Table of Content


WWDC 2018 Summary for iOS developers.

What’s new in Xcode 10

  • An ability to launch XCTest and XCUITest in parallel, so you can run your test suite on multiple simulators at once. That reduces the test execution dramatically.
  • xcodebuild enhancements. For example, you can upload an app to App Store from the xcodebuild tool or run control the behavior of parallel testing.
  • Ability to create custom code snippets for any language and reuse them whenever needed.
  • Dark mode, which you can switch on from System Preferences. You can also switch your app in and out of Dark Mode while debugging or right in the Interface Builder.
  • Newly-created schemes are now shared by all users of an Xcode project.
  • Supports of multi-cursor editing in Source Editor, which allows you to quickly edit multiple lines of code simultaneously.
  • Default build system activation, where the new build system provides improved reliability and build performance, and it catches project configuration problems.
  • Source Control workflow enhancements. For example, integration with source code collaboration platforms (GitHub/GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket Cloud/Bitbucket Server, GitLab/GitLab self-hosted), ability to resolve merge conflicts or create ssh keys directly from Xcode. Also, you’ll be pleased with the improved look of changes highlight with more in-depth information on the actual commit message.
  • Source Editor in Xcode 10 now supports an overscroll!
  • Code folding got dramatic improvements with an ability to fold almost anything. Also, using code folding ribbon it’s easier to do it via interface.

Resources for further learning:

WWDC2018 Videos

What’s new in Swift 4.2

  • Dynamic member look up to provide dot syntax for subscripts. That helps iOS developers to write type-safe code.
  • Random number generation and shuffling, when Swift 4.2 add a random API to the standard library.
  • Ability to check whether all elements in a Sequence satisfied a certain condition.
  • Conditional conformances improvements. For example, Swift 4.2 adds a default implementation for Equatable conditional conformance to an extension and implements dynamic queries of conditional conformances.
  • Hashable enhancements. With Swift 4.2 you can use newly introduced Hasher struct with convenient API to build your hash value in a more secure way.
  • Warning and error diagnostic directives. Embrace #warning and #error directives to add more explicit error/warning message to compiler output.
  • Boolean toggling. Simple but powerful function to toggle Bool value toggle() is now a part of Standard Library.

Resources for further learning

WWDC2018 Videos

Articles

What’s new in Cocoa Touch

  • Scroll performance improved. Data prefetch method now being executed serially instead of concurrently.
  • Memory performance. Automatic Backing Store which reduced Bytes Per Pixel amount depending on the images that needs to be rendered.
  • Improved structure for emuns like UIApplicationState changing them to UIApplication.State to better represent the meaning.
  • String conversions functions (NSStringFromCGRect()...) now is accessible as codable. Also, these functions are now moved to NSCoder to better represent the end goals.
  • Notifications. Pre-defined set of actions for custom notifications is no longer static and could be defined programmatically.
  • An ability to bring your custom stickers pack to Messages and to Camera.
  • Automatic passwords and auto-fill.

Resources for further learning

WWDC2018 Videos

What’s new in ARKit 2.0

  • Support for a new USDZ file format to export 3D models and render them in AR.
  • AR objects browser for displaying 3D models and rendering the same 3D model in AR mode.
  • Real-world objects detection in AR with a new tracking configuration, ARObjectScanningConfiguration.
  • Objects detection with with the ARReferenceImage and ARReferenceObject classes.
  • Environment texturing for better lightning texture models.
  • Storing and sharing AR scenes with ARWorldMap class.

Resources for further learning

WWDC2018 Videos

What’s new in iOS 12

  • Siri Shortcuts, which are actions Siri can predict and provide to the user in places such as Spotlight search, Lock Screen etc.
  • HealthKit, which lets users share their medical history with your app.
  • New Network framework, that makes it easier to create network connections to send and receive data using transport and security protocols.
  • Updated Natural Language framework designed to provide high-performance, on-device APIs for fundamental NLP tasks.
  • Notifications improvements: grouping capabilities and ability to deep link directly into your app’s notification settings from an incoming one via providesAppNotificationSettings.
  • UIKit Additions: extended password autofill APIs, one time TFA codes, better Graphics Rendering.

Resources for further learning

WWDC2018 Videos

Articles