Earlier this month, Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, known as WWDC. The event is an annual tradition for Apple with the inaugural WWDC held in 1987. You may be familiar with Apple’s spectacular press conferences where they announce new iPhones to get everyone excited about their latest products. This is a similar event, but at WWDC, the target audience is developers. Upcoming software, platforms, and tools are the shiny new objects put on display. WWDC always leaves developers with a lot to be excited about, and the 2019 version was no different. Let’s take a quick look around some of the highlights.
General Mac Highlights
A new operating system was introduced called MacOS Catalina. This continues the California theme that has been used to name the recent versions of MacOS. After a long run, the iTunes app is being replaced with separate Music, Podcast, and Apple TV apps. This isn’t especially meaningful for developers, but it’s alway interesting to take note of changes that Apple makes to its first party apps. The Mac and iPad will also be able to work better together than ever before. Through a new app called Sidecar, the iPad will be able to be used as a second display for your Mac either wirelessly or with a wired connection. This has been possible through third-party apps before, but it’s exciting to have Apple support and extend the functionality. Besides traditional second screen use, this has some cool possibilities for using the iPad as a drawing tool with the Apple Pencil where the devices are both working in the same app.
Although this isn’t typically a hardware conference, a new Mac Pro computer was also introduced. The computer is available with up to a 28-core processor and is an impressive high-end machine. To go along with it, a new 32 inch 6K monitor was announced. My favorite tidbit about the monitor is the stand that Apple made for it. The stand can be purchased for an additional $999. At that price, I can only imagine how majestic it sits on a desk and caresses your monitor (but it seems like it should probably make your coffee too).
General iOS Highlights
The new operating system, iOS 13, comes with a number of enhancements as well. A new dark mode has been one of the most talked about features. A dark mode has already been available for Mac, but this is its first appearance on mobile. The feature will darken your background and change to a lighter text color so that it is easier on your eyes at night. This is absolutely relevant to developers, as it offers a new appearance for users to view your app. Typically if users are requesting a dark mode, you would like to have your app enabled to show a mode consistent with that display.
Apple has also introduced a new “swipe” keyboard named QuickPath. This has been in Android for some time and can be handy for one handed typing. The issue has always been how well it can guess what you are trying to type. We’ll gauge its quality with time. Apple also announced a new “Sign in With Apple” feature. This is to compete with Facebook, Google, and other third party log-ins that are used in apps, and it will be based on users existing Apple IDs. This is of particular note because it will be required as an option for log-in in apps where third party log-in options are offered.
iPadOS
All of these are nice, but what I really want to highlight is iPadOS and then quickly mention Project Catalyst. First, we will start with iPadOS. For the last several years, Apple has been slowly positioning the iPad as something closer to a full blown computer. This involved giving it a “Files” folder, attaching a keyboard, several enhancements to multitasking, and drag and drop features while using multiple apps to name a few things. Well, Apple is taking a step further in differentiating the iPad from the iPhone by giving it a dedicated operating system called iPadOS. This immediately brings a lot of questions to mind, so let me clear a few things up before going any further.
First, your current iPad apps will continue to work on iPadOS. This operating system is based on iOS, and is still in parallel with iOS. It is called iPadOS 13 to mirror iOS 13. The primary reason for the renaming is to better differentiate that the iPad and iPhone have different sets of features. As a basic example, Apple pencil support is only available on the iPad, so it’s easier to understand that it’s an iPadOS feature. As more and more features are only available for the iPad, and specifically new iPads, compatibility is easier to understand through the operating system.
Speaking of compatibility, what devices are eligible to upgrade to iPadOS 13? It requires devices that use an Apple A8/A8X chip or later and have over 1 GB of RAM. This includes all iPad Pro models, iPad Air 2nd generation and newer, iPad mini 4th generation and newer, and iPad 5th generation and newer.
What’s new with iPadOS
Now that we’ve covered compatibility and reasoning for the operating system name, what exactly does is it do? Well, the first thing that you will notice is a new home screen. You will still see a grid of app icons like before, but they have been moved to the right. This frees up the left side for the time, date, and Apple’s widgets. The dock of app’s is still at the bottom. None of the elements are exactly new, but it seems to be a nice design and a further departure from the traditional iOS look to accompany the new name.
Safari has also gotten a substantial upgrade. It retrieves full versions of websites, same as you would expect on a Mac. You can still easily request the mobile version from a toolbar button if that’s what you’re after. We also now have the ability to easily manage and see downloads, just like on the Mac version of Safari. Having greater control and ability to manage files is a crucial piece to being able to use the iPad more like a full computer.
This bring us nicely into talking about the Files app. You can now connect a USB drive to your Mac, and it shows up nicely in your Files app. Along with integration with Google Drive and Dropbox, the Files app finally allows you to manage apps like you would expect. It may not seem like a lot, but again, this is key to using an iPad for greater productivity. The Files app also lets you drill down by columns, like in Finder on Mac, so you can navigate with ease.
Finally, mouse support has been added. It doesn’t appear to be a core feature by any means, but the support exists. It’s an AssistiveTouch feature under the Accessibility section of Settings. Given where and how it is included, mouse support inside your app is not necessary as the system still works off of touches and gestures. It is certainly something to note as it is likely a sign of something to come in the future though.
There are a number of other multitasking and performance improvements that go along to round out the changes for iPadOS.
Project Catalyst
Finally, let’s talk about Project Catalyst. This is new, but it was mentioned at WWDC 2018 under the name of Project Marzipan. Apple was using the project internally to build a single app that would work for iOS and macOS. That’s a big deal! Many of Apple’s apps, such as News, Home, and Stocks are apparently built with the the technology. Cross platform building between the Mac and iOS isn’t fully there yet, but this certainly is an encouraging step in the right direction.
Project Catalyst is an SDK for Xcode that will allow developers to convert iPad apps to Mac apps. The app must have an iPad version (it doesn’t work for iPhone only apps). The developer would then be able to submit versions to the iOS and Mac app stores separately. A universal app between the platforms is not available at this time. I have yet to use it, so I can’t speak to the ability to tweak changes to make your app more Mac friendly and whatnot, but it is certainly exciting and could make developing cross platform software for the two systems substantially faster.
Conclusion
WWDC 2019 was packed with many exciting new features. For app developers, any time we hear about completely new operating systems, like iPadOS, there is an initial fear of backwards compatibility for our current apps and excitement for what’s new. Luckily, iPadOS isn’t too much of a deviation from the previous version and is more about an exciting future. If you are interested in learning more about any of these features or other happenings from WWDC, I strongly recommend checking out Apple’s site. We didn’t come close to covering everything. As always, thanks for reading the HangZone blog!