In this big retrospective — let’s take a look under the hood of WWDC by Sundell. I’ll share my key takeaways from running this site during WWDC, as well as how the site ended up performing, and what my plans are for my Swift static site generator.
► Read the articleThank you so much for reading WWDC by Sundell this week, I’ve had such a great time covering the conference and some of the many tools and APIs introduced throughout the week.
This is of course not the end — I work full-time on creating free content for the Swift and Apple developer communities, and you can find an ever-growing collection of articles, podcast episodes, tips, and more — right here:
Once again, big thanks to this site’s four wonderful sponsors — Bitrise, RemObjects Software, Instabug, and Duolingo — without them I wouldn’t have been able to make this site happen. If your company is interested in sponsoring my work, then check out this page.
Also special thanks to the awesome folks at Apple — for all of the amazing new tools, for a fantastic event, and for making it possible for people like me to cover the conference remotely, by making all of the videos and other materials available online so quickly.
But most of all, thank you so much for reading, listening, and joining me as I’ve been posting new content on this site. I hope you’ve enjoyed experiencing WWDC with me, and feel free to let me know what you thought about this site and its content, either by contacting me, or by finding me on Twitter @johnsundell.
There’s been such an incredible amount of quality content from Apple this year — both in terms of announcements, new developer tools, updates to existing APIs, and of course — sessions.
While I’m still working my way through all of the 84 videos that Apple have released so far (not including Friday’s sessions), I wanted to share an initial set of seven videos that I think are essential for any iOS developer to watch.
► Read the articleBesides being a fast, rock solid, and easy to use solution for Continuous Integration — Bitrise also quickly adopts all of Apple’s latest technologies. You can already build and test your app using Swift 5.1 and Xcode 11 on Bitrise — mere days after the betas were released.
Bitrise is also one of the four wonderful companies that have helped me make WWDC by Sundell possible during these past two weeks.
► Read the articleExcellent compilation of all sorts of new APIs and technologies — both big and small — added during this year’s WWDC, by my friend Patrick Balestra.
► Check out the listIn this last WWDC developer interview of 2019, I talk to my good friend Paul Hudson — about his favorite developer announcements from the conference, and his take on SwiftUI — where it currently is at, and where it might go in the future.
► Read the interviewThe video recordings of all 28 WWDC sessions held yesterday, during Thursday, are now available to watch online.
I’ll post some of my personal top picks soon, but for now, here’s the full list of yesterday’s videos and links to watch them.
► Browse all videosRemObjects Software is one of the four wonderful companies that are helping me bring WWDC by Sundell to you, every day throughout this week — completely for free.
Let’s find out more about them and how they can let you bring your Swift code to even more platforms.
► Read the articleSwiftUI is far from everything that’s new this year in terms of UI development. Some incredible advancements have also been made within the existing UI frameworks, such as the new built-in diffable data sources for table views and collection views — which could potentially eliminate a whole class of very common bugs found in many different apps.
► Read the articleSwiftUI, Apple’s brand new declarative UI framework, is here — and it’s exciting. But at the same time, looking at SwiftUI’s API and watching the various sessions on it can also start to raise some questions — like, is this a complete UIKit and AppKit replacement, how does SwiftUI views actually get rendered, and is it all just a simple “wrapper” around Apple’s previous UI frameworks? Let’s find out!
► Read the articleIt’s time for the big 2019 Swift by Sundell WWDC special, featuring PCalc creator James Thomson — who, with his over 25 years of experience developing apps for Apple’s platforms, joined me to discuss SwiftUI, Catalyst, and the other exciting tools and frameworks introduced at this year’s WWDC.
► Listen to the episodeThe video recordings of all 28 WWDC sessions held yesterday, during Wednesday, are now available to watch online. I’ll post some of my personal top picks at the end of the week, but for now, here’s the full list of yesterday’s videos and links to watch them.
► Browse all videosLast week, before WWDC began, I interviewed Anastasiia Voitova about her expectations for the event from a security and privacy perspective — and in this guest article, she shares her list of the major security-related announcements so far — her thoughts on them, and her tips on what session videos to look out for throughout the week.
► Read the articleGuest writer Gui Rambo shares his thoughts on the introduction of RealityKit and Reality Composer — two technologies introduced at WWDC 2019, that have the potential to fundamentally change the augmented reality landscape.
► Read the articleInstabug is one of the four wonderful companies that are helping me bring WWDC by Sundell to you, every day throughout this week — completely for free. Let’s find out more about Instabug and what they can do for you as an app developer.
► Read the articleThe big Stacktrace WWDC special is now out — on which me and Gui Rambo go through the major announcements from Monday’s keynote, to share our reactions and analysis of all the new features and tools that Apple introduced.
► Listen to the episodeThe video recordings of all 28 WWDC sessions held yesterday, during Tuesday, are now available to watch online. I’ll post some of my personal top picks later today, but for now, here’s the full list of videos and links to watch them.
► Browse all videosYesterday I spent a big part of the day looking into SwiftUI, playing around with it, and starting to figure out how it all works. So in this article, I want to try to answer the top five most common questions that I’ve seen people ask me and others on Twitter — about how SwiftUI works, and how compatible it is with the current OS versions and previous developer tools, like UIKit.
► Read the articleApple has posted the video recordings of yesterday’s opening keynote and the Platforms State of the Union session. Essential watching for anyone working on apps for Apple platforms.
Declarative UI programming patterns have become incredibly popular over the last few years, truly taking many different development communities by storm.
It’s therefore especially exciting to see Apple step into this scene, with their own, completely native declarative UI framework — called SwiftUI. While there’s a ton of functionality to be discovered and experimented with in this new UI framework for all of Apple’s platforms — let’s start by taking a first look at some of the fundamentals of SwiftUI, and how it lets us drastically reduce the amount of code needed to produce common forms of UIs and interactions.
► Read the articleOne of the most exciting new features in Xcode 11 is that the Swift Package Manager is finally becoming a first class citizen within Apple’s IDE.
Let’s take a first look at this new integration, and what sort of features that it currently offers.
► Read the articleThe opening keynote of this year’s WWDC was arguably the first since 2014 — when Swift was announced — that brought even bigger news for developers than it did for end users. With the new declarative SwiftUI framework, and its reactive data partner Combine — Apple is setting the stage for their next generation of developer tools, across all of their platforms.
► Read the full reviewHope you enjoyed last week’s pre-WWDC interviews and articles — but now it’s soon time for the real WWDC 2019 coverage to begin — starting with summaries and first impressions of the opening keynote and the Platforms State of the Union, later today.
The keynote kicks off at 10 AM Pacific Time, and the State of the Union session is scheduled for 14:30 Pacific Time. After each session, I’ll post a summary of what was announced — as well as my first impressions of the new developer tools, features, and announcements. Tomorrow I’ll start diving into all of the new releases — from Xcode, to Swift, iOS, macOS, and beyond — to bring you a ton of details, examples, and in-depth coverage of all things WWDC 2019.
So stay tuned, and have a great WWDC week!
WWDC by Sundell on-site correspondents Gui Rambo and Simon Støvring have taken some really nice photos of the decorated McEnery Convention Center. It might still be early morning in California, but just like every other year, the queue for the keynote is already well underway.
After a week of interviewing some amazing developers about their hopes and dreams for this year’s WWDC — I thought it’s time for me to reveal my own.
► Read the articleIt’s time for the last pre-WWDC developer interview!
For the grand finale, I’m talking to Meghan Kane — who is a prominent machine learning developer, university lecturer, and researcher — to get her take on Apple’s current machine learning strategy, and what kind of improvements we might see at this year’s WWDC.
► Read or listen to the interviewToday’s WWDC developer interview is with Anastasiia Voitova, who is a security product engineer at Cossack Labs, and a prominent security expert within the iOS developer community. Let’s find out what her WWDC expectations are from a security and privacy perspective.
► Read or listen to the interviewToday, I’m talking to Antoine van der Lee, who is an iOS developer at WeTransfer. He’s also a fellow weekly blogger, writing articles over at SwiftLee — and he’s somewhat of a WWDC veteran.
In this interview, he shares his top tips on getting the most out of attending WWDC and the events around it, and what new features he’d like to see in Xcode 11.
► Read or listen to the interviewIf you, like me, are eagerly awaiting the start of WWDC on Monday — or if you’re traveling to San José this weekend and want some Swift-based in-flight entertainment — then you’ve come to the right place.
Here is a big Swift by Sundell “Awaiting WWDC” pack — with podcast episodes and articles to enjoy while waiting for the big show to start.
Have a great weekend, and safe travels if you’re WWDC bound.
► Check out the bundleIn this second WWDC by Sundell developer interview, I talk to Dave Verwer — creator of iOS Dev Weekly — about how he consumes the content from WWDC, his take on Marzipan, the future of server-side Swift, and his wishes when it comes to Xcode and the Swift Package Manager.
► Read or listen to the interviewJust like most Apple-focused podcasts, we like to cast our predictions before each Apple event on Stacktrace, but we do it with a twist — we play keynote poker!
► Listen to the episodeThis is the first WWDC by Sundell developer interview — a mini-podcast and article series, in which we’ll hear from some of my friends from around the Apple developer community — about their thoughts, hopes and dreams for WWDC.
Starting with one of my really good friends — he’s an iOS developer, a reverse engineer, he writes for 9to5Mac, and he’s my co-host on the Stacktrace podcast — Mr. Gui Rambo.
► Read or listen to the interviewMaking preparations for WWDC can seem a bit like preparing for something completely unknown. Apart from rumors, leaks, and reports — no one outside of Apple really knows exactly what will be released during the conference — but that doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to enter next week completely unprepared.
Based on my almost 10 years of experience as an iOS developer (it does look like I’m getting old, doesn’t it?), and more importantly, close to a decade of migrating code bases to new versions of Xcode and other developer tools — here are my top 5 tips on how to prepare a code base for WWDC.
► Read the articleI love WWDC. Part Apple event, part conference, but most importantly an enormous celebration of the developer community surrounding Apple’s platforms. I had the pleasure of attending the conference back in 2014 (the year of Swift!), and came back excited and fully inspired (and also quite tired).
However, not everyone is able to actually attend WWDC in person. Not only do you have to win the “lottery” in order to qualify for purchasing a ticket, you also need to have the monetary means to be able to fly to, stay at, and attend the conference. So for a huge amount of people, WWDC can feel a bit out of reach.
I wanted to do something about that. This website is for everyone who wants to closely follow WWDC, but from anywhere in the world. Starting right now, this site will be updated daily with articles, videos, podcasts, and interviews, covering all things WWDC — from recommendations on what session videos to watch, to in-depth looks at new APIs, to interviews with people from all over the Apple developer community.
Think of it as both an extension to all the excellent material that Apple provides, as a way to quickly stay up-to-date on the latest announcements, and a place to see real-life examples of some of the new tools and technologies announced during the conference.
Just like Swift by Sundell, this site has no paywalls and is free, open and accessible to everyone. There’s no privacy-invading tracking, no filthy ad SDKs — there’s not even any JavaScript! All thanks to four wonderful companies that are generously helping me make this site possible — Bitrise, RemObjects Software, Instabug, and Duolingo.
So fire up your RSS reader and subscribe to this site’s feed, follow @swiftbysundell on Twitter for the latest updates, and feel free to check back every day from now until the 7th of June to find new content waiting for you.
Welcome to WWDC by Sundell — I hope you’re going to enjoy it! 😀
