WWDC 2022 first impressions

Stefan and I reflect a bit on the past 24 hours. We've been frantically working on our keynote and state of the union articles. Good stuff to work on.

Stefan and me writing about:

• The WWDC 2022 Keynote
• The Platform State of the Union

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Transcript

Stefan Blos: 0:45

So we can talk a little bit about, like, what would be the structure would be just like news that happened? Or should we also talk about maybe things like, or we could start off with? What didn't happen and then go to the things that happened? Or should we cover that as well.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:01

Let's just talk a bit about our last, say, 24 hours. And then while we discuss that, look back a bit, we'll also get to talk a little bit about what's been released and what we've been doing with all of that. Because we're not completely done yet right now, because we still have to publish the second article, the State of the Union piece, which is much more technical than the keynote, please. But we've been busy.

Stefan Blos: 1:32

Boy, have we been busy?

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:33

Yeah. So basically, last night at seven, we started watching, right, I think, midnight, we finished because the keynote for the two of us is in the evening. It's

Stefan Blos: 1:44

after midnight, it was I think, right? We worked until or we we finished finished the keynote piece. I think it was like

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:54

half past 12. Yeah. So yeah, basically, for people listening, Stefan and I have been working on some content for the WWDC keynote. And we've been working today on some platform status union content, which we are kind of wrapping up the the writing phase. So now all we have to do is, is review it, then do a little bit of copy editing on it, then transfer it over to WordPress, make sure that all the images are attached as well, and then hit hit publish and hope for the best and share it on socials. But yeah, it's when I watched the keynote, my initial impression was that it's not that much this year. But then when you start thinking about it, and you start digging in a little bit, it's actually a ton of stuff that that Apple is releasing, because you've looked at the documentation. Diff as well, right?

Stefan Blos: 2:51

Oh, yes. There's like I, you can you can sort the diff for different technologies. And there was so many technologies where so much stuff changed, it was was really incredible to see that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:06

Yeah. Because if you see, if you switch it to like, display what's actually different. It's It's a sea of purple that you're that you're looking at. And purple means that Apple has changed that API in some way. So yeah, it's gonna be an interesting few months now.

Stefan Blos: 3:25

Yeah, I was kind of surprised by that, to see like this huge differences between, like you mentioned, when watching the keynote and the State of the Union, it wasn't really obvious that we see so much change, because it was rather subtle, or the things they mentioned. Yeah. But it's impressive. And I think it's a it's a really cool trajectory. It's showing because there weren't these huge splashy announcements. I think the biggest one was probably the lockscreen. enhancements.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:56

Yeah. And the 30 app, intense the app intense is also big, I think. And then life activities, that's also on the lockscreen. But that's not available in the beta right now. And it will become available later, after the iOS 16. release, it seems,

Stefan Blos: 4:11

whatever things,

Jeroen Leenarts: 4:12

I think that's going to be interesting as well, because my understanding is that that's a bit that allows you to have something on a lock screen, and it is actual swift UI, and it is real time. So you can influence what's displayed on your lockscreen. Like, immediately directly and not like indirectly, as you have to do right now with with widgets.

Stefan Blos: 4:33

I mean, that's that's an interesting question, how that would work, technically. Because like, what witches are there, basically just a bunch of pre rendered swift UI views, the way I understand them, at least Yeah. And the interesting thing is like, how would How would that change? Will that still be the case, but just they mentioned that the changes between different states There will even be animated. But, I mean, that could still mean that it's some form of pre rendered content. That's just somehow manipulating the hierarchy in some form, but not really like real time. But I mean, it's interesting to see like this is this is just things that we can speculate on for now. Now, we need to wait until we see more details in the sessions or what Apple decides to release more of this.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:26

But to structure our conversation just a little bit. Let's look at the keynote on its own first, right because to me, the keynote was Apple's typical marketing push aimed at publications and consumers I think it basically a good advertorial for what's going to be new in Apple's platforms later this year? Right. So iOS 16, the new iPad OS, what's going to be new at watch OS nine and still have to get used to the name? Mac Ventura. And so it really to me, it was like, again, one of these big, big advertisements really in a good way. Because, yes, there was there was also something announced there that was like, immediately available, or at least you could order it and get your hands on quite soon. And that's the new MacBooks, of course. But But what do you think, what was? What were the best bits of the WWDC keynote for you? Stefan?

Stefan Blos: 6:31

That's a tough question. I think, at least for like the most popular OS is still iOS. And that's also like the one we're mostly developing for. So the most interesting thing there and for release was the lockscreen. enhancement. That was the big, big thing. Yeah. But I also like the way they seem to be pushing the collaborative features. And I like that this goes into the, the overall theme of unifying the platforms, because many of the things they announced during the keynote, they also mentioned that it will also be available, for example, on iPad OS, or watch OS, or iOS or Mac OS. So I really liked that. There seems to be some, some growing together of the different operating systems and the functionalities there. And I think I really liked this theme. And if they if they push to that, I think it's a very good development for the platform's overall.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:46

Yeah, because I noticed that that it seems that Apple really is pushing practices a little bit more State of Union, but they're really pushing us developers to focus more on getting something developed in Swift UI. And then trust Apple's tooling to make sure that it actually will work across all of the platforms, or at least the platforms that you want to support, which are products, so that you have a sort of, sort of a write once, and then you can run it on a phone and iPad and the desktop, and maybe on the watch, and maybe on TV us. But yeah, I'm really wondering how this will end up this year. But I do think that that Apple is getting much closer to this to this goal of making swift UI the one true language for the entire ecosystem? Or I should say framework actually. Like it. Yeah, yeah. And but to me, if I look at the keynote, what I really liked, to me, it was really the the m two chip announcements, I really liked that bit. And that's probably because I'm running a MacBook Pro and one myself. So the, the direct thing that was replaced on Monday, is what I'm using day to day, the machine is still fine for me, I can probably still use it for like a good year or two. But just seeing the advancements on the CPU level that Apple has made in just two years time. That's kind of kind of mind blowing, really. And I'm really looking forward to see how the m two chip will perform in real life also looks a little bit into the hardware. And I really liked the MacBook Air and two screws, because it's a new case design. And it's, it's much more up to up to date with the current design language of Apple. But what's really interesting is that the MacBook Pro 13 inch m two, that that's it's literally the M one with with some new internals and everything else about machine seems to be the same if you look at the spec sheet, and also the price gap between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro in the entry level models, that has also closed quite a lot. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to some some real life performance benchmarks of the MacBook Air to see if thermal throttling is still a thing with this machine. Because the one reason why he wants to get a MacBook Pro 13 inch instead of the MacBook Air, which was basically the same machine was the act of cooling that is going on in the MacBook Pro. And I'm really looking forward to see how much that of a difference is still going to be because I think most most iOS developers, they're perfectly fine using the latest mtwo MacBook Air as an entry level machine. And of course, you can always go for the Mac Studio and have a gazillion heaps of performance. But if Apple really comes through with their promises of compilation performance improvements in Xcode 10 We should still be good with this and more or less entry level hardware, even though and You have the hardware of Apple, I don't consider entry level because of the price point that their stuff is at. But still, it's definitely true. Yeah. And the second thing that I really liked was the was the passkey thing. That's it announced a few weeks ago, there was already this announcement that Apple, Google and Microsoft were in some sort of a collaboration called the phyto. Alliance. And that's Fido is basically an entity that has defined some web standards for web authen. And that's a token based login mechanism that uses public private key cryptography to make sure that everything is secure and stay safe. And the big advantage of that is that you only share a public key unique to a specific website. And if that credential is leaked, that credential is only usable on the site that the credential was leaked at. So it's not with a password. If it's leaked, and you use it on different websites, then yeah, you're basically in a lot of trouble. But that's not the case with this passkey. But what was really interesting was that in the keynotes, Apple mentioned it, and they really made it seem like it was this unique, new thing that they were rolling out with, with the new upcoming platform releases. But I've been looking through the through WWDC videos of last year a bit. And passkey is already a clearly indicated and communicated thing available in the keychain for over a year now. Because if you look at the 2021 WWDC videos, there's actually already mentioned of that as a passkey type now available in keychain that is synced across your devices with iCloud Keychain syncing. So it's I don't know what's going on. It's it's like, it seems really that Apple is making a push for this and that they are improving the usability of this entire feature. And I do hope that this becomes a thing. And I am curious to see what is then the backup mechanism. Because of course, if you have this hardware token type thing based things stored in your keychain, which of course syncs across your devices, you have to have access to some sort of an Apple device to be able to get into your iCloud Keychain, and thus get into these, these websites that you have protected with this passkey thing. So I reckon that a lot of things to use this also start providing you with some sort of a backup login mechanism or some recovery mechanism that you can still get access to your account, even though what if you have lost access to your iCloud Keychain in some way, it's probably going to be a little bit hard. But it is possible, right. But that was the that was the second thing that I really enjoyed about the keynotes. And of course, all the other platform releases, like really watch us really curious to see what new hardware features that will be at the end of this year or no the watch, they're always announced at the early start of the year. Right. So in the spring,

Stefan Blos: 13:54

I think they're actually announced when the new iPhones are announced as well, right?

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:58

I don't know really, but some good things in there. And I really like a few of these new watch faces that will become available.

Stefan Blos: 14:06

True. One thing I want to I want to add to my to my highlights is the addition of more desktop like features for iPad OS, when connected to a external monitor, at least for M one based iPads because

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:23

it stage stage manager also works without an external screen, right? It does, yes. But with an external screen, it becomes even better because to me, it seems to it's like a four window desktop environment. And if you want to have more windows 10, they're off to the side. But still, it is it is the iPad moving more in the direction. If you attach all the required peripherals to a more of a laptop type experience, it seems.

Stefan Blos: 14:52

Yeah, like I think that's that's come becoming more and more the dream of people buying iPads to have them not only as this device you can, for example, take to the sofa and watch some YouTube or some some Netflix on but to use that as a productivity device as well. And I think it's really interesting pushed like in the way Apple approaches this because they had changes to multitasking last year already in last year's release of iPad OS and they keep refining it. So hopefully this will this will become more and more fine grained and better over the over the next years. And then I think I put us on a pretty good way to become this device that can be used in different different settings.

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:40

But what do you think then about which kit now being the best uses of watch complications and these homescreen widgets that you get on the iPhone. And I think also on the on the iPad, I guess. But what are your thoughts on that. And

Stefan Blos: 15:56

it's interesting because I downloaded the beta of iPad OS, to my iPad, and I tried to set the lockscreen. And maybe I didn't find it the way, at least the way they promoted it on the iPhone, it's not working on the iPad, at least not on mine, like I have the entry levels or no and one based iPad. But I liked the way they integrated the widgets on iOS on the lockscreen. Because it's like we are already touching on the State of the Union a little bit. But it's basically using widgetkit. Under the hood. Yeah, and you can can create widgets very similarly, for the watch, and for the iPhone lockscreen. And I really like this because this speaks to the to the push I mentioned before of unifying the platforms, and making it easier for developers to develop a feature once and use it on other platforms as well with some effort, for sure. And this is this will always be necessary, but at least make this friction of using it on other platforms really minimal. And that's a really welcome push, I think.

Jeroen Leenarts: 17:08

And also, what's a really nice gimmicky feature on the on the lockscreen is the is the depth separation that they are able to do on defaults, or that you add to your lockscreen.

Stefan Blos: 17:21

And that's also something that's available on watchtowers Right, yeah, we have this in watch faces already. So I think it's a nice way to see it, this feature looks really nice, and it has a great, great effect. And this can very well be ported as well to the iPhone. So I think it's a very cool, cool way to see like features leak from one platform to the other.

Jeroen Leenarts: 17:42

Yeah. And also something that that you notice that you told me before this recording is that there was nothing AR related in the keynote, right?

Stefan Blos: 17:52

Yes, I was a little bit. I was hoping for more,

Jeroen Leenarts: 17:56

and all that. But also no TV OS and there is a TV OS 16 Better available. So there's bound to be like a whole bunch of updates in TV OS as well, that that hasn't been shared publicly by Apple in this fashion just yet, right?

Stefan Blos: 18:12

Yes, very true. TBS was mentioned very briefly in the State of the Union. So at least the word happened.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:22

It's still it's still not that yet, at least.

Stefan Blos: 18:25

Yeah, that's a good, good sign. And also AR AR was also mentioned, because they they have a nice had a nice demo of a new room plan feature that has some smart scene detection with LIDAR sensors. So I think it's there. It's still improving, but not not the huge push that some people were expecting.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:48

No, no, no reality, iOS and stuff like that. But we're talking about State of Union stuff now. So let's switch to the State of the Union. And let's do that in a in a structured fashion. Because basically, the structure of the State of Union was somewhat of an introduction where Xcode cloud was mentioned and the Apple developer experience centers are what are these things called Apple developer centers were mentioned and that they are doing sessions in like that to do hundreds of sessions in 11 countries in five different languages in the last 12 months. And then they set out to structure so the fishing for the platform, the system experience and new API's. I think the new API's bit is pretty straightforward, but very cool, nonetheless, because that was basically they announced, let's see, I think weather kit and the fact that core kit is now available on watch us. And anything else that that was their driver needed is now available on iPad, that's also cool one because that allows you to implement a USB peripherals connected to an iPad. So

Stefan Blos: 19:53

yeah, I really liked that one, then there's like, this was like a rapid fire section where they just like mentioned a lot of things and get free. There will be more details during the sessions this week. There was also the live text API, they already demonstrated in the keynote, I think, as well, and which is a really cool feature to and developers will have.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:13

And what was really cool there is that's it's it works on pictures, but also on frozen video frames. So if I understand this correctly, probably you have to use Safari. But if you're, if you're watching some cool coding tutorial on YouTube, and you're looking at a screen full of code, you think, Oh, that's cool. I want that code in my code base. You can pause the video and then apparently, you should be able to drag and select this this code and then copy it over to your environment and start experimenting with it and then continue the video again, of course was because we want people to watch the content. But I think that was really cool because you could also add, share extensions and make things in these images. tappable, right, so that you could, for instance, if there's like something that is relevant for your app, in a static image that you can then tap on it. And I also liked with, I think it's called Vision kit, right? The way that that QR code scanning is now shown.

Stefan Blos: 21:12

This is the data scanner API. And it allows people to, or like, it allows developers to say that their users are looking for a QR code, for example. And then users can just use that inside of your app. And when an AI QR code is detected, it will directly be returning to your app with the necessary information. So it's a really cool way to seamlessly integrate things like QR codes or barcodes without the user having to the need to leave your app to scan that somewhere else. But it's a really cool integrated way.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:49

And but also, the way the detection of QR code is visualized is really cool, because it sort of blurs out everything else, and then focuses the QR code itself with some sort of color effects around it as well. It was really nice to see what they were just doing there. And I think those are things that you just get out of the box unless you opt out of this behavior. But yeah, and then of course, there's a whole slew of ad technology related improvements that, yeah, if you're into mobile ads, then esky ad network has had a lot of improvements that are interesting to you. So but that's the new API's, right? And of note about weather kits, you get like half a million API calls each month, I think it was included with your Apple developer account. So if you pay for your Apple developer accounts, you can already start using weather kits in an production app, and only start paying once you go past this 500,000 API call thresholds. So I'm expecting a lot of weather apps in the coming six months.

Stefan Blos: 22:54

But Apple even introduced a weather app for iPad OS, which is also we didn't watch a

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:59

lot about time. Right. And and they're also they're also, they also putting the clock app on our Mac OS. Now, already, so yeah, they're they're rolling all kinds of apps that you were thinking about, why didn't they do this earlier? But they're now looking at it now. Cool, interesting. So you're already running? Offense Ventura, man. What did they

Stefan Blos: 23:21

know? Like on iPad OS? Oh, cool.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:26

Also, what was really interesting, just scrolling through our notes a little bit. That's the system experience. Right. So that's Apple mentioned that in the State of the Union, and it was the lockscreen overhaul and new collaboration features, authentication updates that we already mentioned, but also the app Intents API, with the Siri. Siri tip few that you get available for that. Yeah, there was something I really liked, actually.

Stefan Blos: 23:54

And I really liked the demonstration they showed because, like shorter shortcuts has been a feature that a lot of people really like. But I think one problem with it was the discoverability was not great. So people would not like stumble upon that by accident.

Jeroen Leenarts: 24:13

Yeah, yeah. Because the way they the thing that they're trying to solve is that if you have Siri shortcuts available in your app, is that you have to activate them as an end user. And if you want to use them in the shortcuts app, you have to go look for them and activate them. And now with this new app, intense, it's much more the episode your device, you're using the app. So spotlight and other areas in the system will start suggesting these interactions to you more often.

Stefan Blos: 24:40

Yes. And that's a very good way, I think to make this more accessible and more easily discoverable for people who are not like actively looking for it. And the way they implemented it, at least the way they showed it during the State of the Union was a very easy integration where you could just just like change your existing Siri intent, I think it was to an app intended, then this will automatically be introduced to the system. And like you mentioned, spotlight will automatically detected and it will appear in the shortcuts app. And there's no need for users anymore to click that Add to Siri button to really add it to the experience, but it will automatically be added and I think that's a great a great way to to make this more accessible.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:27

Yeah, I totally agree. Is there anything more in the system experience area that was like really a big chunky new feature that they announced? I think that's the, of course the lockscreen which is that we mentioned the Siri tip view And then there is, I think the big honking, improvement and the big flak that Apple has placed about Swift UI, right? And that's the, what's that section called? Again,

Stefan Blos: 25:59

it's the vision for the platform's fishing for platform. Yeah. And

Jeroen Leenarts: 26:02

that basically was like a big section about Swift and swift UI, starting with like, Okay, you're we're gonna support Objective C, and app kits and UI kit and Interface Builder. Now, don't worry, it won't go anywhere for the foreseeable future. But you should really start using Swift UI now. And I think there was very clear, flack by Apple, Apple cannot be more clear about that, unless they start. What's it called again? I can't come up with a name for it. If deprecating unless they start deprecating API. And that was, that was a big, important message that to say that I had. And best way, the best way to build an app is with Swift and swift UI period.

Stefan Blos: 26:48

And that's what I wanted to mention. It's a very clear statement. Yeah. And like UI kit was, it was mentioned, and then everything else was mentioned. But it didn't really get too much love during the State of the Union, at least. So I think it's nothing at all. It's a pretty clear, clear way of them trying to push developers and companies maybe to use Swift UI more and more and the new features, and there was the same theme last year, like widgets last year, yeah, this year, the lockscreen, which is also based on widgets, but a lot of the new functionality is really using and leveraging the power of Swift UI. And third, yeah, I think it's clear way forward.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:33

And some nice releases as well with with Swift charts and really cool improvements to the Swift package manager. But with back to plugins, generic improvements with the summon any keywords and regular expression, string literal support in Xcode now, so you get syntax highlighting within your regular expressions. And if regular expression is still two thirds for you, with the support, you can also get the regex builder, which allows you to more programmatically define your regular expression, the end result is the same performance is the same, but it's just a little bit more laid out what the regular expression is doing could work very well for people and I understand Apple are doing that. And then I don't even understand I still have to wrap my hand, my head around this because it's the my mind around this. That's the concurrency stuff, the distributed actors, that was wow, I was really thinking of what is what's going on here, distributed actors, cross processes, cross devices, you can have something running on your Swift on the server codebase and have something in your app and have that interact in some way together. With some sort of compiler checking going on, I was like, holy moly, that's, that's impressive, hopefully,

Stefan Blos: 28:47

hopefully. And I think that's one of the features that we will learn more and more and more about in the sessions that will be coming. I think that's not a not a trivial thing. Like from an implementation standpoint, and also how it works under the hood. So it will will be very interesting to see more detail about that, during the sessions. And I'm really looking forward to that. Because it sounds really cool. It's going to be interesting, like how to properly use that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 29:15

So yeah, I think there's so much stuff in there. So I think we'll better stop this recording and and start working on finishing our State of the Union piece. And get that out there. And then just what I like to call marinate in all these nice videos that will be becoming available in the next few days. Because I've looked at the schedule of the Developer App, when videos are becoming available. It's like two hours from now, when we're recording this. That's when the first batch of videos becomes available. And then tomorrow and Thursday, there will be some batch videos, but it's over 100 videos with well as I'm used to with Apple, great content and stuff that will really deepen our understanding of the direction Apple is trying to take us with our development platforms. And I'm really looking forward to 2022 Because to me, at least right now 2022 WWDC has been a much better year than 2021 in the sense of what was announced and the vibe that I'm getting from the stuff that is coming our way. I think I think it's much more of a refinement year and not as much like Grant new features but all the related bugs and issues attached of course the probably going to be issues and things going on. But I think this is going to be one of those years like that we look back in a few years. Yeah, remember 2022 Ventura, iOS six and yeah, those were stable releases man.

Stefan Blos: 30:41

And I think I couldn't agree more. And I think it might be Do that for end users, the new functionalities won't be like breaking new changes that none of everybody has heard before. But I think for developers, it seems to be like a great year to have more capabilities to have more refined API's and like really stable releases, hopefully, that has seems to have been the first impressions that at least I got from people on Twitter who are using it. I agree, I think the year seems to be great. I can't wait for the sessions that will be happening. And I'm really looking forward to learning more about the way Apple sees the platforms and the development they take. Cool.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:29

Okay, I'm gonna hit stop now. By the time that this recording is published, most likely, we will have released our State of Union article, I will make sure to get that in the show notes as a link. And yeah, keep an eye out on our Twitter to see what else we're going to come up with during the week. And, and in the future, because there's so much to unpack that. We'll probably have like months worth of content if we would only be doing this. But unfortunately, we also have to get back to work at some point again. And But getting back to work right now is getting this article on the stream blog and in your browser for you to read. So have a great day enjoy WWDC and talk to you next time. Bye bye