- Apple’s WWDC 2024 kicked off with a wave of innovation, unveiling advancements in augmented reality, machine learning, and developer tools.
- On the second day of the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled a plethora of announcements and updates, demonstrating the company’s dedication to advancing the frontiers of technology.
- With a focus on privacy, security, and empowering developers, the event showcased an array of new APIs, frameworks, and updates aimed at shaping the future of app development across iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
OUR TAKE
Day 2 of WWDC 2024 was a testament to Apple’s dedication to innovation and developer support. The new frameworks, tools, and enhancements not only push the boundaries of technology but also ensure that development becomes more inclusive and efficient. As these tools and technologies become integrated into mainstream applications, we can expect to see a new wave of creativity and functionality in the tech landscape.
–Jinny Xu,BTW reporter
The second day of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 was a treasure trove of announcements and updates that showcased the company’s commitment to pushing technological boundaries. From new frameworks and tools for developers to significant enhancements in augmented reality and accessibility, here’s a detailed look at the major highlights from Day 2 of WWDC 2024.
Xcode 14
Apple unveiled Xcode 14, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE). Xcode 14 comes with significant performance improvements, more robust debugging tools, and enhanced collaboration features. These updates are designed to streamline the development process and improve efficiency for development teams. Notably, Xcode 14 offers seamless integration with Swift AI, allowing developers to incorporate AI functionalities into their apps effortlessly.
Also read: Everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2024 keynote day 1
Swift 6
Swift 6 makes it easier to write concurrent code correctly with a new, optional language mode that analyses your code at compile-time and diagnoses possible data races. This release also brings other enhancements to concurrency and generics, as well as improvements to Language Server Protocol support.
SwiftUI
SwiftUI is the best way to build apps across Apple platforms. Discover new capabilities to customise the look and feel of your apps, as well as improved interoperability with UIKit and AppKit when building animations and gestures. You can also take advantage of new text animations, plot functions in charts, take greater control of volumes and spaces in visionOS, and more.
Also read: Apple’s AI push boost iPhone sales as customers seek to upgrade
SwiftData
SwiftData is a framework that provides developers with an intuitive and lightweight API for structuring and persisting data within their applications using pure Swift code. With SwiftData, developers can easily model their app’s data and manage it efficiently without relying on external dependencies. This framework enables developers to work with custom data stores, transaction history, model indices, compound uniqueness constraints, and more, all using Swift’s expressive syntax. SwiftData offers seamless integration with other Swift libraries and tools, making it a versatile choice for data management in Swift-based applications.
Swift Testing
Developed exclusively for Swift, Swift Testing is a freshly introduced framework equipped with expressive APIs, simplifying the test-writing process. Utilising macros such as #expect, Swift Testing captures intricate expressions, offering comprehensive output upon test failure. Additional features include parameterisation for seamless execution of tests across various values and tagging for selective test execution based on specified criteria. With comprehensive support in Xcode 16, test results are presented in a user-friendly format.
App Intents
New orchestration capabilities provided by Apple Intelligence and significant enhancements to App Intents will enable Siri to take hundreds of new actions in and across apps. Using the Transferable API, File Representations, Item Providers, Spotlight Index, and more, you can make your entities more meaningful to the platform. Plus, you can provide powerful functionality in Siri and Spotlight. You can also explore new APIs for error handling, deferred properties, and associated enums.
SiriKit
Apps that have adopted SiriKit will automatically benefit from enhancements coming to Siri with no additional work, thanks to Apple Intelligence. Siri has more resilient request handling, with the ability to process requests — even when users stumble over their words or change their request mid-sentence. Siri also maintains conversational context and can understand when users reference something from a previous request.
RealityKit 4
RealityKit 4 harmonises its extensive range of features across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro. With the introduction of Reality Composer Pro in Apple Vision Pro, developers can now create spatial apps seamlessly across all these platforms.
Utilising shaders built with MaterialX, along with portals, particles, and various other features, RealityView can now be utilised across all four platforms. This includes APIs for integrating materials, shader-based hover effects, and virtual lighting, as well as new functionalities such as blend shapes, inverse kinematics, skeletal poses, and animation timelines, enhancing character animation capabilities.
RealityKit 4 offers enhanced access to rendering through new APIs for low-level mesh and textures, compatible with Metal compute shaders. With Xcode view debugging now supporting the inspection of 3D scene content, debugging RealityKit content has never been easier.
Metal
Metal powers hardware-accelerated graphics on Apple platforms. Now you can naturally port apps from other platforms with added support for global bindings and extensions to ray tracing. Residency sets let you quickly and easily group resources to manage residency. And it’s even simpler to target Mac, iPad, and iPhone with the same code, thanks to a unified API and shader build process.
SF Symbols
SF Symbols 6 introduces more than 800 new symbols along with enhanced localisation for various international scripts. Key updates include advanced animation options like wiggle, rotate, and breathe, which respond to user input and convey status changes, making symbols more expressive. The Magic Replace feature facilitates smoother transitions between related symbol variants. Improved annotation tools enhance custom symbol creation, allowing developers to specify animation directions and set custom anchor points. These enhancements provide developers with powerful tools to create dynamic and engaging user interfaces, significantly elevating app design and user experience.
CarPlay
On Day 2 of Apple’s WWDC 2024, significant updates to CarPlay were announced, including a complete interface overhaul that allows CarPlay to take over the entire infotainment system, including the instrument cluster. Key features include deeper integration with car functions like climate control and fuel levels, customisable dashboard displays, and a modular design compatible with various car models. Porsche and Aston Martin are among the first automakers to adopt this next-gen CarPlay, with more manufacturers to follow.
