there's going to be like a big push with app developers to do a decent weighted kit implementation for the homescreen. So that that's very much with end users. And as you say that that's more like refinements of existing apps or part of refinements or making like a platform suitable App if you're creating a new app. So I really look forward myself to enjoy my new home screen with this cool image effects and the witches that I want to have on the screen and just make it look very personal. And I think one of the big things that are indeed some more it is it is going to have impact. But it seems Apple did a really big push on making sure that it is supposed to be easier to develop an app that works on the iPhone, iPad, and the Mac side but you can more easily go the catalyst route or even a native targets with shared user interface code. So I'm wondering what what we'll see in that areas, you know that, that if there will be many apps that will be like, become available from iOS to the Mac OS platform or not? Because, yeah, with a whole new, new new navigation API for swift UI that works across all of these device families, I think that would be the I think that might actually be one of the bigger things if you're a Mac user, that there will be more iOS apps that make an appearance on the Mac platform, and that are like a good citizen on the Mac platform. So I think that's some of the more impactful things that we'll get to deal with. Once a September comes by having to make the decision if you want to support the Mac platform as a proper citizen or not. Because nowadays, you can already if you have iPad target, you can already push a button, and it's available on the on the Mac App Store. And quite a lot of apps were quite easily that way. But yeah, I think I think this year is going to be a year with much refinements of, of the API's and the features that we get to deal with as, as Apple Platform Developers.

Stefan Blos: 42:13

And I really liked that. I mean, that's that's been the theme at the beginning, when when we thought about what, what's the topic of this year stepped up this year. And I mean, it's nice that, that us developers are getting better tooling and better SDKs and more refinement there. So I think it's a very, very welcome, welcome tendency. And maybe next year, there will be like a ton of new features. But at least for this year, the the smaller feature enhancements and stability things are a very, very welcome thing. Right. I was wondering if Amos Amos had also some some highlights, or some things he was surprised of that are surprisingly good, or, like disruptive maybe features.

Amos Gyamfi: 43:02

Apart from the Swift charts you mentioned, on Twitter, most of the things I also see is cool. People are just join in with the WebSocket. Yeah. But apart from that, I haven't seen anything, which is very huge, and people were just talking about.

Stefan Blos: 43:25

So someone from the audience wants to share something, you're very welcome to, to jump, jump on and ask for the mic. But yeah, I think I think that the theme has been pretty clear from the beginning, for this year's doctor to see. Now now's the time where people will, will jump on that and start working on their features. Start to experiment. And yeah, your own what's the what's the SDK, you will you will next look at?

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:58

Oh, that's a good one. So I looked at the past key stuff, I looked a little bit at the navigation stuff for swift UI. Let me think a little bit, I think I want to have my hands a little bit on, like, cross platform stuff, you know, see what it takes to once you've adopted the new API's a little bit what it takes to really transfer it over to a Mac app and see what the menus look like. Because there's been some improvements in the support for the native look and feel of the system menus on on Mac OS for swift UI based applications. So yeah, I'm really thinking about that one. And of course, I want to dig into App intense because yeah, I just need to be able to understand what it really takes to work with appetites and if there are any rough edges. And because I do think that app intense is like one of these. Yeah, it's if you don't do it, it's you just leave a lot of integration with your app on the table that you could easily take with without much effort. So I think app incense will be a very important side projects to be done on many code bases. And I want to get my hands on that too, to see if I'm right in that regard.

Stefan Blos: 45:26

Okay, do you have anything there? What do you would tap on next? I know you've been experimenting with with the charts, but is there anything else?

Amos Gyamfi: 45:35

Apart from the chat? I just now want to experiment more with the improvement in Swift UI and also swift and There were some also videos about SF symbols. I just watched the beginning. If I have time, then I will just dive deep into that. And then I will also plan to dive into weather kit and music. Good. Yeah.

Stefan Blos: 46:05

Okay, nice. That's cool. So, so for me, there's a few things I want to I want to play around with, it's probably less, less popular things like one thing is widgetkit. Okay, so I want to see like, what, what's the maximum capability there. And I am really excited for this. I think it called life activities API that's coming later, where we basically can have one notification that constantly updates. So for example, like for, for example, a sports game, the score can update constantly. And like, it seems like it real time and with any major changes and everything, at least from the demo they had. So that's something I'm really looking forward to. One thing that's been, I don't know why, but it's been fascinating. And I really want to dig into that is the transferable protocol. Because I think that's something that that could make the I think it's called an item provider thing. redundant, which has never been a pleasant API to use, at least for me. But it could also have been, like, personal preference there. So I really, really, really looking forward to that. And the last thing is, there's a new image renderer class that allows to render widgets, or render swift UI views as an image and also as PDF, for example. And I think that's a very interesting thing, because I think you can do a lot of things with that, right? Because, for example, one thing I've been always wanting to do is like you can like to create, for example, marketing images from your apps and, and others apps out there that does that. But like if you if you, for example, could have a library or like an SDK that you could just integrate in your app. And then like, from witches create screenshots from that, I think that's a very cool thing. And the new functionality makes it really easy. So I think that's also something I want to have a look at. So there's, there's quite a few things. Like, there's probably a probably, I'm not the only one who just needs more time to play around with all these functionalities, right.

Jeroen Leenarts: 48:25

I know Daniel say he did a nice article on the Swift UI for image renderer. So it is actually scrolling through that right now. And yeah, it is it is very convenient if you want to grab a portion of your user interface, and just do something interesting with them.

Stefan Blos: 48:48

Yeah, it's gonna be fun.

Jeroen Leenarts: 48:51

They can rally chance to

Stefan Blos: 48:53

do we have anything else? Do you have anything else you want to talk about?

Jeroen Leenarts: 48:57

Yeah. Did you try live text API already? Or not in in iOS? The live text API?

Stefan Blos: 49:03

I have not shaved shame on me. I've not

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:08

mean, either, so

Amos Gyamfi: 49:09

I haven't.

Stefan Blos: 49:12

Alright, one thing is, I think that UI Kit API, right.

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:20

In what regards?

Stefan Blos: 49:21

Because I've seen someone play around with it. And that was a UI Kit app. And I think they're only offering a UI kit. Like API for that, which is interesting, right? Because they're not that many of the features, like get an exclusive UI kit. Treatment. I mean, you can always breach that. And it's easier. No, but but still interesting to see that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:45

Is that the collapse the calendar thing, or what is it?

Stefan Blos: 49:51

Now the left text API.

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:53

Yeah, but I think you can you can get to that from from Swift UI.

Stefan Blos: 50:01

You can but the API itself, I think it's your

Jeroen Leenarts: 50:06

best Oh, yeah. Yeah, cuz I'm looking at some code samples. Now. It is it is it has this distinct flavor. In the

Stefan Blos: 50:16

end, it's easy. It's a very, it's a tribal API. I've seen it. I've not, not like used it actively. But I've seen someone do it. And it's a nice API, but I think it's interesting that they announced that or like released that for you. I could only so far.

Jeroen Leenarts: 50:35

Now I think it's part of phishing kits and phishing kits. It works a lot of things through like, what they call controllers, and then it's actually a few controller in In the scope of the object that you're dealing with, so you have to put it on screen with like, quite some screen real estate. Because it's the DAT scanner view controller is one of the central classes for the live text API. And indeed, that is, you cannot throw fish in kids. So not sure. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't looked into that API just yet.

Stefan Blos: 51:09

Yeah. But like I said, there's a lot, a lot we will look at. But yeah, we need more time.

Jeroen Leenarts: 51:16

And way more time, and we're talking about time, I think we've been talking. Well, I think I must be tired. We've been talking for close to an hour right now. So I think it's, it's good that we start winding this space down again. And so what do you think, Stefan? Are we done for the for this space or not?

Stefan Blos: 51:40

I think we're done. I had fun. I like I started off with more of a negative load of I didn't have time to play around with too many API's yet. But, but I'm excited. Again. There's there's, there's interesting things to play with. And I can't wait to get my hands on more of these API's.

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:01

Yeah, yeah, I did notice that the week after WWDC, there were like a whole bunch of new articles popping up on my RSS feeds. And then the second week after that, like, trickled down to like, quite a low number, actually. So I'm expecting some content for the next week, because that's one of the things I really like, about WWDC, and the weeks after that, it's all the new perspectives that people put out there and all the thought process that goes into considering and looking at these API's and working out what is the way that Apple intends you to use these API's in a good way? And yeah, I'm looking forward to what people have to say about some more of the finer details of all the stuff that's been announced by Apple.

Stefan Blos: 52:53

Yeah, I totally agree. It's gonna be very interesting to see.

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:57

So with that, I'd say, as the first of three of us, enjoy the rest of your day. And I like talking about these topics. And then if you want to find us online, just look at Twitter at of course one. And I'll just give it to Stefan to say a few words. And then Amos, and I will just close the space.

Stefan Blos: 53:22

I only say the words. Thanks for listening, everybody. We do this regularly. While it's late already. We do this regularly. So feel free to follow us to see when we will go live again, we always share things. So all of like the three of us, it's always worth the follow. No, no, I feel dirty and I handed over tables.

Amos Gyamfi: 53:47

So thanks for everyone. Thanks, everyone for joining. So, next week, we'll we'll also host another topic, so just try to join. Yeah, that is all I have.

Jeroen Leenarts: 53:59

All right. Thanks, everybody and talk to you next time.