wwdc

While Apple is trying to convince its employees to return to the office, it’s also that time of year when the fruits of their labor are shared with the rest of the world. This year, there is a special event: the unveiling of the Developer Center. This may be a sign that next year that the event will be in person, but, I think that outside of the talks (those can still be prerecorded), Apple should focus on having the week just be labs and hands on time with their engineers so that those who cannot afford the trip can still enjoy what has been a good conference experience remotely (thanks COVID)....

Continuing the with the very high production value, this year’s virtual WWDC was very good. This year included collaborative lounges (in Slack) where lots of Apple engineers could answer whatever question you might have. If WWDC continues to be virtual, I think this is a good way of reconstructing the lab experience so long as the questions and answers get archived publicly. watchOS The watch got a very small update this year with support for keys and IDs being brought to the Wallet app and a fully updated Mindfulness app....

Unlike last year’s WWDC where the development was interrupted by the pandemic, this year’s development was done entirely during the pandemic, so it should be interesting to see whether or not things are going to be scaled down. Well, the production of the conference will not be scaled down as Apple has demonstrated that they will spare no expense for their virtual events over the past year. tvOS Since the new Apple TV remote does not have the hardware for gaming, I’m not sure if there is going to be an Apple Arcade push for the TV this year....

The developer community was interested to see how a remote WWDC would go and I think the general consensus is that this is how the conference should go from now on. By having the session be prerecorded, they are much more polished and the transcripts and sample code are available the same day. This has also allowed for sessions that don’t have to be 50 minutes in length, allowing for some quick videos on best practices or updates on smaller frameworks (very helpful)....

Even with a pandemic, the yearly major release cycle must continue. This year Apple is building upon their Catalyst project, Swift UI, Combine, and iPadOS. There is also a chance that ARM-based Macs make an appearance (or at least the transition is announced) and the announcement of a unified service bundle (Music, News, Arcade, and TV). tvOS With Apple Arcade, Apple is still pushing the gaming aspect of the iPhone, iPad, and TV....