Posts tagged with "developers"

WWDC 2025 Scheduled for June 9-13 Along with Special Event at Apple Park

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

WWDC25 will be held from June 9 - 13 this year and include an in-person experience on June 9 that will provide developers the opportunity to watch the keynote at Apple Park, meet with Apple team members, and take part in special activities. Space will be limited, and details on how to apply to attend can be found on the Apple Developer site and app.

Apple has announced that WWDC 2025 will primarily take place online again this year from June 9-13 2025. However, the company said that it simultaneously will hold a corresponding limited in-person event at Apple Park for developers, students, and press like last year.

In a press release issued by today, Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing, said:

We’re excited to mark another incredible year of WWDC with our global developer community. We can’t wait to share the latest tools and technologies that will empower developers and help them continue to innovate.

Apple also had this to say about events that will be held at Apple Park during the conference:

To celebrate the start of WWDC, Apple will also host an in-person experience on June 9 that will provide developers with the opportunity to watch the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union at Apple Park, meet with Apple experts one-on-one and in group labs, and take part in special activities. Space will be limited; details on how to apply to attend can be found on the WWDC25 website.

As time passes, fewer of the people I used to count on seeing at WWDC attend. I suppose that’s to be expected now that the event is primarily online. However, I’m just as excited as ever for this year’s event. It’s a chance to preview new technology and meet many of the developers whose work we cover. However, with rumors of new hardware on the horizon and a design refresh for all of Apple’s OSes, I’m sure this year’s WWDC will be as interesting as always.

Of course, MacStories readers can expect the same kind of comprehensive WWDC coverage we do every year. We’ll have extensive coverage on MacStories, AppStories, and MacStories Unwind, which will extend to Club MacStories too.

App Store Vibes→

Bryan Irace has an interesting take on the new generation of developer tools that have lowered the barrier to entry for new developers (and sometimes not even developers) when it comes to creating apps:

Recent criticism of Apple’s AI efforts has been juicy to say the least, but this shouldn’t distract us from continuing to criticize one of Apple’s most deserving targets: App Review. Especially now that there’s a perfectly good AI lens through which to do so.

It’s one thing for Apple’s AI product offerings to be non-competitive. Perhaps even worse is that as Apple stands still, software development is moving forward faster than ever before. Like it or not, LLMs—both through general chat interfaces and purpose-built developer tools—have meaningfully increased the rate at which new software can be produced. And they’ve done so both by making skilled developers more productive while also lowering the bar for less-experienced participants.

And:

I recently built a small iOS app for myself. I can install it on my phone directly from Xcode but it expires after seven days because I’m using a free Apple Developer account. I’m not trying to avoid paying Apple, but there’s enough friction involved in switching to a paid account that I simply haven’t been bothered. And I used to wrangle provisioning profiles for a living! I can’t imagine that I’m alone here, or that others with less tribal iOS development knowledge are going to have a higher tolerance for this. A friend asked me to send the app to them but that’d involve creating a TestFlight group, submitting a build to Apple, waiting for them to approve it, etc. Compare this to simply pushing to Cloudflare or Netlify and automatically having a URL you can send to a friend or share via Twitter. Or using tools like v0 or Replit, where hosting/distribution are already baked in.

Again, this isn’t new—but being able to build this much software this fast is new. App distribution friction has stayed constant while friction in all other stages of software development has largely evaporated. It’s the difference between inconvenient and untenable.

Perhaps “vibe coding” is the extreme version of this concept, but I think there’s something here. Creating small, low-stakes apps for personal projects or that you want to share with a small group of people is, objectively, getting easier. After reading Bryan’s post – which rightfully focuses on the distribution side of apps – I’m also wondering: what happens when the first big service comes along and figures out a way to bypass the App Store altogether (perhaps via the web?) to allow “anyone” to create apps, completely cutting out Apple and its App Review from the process?

In a way, this reminds me of blogging. Those who wanted to have an online writing space 30 years ago had to know some of the basics of hosting and HTML if they wanted to publish something for other people to read. Then Blogger came along and allowed anyone – regardless of their skill level – to be read. What if the same happened to mobile software? Should Apple and Google be ready for this possibility within the next few years?

I could see Google spin up a “Build with Gemini” initiative to let anyone create Android apps without any coding knowledge. I’m also reminded of this old Vision Pro rumor that claimed Apple’s Vision team was exploring the idea of letting people create “apps” with Siri.

If only the person in charge of that team went anywhere, right?

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Where’s Swift Assist?→

Last June at WWDC, Apple announced Swift Assist, a way to generate Swift code using natural language prompts. However, as Tim Hardwick writes for MacRumors, Swift Assist hasn’t been heard from since then:

Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn’t announced that it’s been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it’s not even mentioned in the release notes.

Meanwhile, developers have moved on, adopting services like Cursor, which does much of what was promised with Swift Assist, if not more. A similar tool built specifically for Swift projects and Apple’s APIs would be a great addition to Xcode, but it’s been nine months, and developers haven’t heard anything more about Swift Assist. Apple owes them an update.

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On Apple Offering an Abstraction Layer for AI on Its Platforms

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

I’ve been thinking about Apple’s position in AI a lot this week, and I keep coming back to this idea: if Apple is making the best consumer-grade computers for AI right now, but Apple Intelligence is failing third-party developers with a lack of AI-related APIs, should the company try something else to make it easier for developers to integrate AI into their apps?

Gus Mueller, creator of Acorn and Retrobatch, has been pondering similar thoughts:

A week or so ago I was grousing to some friends that Apple needs to open up things on the Mac so other LLMs can step in where Siri is failing. In theory we (developers) could do this today, but I would love to see a blessed system where Apple provided APIs to other LLM providers.

Are there security concerns? Yes, of course there are, there always will be. But I would like the choice.

The crux of the issue in my mind is this: Apple has a lot of good ideas, but they don’t have a monopoly on them. I would like some other folks to come in and try their ideas out. I would like things to advance at the pace of the industry, and not Apple’s. Maybe with a blessed system in place, Apple could watch and see how people use LLMs and other generative models (instead of giving us Genmoji that look like something Fisher-Price would make). And maybe open up the existing Apple-only models to developers. There are locally installed image processing models that I would love to take advantage of in my apps.

The idea is a fascinating one: if Apple Intelligence cannot compete with the likes of ChatGPT or Claude for the foreseeable future, but third-party developers are creating apps based on those APIs, is there a scenario in which Apple may regain control of the burgeoning AI app ecosystem by offering their own native bridge to those APIs?

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The M3 Ultra Mac Studio for Local LLMs→

Speaking of the new Mac Studio and Apple making the best computers for AI: this is a terrific overview by Max Weinbach about the new M3 Ultra chip and its real-world performance with various on-device LLMs:

The Mac I’ve been using for the past few days is the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra SoC, 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB Unified Memory (192GB usable for VRAM), and 4TB SSD. It’s the fastest computer I have. It is faster in my workflows for even AI than my gaming PC (which will be used for comparisons below; it has an Intel i9 13900K, RTX 5090, 64GB of DDR5, and a 2TB NVMe SSD).

It’s a very technical read, but the comparison between the M3 Ultra and a vanilla (non-optimized) RTX 5090 is mind-blogging to me. According to Weinbach, it all comes down to Apple’s MLX framework:

I’ll keep it brief; the LLM performance is essentially as good as you’ll get for the majority of models. You’ll be able to run better models faster with larger context windows on a Mac Studio or any Mac with Unified Memory than essentially any PC on the market. This is simply the inherent benefit of not only Apple Silicon but Apple’s MLX framework (the reason we can efficiently run the models without preloading KV Cache into memory, as well as generate tokens faster as context windows grow).

In case you’re not familiar, MLX is Apple’s open-source framework that – I’m simplifying – optimizes training and serving models on Apple Silicon’s unified memory architecture. It is a wonderful project with over 1,600 community models available for download.

As Weinbach concludes:

I see one of the best combos any developer can do as: M3 Ultra Mac Studio with an Nvidia 8xH100 rented rack. Hopper and Blackwell are outstanding for servers, M3 Ultra is outstanding for your desk. Different machines for a different use, while it’s fun to compare these for sport, that’s not the reality.⁠⁠

There really is no competition for an AI workstation today. The reality is, the only option is a Mac Studio.

Don’t miss the benchmarks in the story.

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App Store Connect Adds New Tools for Developers to Promote Their Apps

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

App Store Connect, the web app that developers use to submit their apps to Apple’s App Store and manage them, was updated yesterday with new tools developers can use to promote their apps.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Developers have been able to submit promotional requests to Apple for quite some time, but the new Featuring Nomination process is now baked right into App Store Connect. Developers can submit nominations from App Store Connect where they will be asked for information about their app. Nominations can be made for events such as a new app launch or adding in-app content and features. When an app is chosen by the App Store editorial team for a feature, developers will be notified in App Store Connect, too.

App Store Connect has also added the ability to generate promotional materials. The assets created can be used on social media and other platforms to promote app launches and other significant events.

These new App Store Connect tools promise to make promoting apps more convenient by including the Featuring Nomination process alongside other aspects of app submission. However, I expect it’s the ready-made promotional assets that are the more significant addition for smaller developers who may not have the budget or skills to create the materials themselves.

New Developer Betas Released for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS with Image Playground, ChatGPT Integration, and More Apple Intelligence Features

iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 aren’t quite out the door, but Apple has already updated its developer betas with the next round of upcoming Apple Intelligence features. Developer betas of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS 15.2 are now available for download and include the following:

  • image generation in the form of Image Playground and Image Wand;
  • Genmoji (iOS and iPadOS only)
  • Visual Intelligence (iPhone 16 line only)
  • ChatGPT integration with Siri; and
  • new text manipulation features.
Image Playground. Source: Apple.

Image Playground. Source: Apple.

Image Playground is a feature that allows you to create images in two styles using in-app themes and other tools. Image Playground is available in apps like Messages, Freeform, Pages, and Keynote, but it’s also a standalone app. Regardless of where you use it, Image Playground looks like it’s designed to make it easy to create animated and sketch-style images using a variety of tools such as suggested concepts that pull from the context the image is created in, like a Messages thread. Creations can be previewed, there’s a history feature that allows you to undo changes made to images, and images are saved to an Image Playground Library that syncs across devices via iCloud.

Image Wand. Source: Apple.

Image Wand. Source: Apple.

Image Wand, which appears in the Apple Pencil tool palette, takes a rough hand-drawn sketch, photo, or note and turns any of them into an image similar to one created by Image Playground. Image Wand can be further refined by adding text, and if you circle a blank space, it will use surrounding text to build an image.

Also, Genmoji – which is only in the iOS and iPadOS betas for now – allows you to create emoji-style images that can be used in Messages and other apps as decorative stickers. Inputs can include a text description, people in your contacts, friends and family recognized in Photos, and characters created from whole cloth.

Visual Intelligence has been added to the Camera Control on the iPhone 16 line too. The feature lets you look up details about a place and work with text, copying, reading, summarizing, and translating it.

The next betas also integrate ChatGPT into Siri. As demoed at WWDC, you can opt to pose queries to ChatGPT without disclosing you identity or IP address and without the prompts being used to train OpenAI’s large language models. The ChatGPT integration is free and does not require an account with OpenAI either.

Writing Tools lets you describe your text changes in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS 15.2.

Writing Tools lets you describe your text changes in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS 15.2.

Finally, Apple has built a new Writing Tool that provides additional flexibility when manipulating text. From the Writing Tools UI, you’ll be able to submit a prompt to alter any text you’ve written. For instance, you could have Apple Intelligence make you sound more excited in your message or rewrite it in the form of a poem, neither of which is possible with the Writing Tools found in iOS and iPadOS 18.1 or macOS 15.1.

For developers, there are also new APIs for Writing Tools, Genmoji, and Image Playground.

As we’ve covered before, Apple’s AI models have been trained on a mix of licensed data and content from the web. If you’re a publisher or a creator who doesn’t want to be part of those models, you can opt out, but it doesn’t work retroactively. In other words, opting out won’t remove any data already ingested by Apple’s web crawlers, but it will work going forward.

I’m not a fan of generative AI tools, but I am looking forward to finally going beyond tightly controlled demos of these features. I want to see how well they work in practice and compare them to other AI tools. Apple appears to have put a lot of guardrails in place to avoid some of the disasters that have befallen other tech companies, but I’m pretty good at breaking software. It will be interesting to see how well these tools hold up under pressure.

Over 300 Apps from Indie Developers Are On Sale Now

Indie App Sales is back with excellent deals on apps from many of your favorite developers. With over 300 apps to choose from, the complete list is full of gems like:

The sale periods vary by app, but most are offering discounts today and tomorrow, so check it out to grab a great deal on these excellent apps and support indie development.

European Commission Preliminarily Finds That Apple Has Violated the Digital Markets Act

Today, the European Commission informed Apple that based on its preliminary investigation it has determined that the company is in violation of the Digital Markets Act. The EC has also opened a separate non-compliance procedure against Apple over the Core Technology Fee and other changes instituted earlier this year as part of its response to the DMA.

In particular, the EC’s preliminary findings take issue with Apple’s response to the DMA’s anti-steering provisions:

Apple currently has three sets of business terms governing its relationship with app developers, including the App Store’s steering rules. The Commission preliminarily finds that:

  • None of these business terms allow developers to freely steer their customers. For example, developers cannot provide pricing information within the app or communicate in any other way with their customers to promote offers available on alternative distribution channels.
  • Under most of the business terms available to app developers, Apple allows steering only through “link-outs”, i.e., app developers can include a link in their app that redirects the customer to a web page where the customer can conclude a contract. The link-out process is subject to several restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating, promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice.
  • Whilst Apple can receive a fee for facilitating via the AppStore the initial acquisition of a new customer by developers, the fees charged by Apple go beyond what is strictly necessary for such remuneration. For example, Apple charges developers a fee for every purchase of digital goods or services a user makes within seven days after a link-out from the app.

Apple may respond to the EC’s preliminary findings in writing. A final decision regarding compliance with the law is due by March 25, 2025, the one year anniversary of the beginning of DMA proceedings against Apple.

The EC has also opened a separate investigation regarding Apple’s compliance with Section 6(4) of the DMA, which provides that:

The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.

The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures to ensure that third-party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.

Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall not be prevented from applying, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures and settings other than default settings, enabling end users to effectively protect security in relation to third-party software applications or software application stores, provided that such measures and settings other than default settings are duly justified by the gatekeeper.

Specifically, the EC says it will investigate whether the Core Technology Fee, the multi-step process for downloading apps from alternative app marketplaces, and the eligibility requirements for running an alternative app marketplace are ‘necessary and proportionate’ under the DMA. The EC also notes that it is continuing to investigate Apple’s process for validating apps and alternative app marketplaces.

None of this is particularly surprising, given the complexities of the provisions Apple put into place in the wake of the DMA. The ‘necessity and proportionality’ of Apple’s changes are, by their nature, subjective determinations. That makes the DMA hard to comply with, but it also leaves ample room for the EC and Apple to negotiate a resolution of their dispute over the DMA. It’s time for the parties to put this dispute to rest.