Apple® today unveiled several innovative technologies that make it
dramatically easier and faster for developers to create powerful new
apps. SwiftUI™ is a revolutionary development framework that makes
building powerful user interfaces easier than ever before. ARKit 3,
RealityKit™ and Reality Composer™ are advanced tools designed to make it
even easier for developers to create compelling AR experiences for
consumer and business apps. New tools and APIs greatly simplify the
process of bringing iPad® apps to Mac®. And updates to Core ML® and
Create ML™ allow for more powerful and streamlined on-device
machine learning apps.
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With Xcode, it’s never been easier for developers to bring their existing iPad projects to Mac. (Photo: Business Wire)
“The new app development technologies unveiled today make app
development faster, easier and more fun for developers, and
represent the future of app creation across all Apple platforms,” said
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
“SwiftUI truly transforms user interface creation by automating large
portions of the process and providing real-time previews of how UI code
looks and behaves in-app. We think developers are going to love it.”
SwiftUI
The vision for Swift™ has always been about making development faster,
easier and more interactive, and a modern UI framework is a huge part of
that vision. SwiftUI provides an extremely powerful and intuitive new
user interface framework for building sophisticated app UIs. Using
simple, easy-to-understand declarative code, developers can create
stunning, full-featured user interfaces complete with smooth animations.
SwiftUI saves developers time by providing a huge amount of automatic
functionality including interface layout, Dark Mode, Accessibility,
right-to-left language support and internationalization. SwiftUI apps
run natively and are lightning fast. And because SwiftUI is the same API
built into iOS, iPadOS™, macOS®, watchOS® and tvOS™, developers can more
quickly and easily build rich, native apps across all Apple platforms.
Xcode 11 Brings SwiftUI to Life
A new graphical UI design tool built into Xcode® 11 makes it easy for UI
designers to quickly assemble a user interface with SwiftUI — without
having to write any code. Swift code is automatically generated and when
this code is modified, the changes to the UI instantly appear in the
visual design tool. Now developers can see automatic, real-time previews
of how the UI will look and behave as they assemble, test and refine
their code. The ability to fluidly move between graphical design and
writing code makes UI development more fun and efficient and makes it
possible for software developers and UI designers to collaborate more
closely. Previews can run directly on connected Apple devices, including
iPhone®, iPad, iPod touch®, Apple Watch® and Apple TV®, allowing
developers to see how an app responds to Multi-Touch™, or works with the
camera and on-board sensors — live, as the interface is being built.
Augmented Reality
ARKit 3 puts people at the center of AR. With Motion Capture, developers
can integrate people’s movement into their app, and with
People Occlusion, AR content will show up naturally in front of or
behind people to enable more immersive AR experiences and fun green
screen-like applications. ARKit 3 also enables the front camera to track
up to three faces, as well as simultaneous front and back camera
support. It also enables collaborative sessions, which make it even
faster to jump into a shared AR experience.
RealityKit was built from the ground up for AR. It features a
photorealistic rendering, as well as incredible environment mapping
and support for camera effects like noise and motion blur, making
virtual content nearly indistinguishable from reality. RealityKit also
features incredible animation, physics and spatial audio, and developers
can harness the capabilities of RealityKit with the new RealityKit Swift
API. Reality Composer, a powerful new app for iOS, iPadOS and Mac, lets
developers easily prototype and produce AR experiences with no prior 3D
experience. With a simple drag-and-drop interface and a library of
high-quality 3D objects and animations, Reality Composer lets developers
place, move and rotate AR objects to assemble an AR experience, which
can be directly integrated into an app in Xcode or exported to AR Quick
Look.
Easier to Bring iPad Apps to Mac
New tools and APIs make it easier than ever to bring iPad apps to Mac.
With Xcode, developers can open an existing iPad project and simply
check a single box to automatically add fundamental Mac and windowing
features, and adapt platform-unique elements like touch controls to
keyboard and mouse — providing a huge head start on building a native
Mac version of their app. Mac and iPad apps share the same project and
source code, so any changes made to the code translate to both the
iPadOS and macOS versions of the app, saving developers valuable time
and resources by allowing one team to work on both versions of their
app. With both the Mac and iPad versions of their apps, users will also
enjoy the unique capabilities of each platform, including the precision
and speed when using their Mac’s keyboard, mouse, trackpad and unique
Mac features like Touch Bar™.
Core ML and Create ML
Core ML 3 supports the acceleration of more types of advanced, real-time
machine learning models. With over 100 model layers now supported with
Core ML, apps can use state-of-the-art models to deliver
experiences that deeply understand vision, natural language and speech
like never before. And for the first time, developers can update machine
learning models on-device using model personalization. This cutting-edge
technique gives developers the opportunity to provide personalized
features without compromising user privacy. With Create ML, a dedicated
app for machine learning development, developers can build machine
learning models without writing code. Multiple-model training with
different datasets can be used with new types of models like object
detection, activity and sound classification.
Apple Watch
With the introduction of watchOS 6 and the App Store® on Apple Watch,
developers can now build and design apps for Apple Watch that can work
completely independently, even without an iPhone.
Developers can also take advantage of the Apple Neural Engine on Apple
Watch Series 4 using Core ML. Incorporating Core ML-trained models into
their apps and on-device interpretation of inputs gives users access to
more intelligent apps. A new streaming audio API means users can stream
from their favorite third-party media apps with just their Apple Watch.
An extended runtime API gives apps additional time to accomplish tasks
on Apple Watch while the app is still in the foreground, even if the
screen turns off, including access to allowed sensors that measure heart
rate, location and motion.
Fast, Easy and Private Sign In Using Apple ID
Sign In with Apple makes it easy for users to sign in to apps and
websites using their existing Apple ID. Instead of filling out forms,
verifying email addresses or choosing passwords, users simply use their
Apple ID to set up an account and start using an app right away,
improving the user’s time to engagement. All accounts are protected with
two-factor authentication, making Sign In with Apple a great way
for developers to improve the security of their app. It also includes a
new anti-fraud feature to give developers confidence that the new
users are real people and not bots or farmed accounts. A new
privacy-focused email relay service eliminates the need for users to
disclose their personal email address, but still allows them to receive
important messages from the app developer. And since Apple does not
track users’ app activity or create a profile of app usage, information
about the developer’s business and their users remains with the
developer.
Other Developer Features
-
PencilKit makes it easy for developers to add Apple Pencil support to
their apps and includes the redesigned tool palette. -
SiriKit™ adds support for third-party audio apps, including music,
podcasts and audiobooks, so developers can now integrate Siri directly
into their iOS, iPadOS and watchOS apps, giving users the ability to
control their audio with a simple voice command. -
MapKit now provides developers a number of new features such as vector
overlays, point-of-interest filtering, camera zoom and pan limits, and
support for Dark Mode. -
In addition to language enhancements targeted at SwiftUI, Swift 5.1
adds Module Stability — the critical foundation for
building binary-compatible frameworks in Swift. -
Powerful new Metal® Device families facilitate code sharing between
multiple GPU types on all Apple platforms, while support for the iOS
Simulator makes it simple to build Metal apps for iOS and iPadOS.
Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the
Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with
iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software
platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS — provide seamless experiences
across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services
including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Apple’s more
than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on
earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.
NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple Newsroom (www.apple.com/newsroom),
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© 2019 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, SwiftUI,
RealityKit, Reality Composer, iPad, Mac, Core ML, Create ML, Swift,
iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Xcode, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple Watch,
Apple TV, Multi-Touch, Touch Bar, App Store, SiriKit and Metal are
trademarks of Apple Inc. Other company and product names may be
trademarks of their respective owners.
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