WWDC17 — DaftMobile’s impressions
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2017, also known as WWDC17, is almost over, so it’s good time to review some announcements made by our favourite tech company and to start working on brand new apps that will take advantage from the new features coming to Apple’s OSes.
Here are thoughts from DaftMobile team members about features coming to iOS 11 this Fall:
Michał Dąbrowski, Team Leader, iOS Developer
I’m pretty excited about Core Bluetooth access on watchOS. This feature was just briefly mentioned during the Keynote presentation. However, it should allow us to port DaftCode’s indoor location solution: Indoorway to be available on the Watch, which sounds pretty amazing! I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Eryk Sajur, iOS Developer
As Apple seems to have put it everywhere (have you checked your fridge?), I am most excited about machine learning, or Core ML. The ease of integrating trained models into apps can lead to development of really smart phones. Coming back to Earth, iOS Drag and Drop seems pretty interesting as well, as that brings much more power to the users. I’m not sure if I’m happy about sherlocking 1Password’s app extension, I guess it might be better for the users of “Apple ecosystem”. When it comes to code, JSON support for structs, and the ease of using Encodable and Decodable protocols may not be groundbreaking, but is probably going to be used heavily (I will for sure).
Bartosz Kamiński, Junior iOS Developer
Being a Swift developer is great because of how thoughtful this programming language is. However, being an iOS developer isn’t always that wonderful, as tools provided by Apple tend to have issues. That’s why despite many innovations were presented on WWDC 2017 I mostly look forward to the new Xcode version. It includes overall quality improvements as well as some new features. All new editor is said to be much more responsive allowing users to jump from one line to another 50 times faster than before. Scrolling is buttery smooth with 60 frames per second. Also, debugging is easier with new Undefined Behavior Sanitizer that helps find sources of app crashes and Main Thread Checker that detects UIKit method calls that are not made on the main thread. Last but certainly not least, there’s new build system with improved performance and reliability. These are just the highlights of the new Xcode 9 and I think they’ll make our work much more effective.
Hubert Kuczyński, Junior iOS Developer
As a daily Swift developer, I’m the most excited about its upcoming improvements. Fortunately new features presented on this year WWDC were far from disappointing.
For me the biggest news is the fact that after Swift 4 release you’ll no longer need any external library to be able to use JSON serialization, as built-in support will be available. The only thing you’ll have to do is add conformance to Codable protocol to your models. Isn’t that great? There are plenty more interesting features such as String and generics improvements, reduced build times and many more. I’m looking forward to use it as soon as possible.
Daniel Marcinkowski, Junior Social Media Specialist
WWDC is event not only for the developers - it also provides a lot of useful tips and features for marketing people like me. The best one this year was introduction of Business Chat. Facebook’s Messenger, Instagram and Twitter are great ways for customers to reach their favourite brands for support or advices. iMessage is finally stepping into the game.
Users will be able to contact with businesses using Safari, Maps or even Spotlight and Siri. I can see advantages of Business Chats in DaftMobile’s communication. We’ll be able to answer questions from users of our apps or just provide them help if they find any problem in the fastest possible way — by using iOS’s native Messages app.
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