A SMARTER SIRI, ARKIT2 AND A FASTER iPHONE: APPLE’S HEADLINE INNOVATIONS STREAMED LIVE FROM SAN JOSE TO THE TECH COMMUNITY IN SUFFOLK, THANKS TO CODERUS AND UOS.
Following the sell-out success of the Google I/O event at Adastral Park, it was IWIC’s turn to host the second of Coderus’ Live Streamed events – The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.
Informally known as ‘dub dub’, the WWDC provides a window into Apple’s innovations for the coming year, and is hotly anticipated by techies worldwide. At Coderus, these keynotes provide an invaluable heads-up into what we’ll be working on – and to share the fun, we invite tech enthusiasts, hobbyists and business owners from our region to come and celebrate with us.
While Coderus CEO, Mark Thomas took in the action place at the Ipswich Waterfront Innovation Centre at the University of Suffolk.
From the moment the doors opened at 16:30 to the final wrap-up at around 20:30 GMT, it was wonderful to share the experience with enthusiastic friends across the tech community.
So what caught our eye? Here’s our quick picks of the announcements that got us excited.
Increased speed and performance for iPhone: iOS 12 is set to improve the speed and reliability to improve the customer experience on iPhone. Apple representatives said that apps will launch 40 percent faster with up to 50 percent faster keyboard display and up to 70 percent faster to camera.
A smarter Siri: Apple’s voice assistant will also get a boost, featuring voice-activated shortcuts which fire based on activities you do regularly. Let’s say you’re driving to work: tell Siri that’s what you’re doing and it will reel off when you’re likely to get there, what the weather’s like at your destination – even prompt your team if you’re running late for a meeting in your diary.
ARKit2: this is Apple’s augmented reality (AR) development platform for iOS. We had fun demoing the current ARKit to Live Stream attendees, encouraging them to play Tetris with objects around them. ARKit2 will offer a new file sharing standard that’ll make it easier for developers to integrate AR into apps. Expect to see many more apps like Measure, which lets you see the physical size of something just by dragging your camera across its corners. Nice!
Privacy and data security: a big deal at WWDC18. Apple reiterated its commitment to privacy across both its App Store and Developer ID routes, while a new feature in Safari will disable tracking software that advertising companies embed in websites to track internet activity.
Application binary interface stability: coming to Swift, (Apple’s programming language) – this will really help the Coderus team create new apps for iOS, Mac and also other platforms when integrating with third party frameworks/SDKs.
Mojave: move over High Sierra – Dark Mode is on its way. Later this year, Mac users will have the option to switch the OS into a new colour scheme which effectively inverts the viewing experience, turning the desktop, background and icons dark grey. As well as looking cool (and easier on the eye for us developers), it has some great productivity features, such as Desktop Stacks, which aim to save time by grouping all contents automatically by kind, date or tag, with associated content ‘flying’ back into the stack when you are done. Even creating and using the humble screenshot is going to be easier and more intuitive in Mojave.
Screentime apps: At Coderus, our overall wellbeing is important to creating great code so Apple’s forthcoming Do Not Disturb feature – which allows you to ring-fence periods when you can’t see notifications – will allow us to concentrate on having fun outside work. We might even use the new features within the Apple Watch to get competitive with our free gym membership…
That’s all for now! Thank you to the University of Suffolk for hosting our event, for all the support from Nicky, Jim and the wonderful team at Innovation Martlesham and most of all, our attendees for coming along and making this a most enjoyable learning experience. If you’d like to provide your feedback on the WWDC event, please take our survey and help us make it even bigger and better in 2019!
Liked this? Check out Coderus: Top 10 Developer Picks from Google I/O 2018.
