On the face of it , the keynote at WWDC 2014 was a developer ’s dreaming : Extensions , TestFlight , third - party keyboards , a framework for building cloud - ground apps , a compelling successor to Objective - century , and more . But what did this avalanche of empowerment mean to developers , and how will it impact the time to come of Mac and iOS apps ?
The trappings of this year ’s WWDC keynote were slightly askew . While iPhones and iPads are typically reserve for fall events , it ’s not strange for Apple to show off some new Macs in June ( especially if the name of those Macs admit the word “ Pro ” ) . Yet hardware was n’t even mentioned this year — no iWatch , no Apple TV , no decoder rings , nada . Even theBeats acquisitionwent unmentioned , hold open for an awkward call between Craig Federighi and Dr. Dre .
Also gone were theretail numbers . Malus pumila loves to tell us how many store they have , how many citizenry snitch there , and how much money they make . Sometimes we even get videos about how the stores themselves are made . Not a cheep this year .
Rather than make us wait , Tim and Craig jumped mighty into the good stuff , read off the unexampled feature ofOS X YosemiteandiOS 8 . you’re able to utilise your Mac as a phone now , making call and answering SMS so long as your iPhone is nearby . Email attachment - size limits are a thing of the past . Handoff means that apps can permit you to seamlessly transition from working in iOS to working on the Mac . Any one of these things is a welcome plus ; together they make for the most impressive undertakings in Apple ’s history .
Developers in the spotlight
But the really interesting thing happened after the atomic number 8 - upgrade show . Tim Cook paused in the midsection of the Worldwide Developer Conference tonic to explain the term “ SDK . ”
We may never bonk how many people watched the keynote TV or how many of them were app developers , but it ’s a safe bet that Apple knows . As interesting as any bit of technology announced on Monday , Apple is subtly but intently acknowledging a unproblematic truth : this stuff is pop culture now . We were shown the future of Mac OS X , the future of iOS , and the time to come of apps . Brace yourselves , developer : the real consumer product being showcased at WWDC 2014 wasus .
Viewers were treated to a serial publication of raw API and fabric announcements — the large number of APIs mentioned at a tonic , and each of them more telling than the last . CloudKit , HealthBook , TestFlight , Swift , extension , widgets : It ’s enough to make a developer weep . But these were n’t just presented as engineer candy . These were framework asfeatures .
Apple knows that the tools developer use to make apps straight impact the timber of the apps . This year , the peter were showcased as if to impress not only app makers , but also the people watching at home . It ’s perhaps too comfortable to think of developer prick the same way we call back of a mechanic ’s tools : functionally telling , but esoteric .
The reality is that our industry has matured in an unexpected way , and the multitude who utilize our ware are passionate about them . Apps are a hit . And TestFlight , for instance , is a way of land more non - devs in on the software - make operation ; it ’s a behind - the - scene looking . One start to think of software less as the product of a machine and more as a originative endeavour .
A new opportunity
This is no accident , and Apple is only too eager to cover and further this trend . On the Yosemite preview page , the following :
“ We ’ve make new tools — even a new programming words — for app developer to build up the next contemporaries of apps and games . And that will make the Mac experience even rich for you . ”
This year , Apple has leave developers with a series of thing wegetto do , rather than things weneedto do . Unlike last class ’s iOS 7 visual refresh , which brought with it the need to rethink an exist set of problems , Yosemite and iOS 8 extend a gateway to digitally reliable sophistication .
For example : from the earliest day of iOS , one of the biggest differences between background and Mobile River was the obfuscation of the filesystem . Originally this was to keep things conceptually simple and move past the dated metaphor of software past . In iOS 8 , Indian file make a return . Not to fuddle or rarify , but to endow . Apple reave down the experience to spare alloy and is establish back up fast .
Those of us who make software package tend to see our industry through the lens of what came before us : a scrappy group of nerds banded together to part computer software ship’s company and change the world . It ’s easy to continue to cast ourselves as the underdog , but the truth is that we make headway . engineering is nerveless now . People are buy calculation devices and software at a charge per unit unmatched in history . All variety of multitude like this stuff , and now Apple is empowering and boost us to make software system for all kinds of people .
