WWDC21 – State of the Union Bullet Point List

Another quick list of topics from today’s WWDC State of the Union presentation. I dropped the ball a bit (mostly during the graphics/Metal portion), so apologies for that. Again, no warranties expressed or implied on this. 😉

Xcode in the Cloud

Unit Testing

Deliver

  • Code signing in the Cloud
  • add a post action
  • automatic delivery to all platforms

Refine

  • crash reports and comments delivered to Xcode organizer
    • fully symbolicated

Privacy + Security

  • Slide of new stuff at 19 minute mark

Swift Frameworks: Concurrency

Structured Concurrency

Actors

  • industry proven model
  • object that protects its own state
  • mutually exclusive access
  • proper use of main thread

@MainActor

  • assures always runs on main thread

SwiftUI

  • another huge step forward
  • critical APIs

Apple dogfooding SwiftUI

List

  • add swipe action
  • pull to refresh in one line – refreshable
  • searchable
  • platform specific

Accessibility

  • accessibilityRotor
  • accessibilityRepresentation

Multi-column table

  • Table
  • (like Music)

VoiceOver

Material support

  • blur?

Swift Playgrounds 4

  • create apps with iPad
  • move between playgrounds and Xcode
  • “available later this year…”

AR

  • RealityKit

Graphics/Metal

  • Metal debugger timeline
  • Unified Graphics Platform

Focus

  • Notifications
    • Interruption Level API
      • passive
      • active
      • time sensitive
      • critical – approved entitlement
  • call apps
  • Notification Summary
    • Large thumbnail chosen over small/none
    • relevance score
  • DND
    • based on what they are doing
  • ScreenTime API
    • parental control frameworks
    • managed settings
      • restrict across devices
    • family controls 
      • heart of privacy model
      • tokens
        • device activity framework

Widgets

  • extra large size for iPad
  • default home screen layouts
  • smart stacks

SharePlay

  • group activities
  • videos are synced
  • framework available for shared playback
  • deep links
  • returns immediately if FaceTime not running
  • coordinate session method
    • that’s it.
  • not screen sharing
    • app is running natively

Conclusion

  • “we can’t wait…”