So, to be perfectly honest, I was not expecting anything groundbreaking at this years WWDC. I thought there would be iOS 8, which would have a few new features, but not TOO much. I mean, after iOS 7, there should definitely be some cool-down time before anymore big changes to the OS. I also thought they would probably talk about OSX 10.10, and there would be a few new features too. Not that I was expecting Apple to be lazy this year, but you can’t make something groundbreaking and amazing every single year.
Swift
With that being said, despite John Siracusa’s requests, I NEVER thought they would release a new programming language this year. Maybe sometime in the next few years, but not 2014. I am definitely a fan of C#, and to a lesser extent Java, with how they handle some programming tasks. So when I saw the screen showing off the new capabilities of Swift at WWDC, I was overjoyed. Namespaces, Generics, Type Inference, and Multiple return types? Yes, please! I have already been going through The Swift Programming Language Reference book on the iBook Store, and am LOVING the new syntax.
So, guess what I’m going to do with this blog now? I am currently not sure how much I can talk about besides what the Keynote said, but once allowed to, I am definitely planning on talking a lot about Swift on this blog. I am currently not sure if it will be a whole leap to Swift only, or if there will still be a mix of Objective-C and Swift, but I am currently thinking that latter, but with Swift being the primary focus. Either way though, I am blogging here to share what I learn in the hopes that it helps others learning as well, so if I learn something new in Objective-C, I will probably cover it here at some point. When talking about Objective-C, I tend to talk about C related subjects that give a better view of that aspect of Objective-C, so I anticipate continuing to do that, to help describe something in Swift.
I am really looking forward to programming for iOS with Swift, and want to make this blog a helpful resource for those wanting to do the same. Until then though, I still have been learning a lot about Objective-C and will continue to share such.
OS X Yosemite
I definitely see the effects of iOS7’s design on OS X Yosemite. The iconography is a lot simpler, and their use of translucency in scrollviews to give you a “sense of place” as Apple says, which is particularly apropos in the “Maps” app, is definitely related to iOS 7. The changes to Spotlight to show Wikipedia and other sources more easily is pretty nice too, as well as its integration with maps and iTunes.
The advent of Notification Center widgets is also very nice. I have used the dashboard in the current version of OS X, I definitely think having many of the widgets from there, and more in the future, in the Notification Center makes them even easier to use. I have never particularly been a fan of shifting my entire screen over just to check the whether really quick. While the Notification Center does shift the screen a little, it doesn’t completely replace it like Dashboard does.
Phone and SMS Forwarding
I am not the biggest user of SMS, but I definitely think it is a good thing to have it integrated with Messages. I love using it to communicate between my friends and family that have Apple devices, and have definitely felt that it would be nice to have what SMS’s I do use in here, to be able text communicate from everywhere. On the other hand though, Phone forwarding, that is absolutely awesome. I liked doing FaceTime with the mac to other Apple devices, but being able to use my phone while sitting at my computer and not having to hold it up to my ear or switch out my headphones for a headset for the phone while be very helpful. The instant hotspot looks cool too, though I doubt it will let those of us that don’t have tethering on our plans, and can’t (with the older iPhone Unlimited data plan). I will update here when I find out whether that is the case.
iCloud Drive
This definitely looks cool to me. Obviously there are plenty of other cloud storage media that I have used, but having one directly built into all of my Apple devices makes it just plain easy. Its integration with Handoff makes it even better, so you can work on whatever device you want, whenever you want, without so much as a “send to my other device” command.
iOS 8
There were a few updates to iOS 8 as well, which were cool, but definitely not as groundbreaking as iOS 7.
Photos
I have not really been the biggest fan of Photo Streams, so I might not be the best person to ask about this, but if iCloud Photo Library is better than such, I could see it as being quite useful. I am one of the few people that likes plugging my phone in to charge, and organizing my photos into my own repository and syncing them back via iPhoto, but if it integrates with that, I might take them up on this one. We shall see.
The improved built-in photo-editting capabilities are good, and I might use them a bit, but the extensions to work with other apps to edit photos, that is the really good addition to this app.
There is one addition to the Photos app that, I don’t believe was in the Keynote, but I find quite cool, and something I might use if I can put my phone down long enough to do so: Time-lapse videos. It does basically what it sounds like. You set your phone up somewhere, apparently set the time interval, and it creates a movie of photos taken at these intervals. Pretty neat.
Messages – Voice, video, and location messages
This is interesting. I thought text was sufficient for messages, but adding short clips to replies, I could see myself using it. I almost feel like I won’t use it, but then find myself in a couple months using it all the time.
Family Sharing
I think this is my favorite capability of iOS 8. It’s major capability: to allow you to share your iTunes, iBooks, and App store purchases between family members. I think I will use this one all the time. So now, if I want to play a game with somebody in my family, they can just download it from my App Store account, and we don’t have to buy a second copy, if it is paid. Family sharing also gives access to a shared photo album. It is basically a photo stream like I had mentioned I’m not a big fan of before… but one automatically set up for my family, I think I may actually start using it. Organizing family calendars will be very helpful as well, so that it will be easy to tell when things are happening for myself, my wife, and my child (when he’s old enough to use this), in one view. I currently do this somewhat via Google Calendar, but still, having this automatically set up for my family once I add family members to my iCloud account, is quite nice. Being able to see the location of my family’s devices I’m sure will be useful in the future.
And of course, especially with a child with an iDevice, the “Ask to Buy” feature. With it, a user that tries to buy something on the app store that is not allowed to authorize payments, will send a request to the parent’s iDevice saying that the child (or whoever) is trying to buy something, and ask you for your permission. I think this will be VERY useful in my future.
Health
This one, I think has good potential, and if it lives up to it, will be quite useful. I currently use a few different apps to track my health on the iPhone, including MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, and Pedometer++. Having them all report to a central repository could be a good thing. I think they are currently fine separate (though currently RunKeeper already talks to MyFitnessPal, so they aren’t entirely separate), but I will definitely be watching this to see how it goes.
Conclusion
I know this post is not really going into any nitty-gritty programming, but talking about the news of Swift and WWDC I believe is a good reason change it up a bit. I may have rambled a bit for my reviews of general parts of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, but I felt it would be useful to list off a bunch of my personal highlights about the new features in one place. A lot of my commentary was saying how “nice” or “awesome” something new is, but a lot of it was giving a quick overview of the some details of these new capabilities.
Anyway, for the future of this blog, if you have any suggestions of what to talk about in Swift or even Objective-C, you can message me on twitter @CodingExplorer, and we’ll see what we can do about putting that topic into the hopper. I will be chronicling what I learn, but if you have things you all want to know, I can steer my learning that way a bit and help explain it as well. Thank you for reading this post, and I hope you found it helpful. Good luck on your new apps, and I hope I can be of help.