And just like that the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union are over for another year. Although last year had the big Apple Silicon announcement, I felt they spent too long on it, so this year’s focus on the software and APIs was more interesting for me.
I particularly liked the Maps enhancements around directions (both on foot and in a car). The new Weather app, which I believe has been developed in SwiftUI, looks lovely and offers some new data points from what I could tell. Definitely looking forward to trying out.
On the Home front I love everything around home automation and HomeKit. Even if I’m not personally interested in a specific feature or device, I am always interested in seeing the use cases. I find the idea of “keys in iOS wallet” to be pretty compelling and will definitely look into how that could work for me. Even if it’s just a lock on the shed while I decide whether I trust the tech or not! And I’m also thinking about HomePod Mini in the lounge, both as audio output for the TV and also so I can “Hey, Dingus!” to get it to control the TV to some extent.
I think the most interesting developer things for me where coding SwiftUI apps on iPad in the new Playgrounds app and Xcode Cloud. Finally we get to see the fruits of the BuddyBuild acquisition and I think it sounds fantastic. Anything that can help make the process of development easier for me is welcome and I think this will do just that.
Lastly, the concurrency story for Swift and the introduction of the AAA (async, await, actors) was another interesting area. Concurrency in programming is new for me and I haven’t quite got my head round it yet, but I am looking forward to trying out the new features of Swift to see if they can help me with ExerPlan.
Overall, a good start to WWDC 2021 with plenty to pique my interest and no doubt plenty of detail still to come out over the next few days and weeks. My new SSD arrives tomorrow so I will finally have enough space to install new stuff without the fear that my Mac Mini will run out of space. Can’t wait!