Apple: What’s New in Developer Technologies

Apple Newsroom:

SwiftUI introduced developers to a modern UI framework that made it more intuitive than ever to build sophisticated app UIs. This year, new life cycle APIs let developers write an entire app in SwiftUI, and share that code across all Apple platforms. Developers who have already started with SwiftUI will easily be able to add new features to their existing code, and a new Lazy API ensures enormous data sets will offer great performance.

I still can’t quite put my finger on where SwiftUI fits in the grand scheme of things alongside Catalyst, but this is a big year-over-year step forward. And I just could not resist quoting the bit with “Lazy API”. (See Larry Wall’s “three great virtues of a programmer”.)

Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission.

Both of these changes sound great. The second one means bug fix updates (which are often security updates) won’t be held up by Apple while a broader dispute over App Store compliance is being resolved or negotiated. The first sounds like an even bigger concession on Apple’s part, but let’s see how it works in practice. If this is more than just lip service, wow, that’s huge.

★ Tuesday, 23 June 2020