WWDC 2017 State of the Union TL;DR

Here is a quick recap of everything we’ve learrned from Apple during the “State of the Union” talk in WWDC 2017. Have fun!

Source Editor

• Rewritten in Swift from scratch
• Built-in markdown editor
• Better fix-its (inline and don’t break formatting)
• 300+ new diagnostics, analyzers and fix-its
• 3x quicker file opening, 60 fps scrolling, 50x line jump
• Tokenizing in code editor from Playgrounds (Hold Cmd while hovering)
• Contextual menu for actions (Tap while tokenizing structure)
• Brand new refactoring system
• Cmd +/- to resize code text
• SDK version availability Fix-it
• Protocol implementation stub fix-its
• “Extract” moves implementation to its own method/let
• Rename/edit in scope
• Global rename/refactor across source code — live update across all slices
• Open Source transformations / actions — new stuff will probably come in from devs

Swift 4

• Strings Are now a Character Collection, act like arrays
• Multi-line string literals with """
• One-side ranges and string slicing using subscripting
• Unicode 9 Grapheme Breaking — Unicode support is better (and actually correct as opposed to older versions)
• Codable protocol: Super-super simple way to encode/decode JSON/plist: try JSONEncoder().encode(Codable) vs try JSONDecoder.decode(Type.self, from: payload)
• Xcode 9 Swift language Version (3.2 / 4.0) — allows to gradually upgrade to Swift 4
• Build times:Mix and match Swift/Objective-C should be 40% faster
• Whole-Module Optimization should have bettter build time (about 2x) (in theory since Xcode 8.3.2)

Core Technologies

Indexer

• Completely Rearchitectured
• Open quickly x35 faster
• Larget Proejct Search is x50 faster
• Indexing will occur simultaneously while building

Build System — New Build System

• Build operations are x2.5 faster so should be even better with incremental builds
• Opt-in via Workspace Settings
• Will be the default build system soon

Source Control

• Tight integration between GitHub/Github Enterprise with Xcode
• You can see branches/tags/push PRs stragithf rom Xcode to GitHub
• Commit history built in to Xcode
• New “Source Control” tab (second from left after project structure)
• Moving files between groups ACTUALLY FREAKING MOVES THEM
• Create new Remote / New GitHub repo directly from Xcode
• New “Open in Xcode” straight from GitHub.com

Debugging and Analysis

• View Debugger improved for ViewControllers, SpriteKit, SceneKit
• Runtime Sanitizers — Undefined Behaviour & Main Thread Sanitizer
• Enabled from Diagnostics Panel in Run/Test panels (Scheme Editor)

Testing & Continuous Integration

• No need to install Xcode Server, It’s built in to Xcode itself
• UI Testing x3 times faster (or up to x10 faster with new First Match API)
• xcodebuild now runs test on multiple destinations simultaneously
• Simulator supports multiple booted devices
• Redesigned Simulator to look like physical device — so you can actually interact with the physical controls (switches / volume controls)
• Fully resizable Simulator

Wireless Development

• iOS & tvOS devices
• Works with Xcode, Accessibillity Inspector, Instruments and much more

General APIs

Drag & Drop

• Automatic for Text and Web
• Standard API for implementing non-standard drag & drop behaviours
• Generate custom preview for dragged content
• Custom badge for dragged content
• Can work with any type of Data
• In-app Multi Touch (you can perform more actions while dragging / collect more items)
• Completely rewritten app-reordering on Home Screen using the Drag & Drop API
• Collection View and Table View come with built in support using UICollectionViewDragDelegate/UICollectionViewDropDelegate etc

UI Changes

• Large navigation bar with integrated Search Bar (UINavigationBar.prefersLargeTitles, UINavigationBar.searchController)
• Automatic Cell Sizing for Dynamic Type size

Files

• Access from new Files App
• New Document Browser can be presented from within your own app with custom actions, type filtering, creating new documents. Also possible to customize appearance of the Document Browser.
• In-app document sharing

Multi-tasking

• Size classes, Auto layout & Default storyboards — If you have those, you are probably already set for the new Multi-tasking APIs

iMessage

• App strip
• Apps inline with transcript

SiriKit

• New domains: Payment accounts, lists, notes, qr codes
• New Simulator Support for iOS & watchOS

MusicKit

• Users can play audio from Apple Music from within your app

Photo and Imaging APIs

• Photos Project Extensions: External provider support built in to Photos.app — Print/Web/etc
• Camera detects QR codes by default — Link ito apps via Universal Links
• HEVC — 2x Compression, hardware accelerated, supports images & videos
• HEIF — Asset container supporting Compound Assets, rich meta data, an ISO standard
• Standard API supports both new formats: ImageIO, Core Image, AVFoundation, PhotoKit
• new AVAsset.isPlayable to determine specific device can playback asset
• Access to Depth APIs so you can get access to different depth layers and create various layers etc
• Streaming Depth API is similar to the regualr Depth API for a live camera stream

Vision APIs

• Face and Landmark Detection
• Rectangle Detection
• Text detection
• Barcode detection
• Live Object tracking
• Integration between Vision and CoreML allows bringing in your own Machine Learning Models/Classifiers
• Powered by Accelerate and Metal shaders

Core ML

• Converter tool takes model and converst to a MLModel, then can be dropped into Xcode
• Graph optimizations increase performance along other optimizations

Metal

• Many system frameworks are built on top of Metal
• Almost 2 million apps are using Metal through the System Frameworks
• Over 900 million apple products supporting metal
• Metal 2 — Next generation
• GPU Driven Rendering — Reduce load from CPU and handover to GPU for rendering frames
• Platform Feature Alignment — Unified API across macOS, iOS and tvOS that maintains compatibility where possible
• Much much more :)

VR

• With Metal 2 and macOS High Sierra
• Low latency support for Head mounted displays
• SteamVR runtime and SDK for macOS (HTC Vive headset and control supported)
• Unreal Engine & Unity will add macOS VR Support (Early access in September via GitHub for Unreal)
• VR renders at 90 fps, about 10ms per frame available time (need to target 100 FPS)
• Metal 2 will also be supported with an External GPU on MacBook Pro
• Advanced Optimization Tools