Apple rolls out new resources for developers
Alongside yesterday's raft of operating system announcements, Apple also unveiled a suite of new tools and features for developers to help them create more powerful and efficient apps.
With Xcode 16, developers can save time in their development process and get more done thanks to features like Swift Assist and predictive code completion. New and expanded APIs also give developers the tools to advance their apps and introduce new features.
"At Apple, we are dedicated to providing developers everywhere with the cutting-edge technologies and resources to build incredible apps," says Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "With thoughtful innovation behind Xcode 16 and our latest platform APIs, we’ve created the best tools for developers to create outstanding apps. We're excited to see what they build next."
The Swift Assist feature serves as a companion for all of a developer's coding tasks, so they can focus on higher-level problems and solutions. It's integrated into Xcode, and knows the latest software development kits (SDKs) and Swift language features, so developers will always get the latest code features that blend into their projects.
A new predictive code completion engine in Xcode uses a unique model specifically trained for Swift and Apple SDKs, and can suggest the code developers need. Code completion is powered entirely by Apple silicon and machine learning enhancements in macOS Sequoia, and runs locally on a developer’s device. This means that code is kept completely private, and developers can receive relevant suggestions quickly even when working offline.
Swift 6 introduces new capabilities aimed at enhancing developer productivity and code clarity. As multicore architectures have made devices more powerful, Swift has continually added features to make concurrent programming easier. Swift 6 introduces a compile-time data-race safety feature, which diagnoses concurrent access to memory across a developer’s project at compile time. This allows errors to be caught and fixed with minimal changes to the entire codebase.
There's a new cross-platform Swift Testing framework too that offers developers expressive APIs that make it simple to write tests.
Other announcements include Game Porting Toolkit 2 that makes it easier to transfer games to Apple devices. Also visionOS 2 introduces new APIs and frameworks, assisting developers with creating complex and nuanced spatial experiences. Additional platform APIs help to accomplish tasks and TestFlight makes it easier to collect beta feedback through the development and release process.
Finally there are some new App Store features that offer ways for developers to get their apps discovered and present new features for monetizing with subscriptions.
You can find out more on all the new announcements on the Apple Developer site.
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