Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So for the last few weeks, we've been covering WWDC announcements, platform by platform.

00:00:15 ◼   ► And this week is kind of like the cleanup week because we're going to talk first about

00:00:18 ◼   ► tvOS and macOS, and then some bonus stuff after that. And we're kind of lumping this

00:00:23 ◼   ► together because, honestly, from the point of view of two iOS developers, there's not

00:00:28 ◼   ► a whole lot of new stuff in tvOS or macOS

00:00:31 ◼   ► that's really relevant to us.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I guess let's start out with tvOS.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I mean, neither of us have a tv app,

00:00:37 ◼   ► but we've both kind of looked at it, considered it,

00:00:40 ◼   ► even gone to the tvOS tech talks this past winter.

00:00:43 ◼   ► So David, what do you think,

00:00:45 ◼   ► has anything changed in regards to like,

00:00:47 ◼   ► is anything in tvOS now going to make it more appealing

00:00:52 ◼   ► or more relevant or more compelling

00:00:55 ◼   ► for us to make apps for it?

00:00:57 ◼   ► I don't think so. I mean, it's a strange thing to have an Apple platform that I really don't

00:01:03 ◼   ► feel much drawn to making apps for. Because almost so many other platforms, I've always

00:01:11 ◼   ► had an app available and ready on the first day. That was just sort of been my thing for—I

00:01:17 ◼   ► did it for as close as I could for the iPhone, definitely did it for the iPad, for the watch.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And I did it for Mac App Store even too, if I remember right.

00:01:28 ◼   ► But there's something on the TV that just doesn't really appeal to me or feel compelling.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And I think a lot of it's just the TV.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And this is in large ways that Apple kind of is pitching it, is TV OS is like the future

00:01:42 ◼   ► of TV is apps.

00:01:44 ◼   ► But implicit in that in some ways is that the apps are reflecting the previous content

00:01:50 ◼   ► that was shown on TV.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And I think there's a lot of, unless you have a, you know, you're a content creator or producer,

00:01:59 ◼   ► you're a network, you're a TV network or a movie station or something, or you're a game

00:02:03 ◼   ► producer, someone who would alternatively be playing on a game console, there's not

00:02:08 ◼   ► a lot there.

00:02:09 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I'm just not creative enough.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And I think in general, this has been borne out.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Like I don't hear a lot of talk from, about interesting tvOS apps that aren't from networks.

00:02:22 ◼   ► and largely it's just a slightly more convenient way to access content that you previously

00:02:27 ◼   ► would have access to some other way.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And the changes we see in TVOS this year seem lined up with that.

00:02:33 ◼   ► There's really not much there, which fair enough to TVOS was announced in between the

00:02:38 ◼   ► last WWDC and this one, and so there's less time for things to have changed.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But the biggest change is the single sign-on thing, which is useful and awesome if you're

00:02:48 ◼   ► a TV network or someone who needs to do a way to authenticate whether someone has bought

00:02:53 ◼   ► a cable package. But that's a very narrow use case. And so generally it's like, cool,

00:02:59 ◼   ► I'm glad there's more stuff happening here, I suppose, but in general, I'm like, yeah,

00:03:03 ◼   ► that's kind of, it'll keep doing its thing and maybe I'll check in with it periodically,

00:03:06 ◼   ► but I don't see much there for me. Do you see anything there for you? Because obviously

00:03:10 ◼   ► you have, of the two of us, you have the closest sort of need or reason to be there, insofar

00:03:17 ◼   ► as you make a media consumption app, which you could reasonably imagine existing on a

00:03:22 ◼   ► television. Do you have any plans to go towards that, though?

00:03:26 ◼   ► I still am kind of waiting and seeing on that, because, you know, I mean, as you mentioned,

00:03:30 ◼   ► like, it really does seem, you know, like when the TV first came out, and when we first

00:03:35 ◼   ► were hearing that we were going to have access to make apps for Apple TV, and there was this

00:03:39 ◼   ► new TV platform with this new crazy remote that you can't hold and everything, I thought,

00:03:43 ◼   ► And a lot of people thought, wow, this is gonna be really great once we figure out stuff

00:03:49 ◼   ► we haven't even thought of before.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like apps that right now, as we think about it beforehand, it's like apps that right now

00:03:55 ◼   ► we can't even consider, that we haven't even thought of, and there's gonna be something

00:03:59 ◼   ► really cool that you can do on the TV now that we can put apps on it.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And I think so far that has proven not to be the case yet.

00:04:08 ◼   ► that so far we as an industry of app makers

00:04:13 ◼   ► and Apple TV users, we really haven't figured out

00:04:16 ◼   ► anything else to do on TVs than we weren't

00:04:18 ◼   ► basically already doing before.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Maybe now we're doing things better,

00:04:22 ◼   ► and maybe we're doing things on different platforms.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Before, there were no games on the Apple TV.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Now there are games for it.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Not a ton of them.

00:04:30 ◼   ► They aren't all great, but there are games for it.

00:04:33 ◼   ► But we're still basically using TV

00:04:36 ◼   ► to watch video, maybe occasionally play some music,

00:04:40 ◼   ► and play games.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Like that's mainly what people use their Apple TVs for.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So as you mentioned, like if you're not,

00:04:47 ◼   ► you know, watching video is tough

00:04:49 ◼   ► if you're not a content owner.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Like there's not a whole lot for non-content owners to do,

00:04:55 ◼   ► because for the most part, there's no good source

00:04:59 ◼   ► where you can get video content to play in your app.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Like there are video podcasts,

00:05:03 ◼   ► you could make a video podcast player,

00:05:04 ◼   ► Those are pretty, it's a pretty small market

00:05:08 ◼   ► both of content and of viewers

00:05:09 ◼   ► relative to something like YouTube or a TV network.

00:05:12 ◼   ► So there's not a whole lot for you to do

00:05:15 ◼   ► in making a video consumption app

00:05:17 ◼   ► if you aren't a video producer

00:05:19 ◼   ► or working for a video producer.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And then most people I know who are indie developers

00:05:26 ◼   ► make either some kind of media consumption app

00:05:29 ◼   ► or what I would generally classify as productivity apps

00:05:32 ◼   ► or utility apps.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Like I don't know a lot of people who make games,

00:05:36 ◼   ► and I don't know a lot of people

00:05:38 ◼   ► who own TV stations and TV networks.

00:05:40 ◼   ► So the vast majority of apps, of programmers I know

00:05:45 ◼   ► who are like working for themselves

00:05:46 ◼   ► and not contracting for somebody like a media company,

00:05:49 ◼   ► I don't really see a lot for any of us

00:05:50 ◼   ► to do on the Apple TV.

00:05:52 ◼   ► There is that one area though

00:05:54 ◼   ► that you mentioned of media consumption,

00:05:55 ◼   ► like what else is there besides video

00:05:56 ◼   ► that you might be able to get on there?

00:05:57 ◼   ► And you know, like I know people who make RSS readers,

00:06:00 ◼   ► I don't see much of a use for that on the TV,

00:06:02 ◼   ► especially given there's no WebKit,

00:06:03 ◼   ► but even if there was, I don't think that would solve the problem. So then I guess that

00:06:07 ◼   ► boils down to, okay, what about audio? You know, I make an audio playback app. I don't

00:06:11 ◼   ► need to worry about where the content comes from because it's free and open because it's

00:06:14 ◼   ► actually the last useful medium. So, sorry, getting political there. So, there is a good

00:06:20 ◼   ► question of like, well, is there a use for overcast on the Apple TV? And no question,

00:06:25 ◼   ► there is a use for overcast for some people. Some people have asked for it. But for the

00:06:31 ◼   ► most part, most people don't use their TVs, as far as I can tell. Most people don't use

00:06:36 ◼   ► their TVs to just play audio content and then sit there with nothing else happening on screen.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Most TV media consumption is video. And because I don't even play video, even the World of

00:06:49 ◼   ► Video podcast, I'm not in. So because I don't even handle video at all, and I don't really

00:06:53 ◼   ► intend to change that, I just don't think there's enough reason for me to be there to

00:07:00 ◼   ► justify the fairly sizable amount of work it would take. The whole bottom half of the

00:07:07 ◼   ► app, like the data layer, the sync layer, the audio engine, I got those built and running

00:07:11 ◼   ► on Apple TV back when the SDK first came out with a couple hours of work. That was the

00:07:16 ◼   ► easy part because it was already all iOS code. The hard part is the entire TV UI, which all

00:07:24 ◼   ► basically has to be written from scratch. You pretty much can't use any code, or at

00:07:29 ◼   ► you can't use most code that you wrote for iOS on tvOS

00:07:33 ◼   ► 'cause things just work differently,

00:07:34 ◼   ► they're structured differently,

00:07:35 ◼   ► the input is completely different,

00:07:36 ◼   ► the navigation is completely different.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So you basically have to write

00:07:40 ◼   ► the entire UI layer from scratch.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And I just, I started doing it,

00:07:46 ◼   ► I made the login screen and stuff,

00:07:47 ◼   ► and after making login and registration and everything,

00:07:50 ◼   ► and I was like, you know,

00:07:51 ◼   ► I really am not enjoying this at all,

00:07:53 ◼   ► and what's the benefit really gonna be here?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Like, a podcast app has a lot of screens,

00:07:58 ◼   ► way, way more than you might think if you haven't built one.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And yeah, I could just port over a subset of functionality,

00:08:04 ◼   ► but it doesn't really, I don't know.

00:08:06 ◼   ► It doesn't seem worth it unless there's really strong demand.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And I just haven't seen evidence of that.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I've seen evidence of a few people who want it,

00:08:14 ◼   ► but not most.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's a tricky platform too,

00:08:18 ◼   ► 'cause I was even trying to imagine

00:08:21 ◼   ► if Apple has likely sold more Apple TV fourth generations

00:08:25 ◼   ► or Apple Watches.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And my guess is they've sold more Apple watches.

00:08:30 ◼   ► And that's even, in and of itself,

00:08:32 ◼   ► a relatively small and narrow audience,

00:08:36 ◼   ► certainly compared to something like iOS,

00:08:37 ◼   ► which is where it's just immense and massive.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And so I think of something like TVOS,

00:08:44 ◼   ► and it's like, usually if you have

00:08:46 ◼   ► a relatively small addressable market,

00:08:49 ◼   ► you have to be able to charge a lot for an app,

00:08:51 ◼   ► for it to sort of make sense financially,

00:08:54 ◼   ► and I'm not sure, like in general,

00:08:56 ◼   ► the app store, that's always been kind of a tricky thing to have, or there's always

00:09:01 ◼   ► been a downward force on pressure, pressure on prices. And so it's kind of a strange thing

00:09:06 ◼   ► to be like, well, if it's, there's only, I don't know, a few million of them in the world.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And of those, how many people are looking for third party apps that aren't just, you

00:09:16 ◼   ► know, major TV networks or things like that. And so, in general, it may just be fine for

00:09:21 ◼   ► to be a platform that there isn't a lot of interest from people like us, which seems

00:09:27 ◼   ► like that's probably fine, that's okay. Maybe it's for other people, it's cool,

00:09:31 ◼   ► it's—I have one in my house and I use it, but it's not a platform that I expect to

00:09:37 ◼   ► really dive into until there is such—something changes to where that becomes compelling.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And I don't really know what that change could or would be, but as it is now, I don't

00:09:46 ◼   ► expect that to change in the near future.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Right. I mean, one obvious big thing they could do is the App Store environment really

00:09:53 ◼   ► needs some help on the Apple TV. It is a very limited, difficult to browse App Store. There

00:09:58 ◼   ► are still no conveniences like web links to Apple TV. So if you convince somebody to go

00:10:04 ◼   ► look for your Apple TV app, they can't just click a button and buy it from their phone

00:10:08 ◼   ► or computer. They have to go to the Apple TV, which they might not even be near at the

00:10:12 ◼   ► time. They might be reading Twitter on their phone away from home or something. But they

00:10:15 ◼   ► to go to the Apple TV at home, if they remember to do that, go to the App Store, search for

00:10:20 ◼   ► your app, find it. There's no link or buy for later or anything like that. So a lot

00:10:26 ◼   ► of that could help this a little bit. But also, I just feel like you as an Apple TV

00:10:32 ◼   ► user, me as an Apple TV user, I've used the Apple TV every day for years. And of course

00:10:37 ◼   ► we got the new one immediately. And I've been using that every day since it came out.

00:10:41 ◼   ► The Apple TV is our primary TV connected device. The vast majority of the time the TV is on,

00:10:45 ◼   ► what we're using. So as a user though, I hardly ever go to browse the App Store on the Apple

00:10:52 ◼   ► TV. Like that's not what I'm sitting down there to do. I'm sitting down in front of

00:10:56 ◼   ► the TV usually to play video content in like two or three apps. And I think for most people

00:11:02 ◼   ► that's probably the biggest use cases. Like you're not sitting down to browse through

00:11:07 ◼   ► the App Store and buy a bunch of crap and see what you like, you're probably sitting

00:11:10 ◼   ► down to watch TV. And even if you were sitting down to browse, I think, "What would I be

00:11:16 ◼   ► browsing for?" I'd probably be browsing for games. So like, I--and when I have--the

00:11:23 ◼   ► handful of times I have browsed the App Store on Apple TV, that's the only--I was only looking

00:11:27 ◼   ► for games. I was not looking for like, "Oh, I wonder if there's any podcast players."

00:11:30 ◼   ► That never even crossed my mind. It was only about, "Okay, I'm at this thing. I either

00:11:34 ◼   ► want to watch TV or play games." And that just might always be the case. Like, that

00:11:39 ◼   ► might never actually change with the Apple TV. And that's okay. That's just how people

00:11:43 ◼   ► use their TVs most of the time. And if the TV never ends up becoming a general purpose

00:11:49 ◼   ► computing platform, that's okay. We have lots of other general purpose computing platforms

00:11:53 ◼   ► that are really good and really compelling. And so not everything needs to be one. Obviously

00:12:00 ◼   ► you can say a lot of similar things about the watch, honestly. But I think the TV is

00:12:03 ◼   ► even more limited because it's like this fixed thing in your house that you're accessing

00:12:06 ◼   ► through this distant remote with very little interaction possible and you just kind of

00:12:12 ◼   ► want to sit back and watch TV or play a game. So I think if you're a game maker, the case

00:12:16 ◼   ► is fairly compelling to, you know, if you can get your game ported to the Apple TV without

00:12:21 ◼   ► a whole ton of work, it is almost certainly worth doing that. But if you are pretty much

00:12:26 ◼   ► any other kind of app maker besides a TV content producer, I think you can safely avoid it

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00:14:08 ◼   ► - So the other platform that I think

00:14:10 ◼   ► seemed like it made sense to just briefly touch on

00:14:13 ◼   ► is macOS, and macOS is an interesting platform

00:14:17 ◼   ► in so far as I use it constantly,

00:14:20 ◼   ► but I don't develop for it.

00:14:22 ◼   ► I develop on it, and so there are a variety

00:14:25 ◼   ► of interesting changes happening to macOS.

00:14:27 ◼   ► name, it has a new file system, and there's a few other user-facing things, but the only

00:14:34 ◼   ► thing that actually caught my attention in this WWDC on the Mac that I think I'm excited

00:14:39 ◼   ► about as a developer is the new console app, which is a bit of a low-level thing, I suppose,

00:14:46 ◼   ► to be excited about. But I got a chance to play with this when I was in WWDC, and it

00:14:51 ◼   ► It is going to be extraordinarily useful to be able to keep track and diagnose problems

00:14:57 ◼   ► when I'm debugging to have the new console app on Mac OS Sierra.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Because essentially the thing that it can now do, and this is part of this whole new

00:15:06 ◼   ► re-architecting they've done of the way console and logging works in the various platforms,

00:15:13 ◼   ► but is you will be able to get the logs from your devices.

00:15:19 ◼   ► So like from your watch or your phone or your iPad,

00:15:23 ◼   ► streamed to your Mac if you have a debug session,

00:15:26 ◼   ► if you have a sort of a development session in active.

00:15:29 ◼   ► And once they're in the console app,

00:15:31 ◼   ► you can start to do clever and interesting things with them.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Like you can start to filter them down

00:15:36 ◼   ► based on particular keywords,

00:15:37 ◼   ► or what I find this is really hopeful

00:15:41 ◼   ► for me in watch development,

00:15:42 ◼   ► where watch development can get really, really annoying

00:15:46 ◼   ► because a lot of the things that you're trying to do,

00:15:49 ◼   ► you don't want to be connected to Xcode

00:15:52 ◼   ► while they're happening.

00:15:53 ◼   ► So all the background refresh stuff.

00:15:55 ◼   ► You want it to be running off on its own

00:15:57 ◼   ► and then be reporting results as it goes.

00:16:00 ◼   ► And you want to see, OK, every 15 minutes

00:16:02 ◼   ► it woke up and refreshed itself.

00:16:05 ◼   ► So right now what I end up doing is I have my iPhone connected

00:16:09 ◼   ► to my watch, connected via Lightning port,

00:16:11 ◼   ► and then Xcode open to the Devices tab.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And then I have the full and complete console log from the watch shown there.

00:16:19 ◼   ► And then I need to go through and take that file, save it to a disk, run it through grep

00:16:24 ◼   ► to find the various relevant things and kind of go through it.

00:16:27 ◼   ► It's a bit of a nightmare.

00:16:28 ◼   ► In the new console, you'll be able to do that much more straightforwardly.

00:16:30 ◼   ► I can just say, "Show me messages from my app from my watch."

00:16:35 ◼   ► And that'll just stream live and I don't have to fuss with grep or anything like that.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So that's kind of exciting, kind of nice, very low-level and straightforward.

00:16:43 ◼   ► but I almost missed it in the announcements

00:16:45 ◼   ► that that was coming.

00:16:47 ◼   ► But other than that, I didn't see anything in it

00:16:49 ◼   ► that was really exciting or interesting to me.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I was like, yep, hopefully at this point,

00:16:53 ◼   ► all I want from the Mac is for it to be stable, reliable,

00:16:56 ◼   ► a place that I can sit down, open Xcode, and get to work.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And I think macOS Sierra will probably be that,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and so I'm happy.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, as a user, it seems I'm pretty happy with it.

00:17:08 ◼   ► As a developer, I am a Mac developer slightly,

00:17:13 ◼   ► in that I did recently write a Mac app called Quitter,

00:17:16 ◼   ► and now I'm working on another one

00:17:18 ◼   ► for podcast post-production utilities, basically.

00:17:22 ◼   ► But because I'm such an elementary-level Mac programmer,

00:17:28 ◼   ► imagine if you were learning iOS development,

00:17:32 ◼   ► and you started learning iOS development in March.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And that was the first time you ever did it.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Whatever was announced at WBC wouldn't really be

00:17:42 ◼   ► that important to you because you were at such an elementary level that you still need

00:17:48 ◼   ► to learn the basics that were announced five, ten years ago, if it was that old. So that's

00:17:53 ◼   ► kind of where I am with macOS development, where I'm still using the basic stuff and

00:17:59 ◼   ► any new things they introduce to the Mac. First of all, the Mac API doesn't change

00:18:03 ◼   ► much these days anymore because it's much older and has matured and the rate of change

00:18:09 ◼   ► much slower than an iOS, but whatever they would change

00:18:13 ◼   ► would be so far above my head unless they radically

00:18:16 ◼   ► revamped AppKit, which I have doubts on whether

00:18:19 ◼   ► they will ever do that.

00:18:21 ◼   ► So it's not really relevant to me, whatever they change.

00:18:25 ◼   ► I don't even know what they change, but whatever it is,

00:18:26 ◼   ► it's almost certainly not relevant to me,

00:18:30 ◼   ► except for stuff that's shared with iOS.

00:18:33 ◼   ► So as a developer, cool.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I love that there's no App Store.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Let's move on.

00:18:37 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:18:38 ◼   ► So I guess the last thing to talk about for major WWDC announcement areas is Swift. Now,

00:18:47 ◼   ► Swift is interesting because ever since it went open source, which was what, last fall?

00:18:54 ◼   ► Was that it?

00:18:55 ◼   ► It was right before the end of the year, I think. Because I think it was because they

00:19:00 ◼   ► had said—what sticks in my head is that they had said, "We're going to open source

00:19:03 ◼   ► Swift this year," and then they ended up open sourcing it in December, like towards

00:19:08 ◼   ► the end of December, but it was along those lines.

00:19:10 ◼   ► - Right, so ever since Swift has been open sourced,

00:19:14 ◼   ► there's, you know, we've seen the roadmap,

00:19:17 ◼   ► like they've developed the vast majority of it in the open,

00:19:20 ◼   ► so we've seen the roadmap and we know what's coming.

00:19:23 ◼   ► In many cases, the community has input

00:19:25 ◼   ► and influences what's coming, which is great.

00:19:28 ◼   ► So there wasn't really any kind of surprise

00:19:31 ◼   ► to announce at WWDC, except maybe the Playgrounds app

00:19:34 ◼   ► for iPad, but, and that's big and that's good,

00:19:37 ◼   ► but I don't think it's really that relevant to existing Swift developers. What is new

00:19:41 ◼   ► in Swift?

00:19:42 ◼   ► >>

00:19:43 ◼   ► So I think the biggest things that—I'm by no means a Swift expert, but the biggest

00:19:48 ◼   ► goals as best I could understand for Swift 3 was to get to a place where they would be

00:19:54 ◼   ► able to maintain source compatibility going forward. Because in the first versions of

00:20:00 ◼   ► Swift, Swift 1 and Swift 2, those jumps, and from 2 to 3 in fact, there have been a variety

00:20:06 ◼   ► of source-breaking changes that I hear from a variety of people who are Swift developers,

00:20:11 ◼   ► where something new comes out and sometimes there's tools to help them with this, but

00:20:16 ◼   ► then they need to go and sit down for a day and fix all the things to make it not broken

00:20:21 ◼   ► anymore, which is a little bit scary. If you imagine if you had a project of any kind of

00:20:28 ◼   ► significance and you go through this massive refactoring process, to have confidence that

00:20:33 ◼   ► at the end of it, like everything works in the way that you expected it to work.

00:20:37 ◼   ► So as best I understand, for Swift 3, their goal was to get all of those kinds of changes

00:20:44 ◼   ► done with at once.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And so now, from Swift 3 going forward, there should be very few things that would break

00:20:51 ◼   ► source compatibility going forward.

00:20:53 ◼   ► There may be things that change, you know, I believe the binary format and things is

00:20:59 ◼   ► not stable yet and things like that, but that doesn't really matter practically.

00:21:03 ◼   ► It's an important thing, but in general, that's more of a tooling problem than a developer

00:21:10 ◼   ► problem.

00:21:11 ◼   ► There's certainly some overlap there, but in general, that's fine.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Then now in Swift 3, they've gone through and they've done all these things, like they've

00:21:16 ◼   ► changed the way things are named, so they got rid of a lot of prefixes, they did some

00:21:22 ◼   ► really cool and clever things to take C APIs and make them look swifty, which I thought

00:21:28 ◼   ► was really clever. So like now if you're working with core graphics, which even felt awkward

00:21:34 ◼   ► in Objective-C, now in Swift it actually looks really Swift, and it looks really clever and

00:21:40 ◼   ► clear to be able to, you know, you take your context and you call methods on it in a way

00:21:44 ◼   ► that you would expect from Swift. And I believe all it's doing is under the hood, it's taking

00:21:49 ◼   ► your Swift syntax and like unwrapping it and turning it into this, the old sort of very

00:21:56 ◼   ► verbose C syntax, but it's doing things like that. So it's just trying to make the platform

00:22:02 ◼   ► make it a really nice, clear and concise language to start writing in. And going forward, I

00:22:08 ◼   ► think the big things they're expecting to they're working on for like, I don't even

00:22:12 ◼   ► know if it's 3.1 or Swift 4 or whatever the roadmap will go get towards like they're

00:22:17 ◼   ► going to make the binary more stable, work on generics, slightly improved concurrency,

00:22:23 ◼   ► I think is something that I remember being on the roadmap. But in general, Swift seems

00:22:27 ◼   ► to be in a pretty good place after, you know, it's two years in from when it was first announced.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I think it finally seems to have entered into the slightly mature phase of its life, where

00:22:41 ◼   ► this is probably a reasonable time to sort of start diving into it, because what you're

00:22:47 ◼   ► you're learning now is unlikely to be, sort of,

00:22:51 ◼   ► need to be unlearned a year from now.

00:22:54 ◼   ► - I really should dive into it.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I just keep wanting to do things faster

00:22:59 ◼   ► and with less time investment,

00:23:01 ◼   ► and so I keep falling back to Objective C,

00:23:03 ◼   ► but I do admit I am tempted to jump into Swift this summer.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I just haven't quite done it yet.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Do you plan on anything with that?

00:23:10 ◼   ► - So, shockingly, yes.

00:23:11 ◼   ► This is actually one of these,

00:23:14 ◼   ► So this last week, I decided that I was going to learn Swift, and I sat down with the Swift

00:23:23 ◼   ► developer book in iBooks, and I read the first sort of third of it, which is essentially

00:23:29 ◼   ► the language overview, and I'm delighted to say that I am going to be—I'm a little nervous

00:23:35 ◼   ► in saying it, but I think I need to say it in order to make it actually happen—that

00:23:38 ◼   ► I'm going to write my next app in Swift.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And if you are a follower of my work, I tend to release a new app every summer, at least

00:23:47 ◼   ► one.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And so the next app I write is going to be in Swift.

00:23:52 ◼   ► All right, congratulations!

00:23:54 ◼   ► Earlier this week, I think on Tuesday, I went into Xcode, you know, "File a new project,"

00:24:00 ◼   ► and for the first time ever changed the language dropdown from Objective-C to Swift.

00:24:07 ◼   ► And so I've been spending the last few days just kind of digging into how I would actually

00:24:12 ◼   ► write an app in Swift.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And it's weird.

00:24:15 ◼   ► It's taken a lot of like, it's just this really strange feeling.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And it almost makes me think of what I imagine people who switch to like, try and learn a

00:24:24 ◼   ► Dvorak keyboard, their experience where it's like, it feels really familiar, like typing

00:24:29 ◼   ► feels familiar.

00:24:30 ◼   ► But it's like, I'm writing Swift and it looks familiar.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Like I know all the API's.

00:24:35 ◼   ► It's not like I'm doing something new that I had to learn.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I know how UIKit works, I know how HealthKit works, I know how all these frameworks work,

00:24:43 ◼   ► but I have no idea how to call it.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And so I keep running off to Google and being like, "How do I do this in Swift?

00:24:50 ◼   ► How do I do this in Swift?"

00:24:51 ◼   ► And it keeps learning the syntax and exactly all the idioms for it.

00:24:57 ◼   ► But overall, it's been pretty cool.

00:25:00 ◼   ► It's an interesting language because I think ultimately Objective-C is a better fit for

00:25:06 ◼   ► my mentality than Swift is.

00:25:09 ◼   ► I think I like Swift as a language and I can see its utility.

00:25:14 ◼   ► The thing that always kind of frustrates me with it, at least so far, and I'm certainly

00:25:18 ◼   ► a bit of a noob with it at this point, but it values correctness higher than I would

00:25:27 ◼   ► value correctness, which maybe makes me a bad programmer. But the way I think about

00:25:32 ◼   ► a lot of things is I don't write code that has these elaborate error checking things

00:25:40 ◼   ► in it. I tend to do best effort and then just throw up my hands. It's sort of the approach

00:25:46 ◼   ► that I'll often take in my apps. And that's just the nature of the way that I program.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I go for quick, and I'm experienced enough that I know how to not write horrible code

00:25:56 ◼   ► that's going to be very problematic. And I mean, I would, this is the way that I built

00:25:59 ◼   ► my apps. And if you look at my apps, I wouldn't think you would say that they're, you know,

00:26:04 ◼   ► like poorly, poorly designed or created. But in Swift, there's all of these things that

00:26:09 ◼   ► you just have, you can't get around, like everything has to be super correct and type

00:26:12 ◼   ► safe and the whole thing with optionals and like, is this nil? Or is it not? No. And you

00:26:17 ◼   ► have to always check. Whereas in Objective C, I can be like, I know it's not or I know

00:26:21 ◼   ► that if it is nil, I don't care. And there's a philosophical difference there that I have

00:26:28 ◼   ► to give into and be like, "Okay, no, it's fine that I have to be explicit about all

00:26:33 ◼   ► these things," which I imagine in a team environment would be huge, that you don't

00:26:39 ◼   ► have all of this meta information that is just stuck in my brain about how this function

00:26:45 ◼   ► works because I'm the one who wrote it and I'm the only one who's ever going to see

00:26:49 ◼   ► it. Whereas if you work in a team environment, it might be more important to have everything

00:26:53 ◼   ► like, it's almost like self-documenting in a way where all the conditions and things

00:26:59 ◼   ► have to be so much more explicit. But overall, I like it. It's been weird. I like that there's

00:27:05 ◼   ► a lot less code, it feels like. Like I have more code per line, because I often have to

00:27:10 ◼   ► do a lot of extra kind of like casts and little checks. But overall, it seems like there's

00:27:17 ◼   ► no header files and things. Overall, the lines of code count goes down, and so it's been

00:27:23 ◼   ► fun. And I guess we'll check in in a couple of months at the end of the summer when I've

00:27:27 ◼   ► actually written this app, and it's not just this terrible, basic, learning my first UI

00:27:35 ◼   ► kit program to see if this experiment succeeds. But so far, so good, and I recommend trying,

00:27:43 ◼   ► because I think this seems like the right time. One of our first episodes was about

00:27:48 ◼   ► when we were going to get into Swift, and I think I remember we were saying, "Well,

00:27:53 ◼   ► we want to do it when it's stable and it's a reasonable thing to tackle." And this

00:27:58 ◼   ► felt like the right time for me, so I've taken the plunge.

00:28:02 ◼   ► All right, well congratulations. Now I'm the last one, so I'll probably take the

00:28:08 ◼   ► point myself soon, but I'm not quite there yet. Probably later this summer. It's always

00:28:14 ◼   ► like the year of desktop Linux. I'm always going to write Swift starting next month.

00:28:18 ◼   ► All you need to do is write a new app, right? You need to just broaden your horizons, think

00:28:25 ◼   ► of something new to make, and then just do that scary thing of changing the dropdown

00:28:29 ◼   ► from Objective-C to Swift, and you can go from there.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm curious, do you think you're going to be writing all or mostly Swift from

00:28:38 ◼   ► this point forward, even in existing code bases?

00:28:41 ◼   ► I doubt it.

00:28:43 ◼   ► I expect to be writing Objective-C in my existing products and Swift in my new things, I think

00:28:48 ◼   ► is probably what I expect to do.

00:28:51 ◼   ► The context shifting has been—the little bit I've done so far where I would look

00:28:56 ◼   ► at the way I did something previously in Objective-C and then try and Swiftify it, it really hurts

00:29:01 ◼   ► your brain to—they're so similar but so different that if I think I'm going to want—if

00:29:07 ◼   ► I'm working on a particular project, I want to just be in the Objective-C mindset, or

00:29:11 ◼   ► if I'm in this one, I want to be in the Swift mindset. That jumping back and forth between

00:29:15 ◼   ► them I think would just drive me insane. Like the number of times I do ampersand quote for

00:29:22 ◼   ► a string or things like that, where it's like all—or add a semicolon to the end of

00:29:26 ◼   ► a line, which are just habits I have from a JFC, but in Swift I don't need them, and

00:29:32 ◼   ► so I think I would just drive myself crazy jumping back and forth. So I have this one

00:29:36 ◼   ► new project, it's one I'm going to work on in the summer, and it'll be in Swift,

00:29:40 ◼   ► and we'll see how it goes.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Awesome. All right, well we're out of time this week. Thank you very much for listening,

00:29:45 ◼   ► everybody, and good luck, Dave, with your new Swiftification.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:29:49 ◼   ► And we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:51 ◼   ► Bye.

00:29:51 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]