Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) recently took place with several announcements regarding upcoming functionality in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. During the conference keynote Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior VP of Software Engineering, announced and demonstrated several consumer and enterprise features. The keynote ended with a bang when Federighi asked the question, "What would it be like if we had the benefits of Objective-C, without the baggage of C?"
Swift, a new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, promises to be modern, more interactive, safe, and perform faster than Objective-C and Python. Developers can take advantage of this new language now for their iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite apps, since Apple has already released it in Xcode 6 (beta). With Xcode having 14 million downloads, there are implications developers will make Swift part of their toolset. Developers with Objective-C skills will be able to take advantage of Swift quickly, since it has the same runtime, LLVM complier, and optimizer as Objective-C. Essentially, Swift works alongside Objective-C, C, and Cocoa.
Apple has released a handy guide for developers to get started with Swift. In this guide, Apple explains why Swift is a type safe language, in that it uses optionals and type inference. Optionals handle the absence of a value and allows developers to be clear about the types of code they are working with. If there is an absence of a value, Swift uses type inference to determine the appropriate type. Type inference requires fewer type declarations than C or Objective-C, making it more efficient. As a result, faster performance seems to be a result of Swift's scripting-like abilities with the excessive code of other languages. Tuples adds another level of efficiency, allowing for multiple value groupings into a single compound value. Playground, a new Apple tool to write code, would be appealing to developers if they are interested in taking advantage of the interactive abilities of Swift, leveraging possibilities with new APIs. Chris Lattner demonstrated Playground at WWDC.
Swift and the new Apple tools certainly have implications for app development in iOS 8, especially in the enterprise. Apple announced new functionality for mobile device management (MDM) solutions for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite management. TouchID API, document provider APIs, advanced content filtering APIs, and extensibility are a few items with implication for the enterprise announced at WWDC. The device passcode can now extend data encryption to Calendar, Contacts, Messages, Notes, and Reminders apps for increased security. As a result, developers can work with IT to create enterprise apps in harmony. With an adoption rate of over 95% in the Fortune 500, iOS devices and app development should be considered in not only enterprise, but healthcare, government, and small business organizations.
Enterprise mobility management (EMM) players, especially those in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites report, will be exploring, developing, and implementing new APIs in their solutions. New queries, new remote management UI, and ability to name devices remotely are a few of the new MDM functions available with iOS 8. Managed books and PDFs is another new MDM feature for iOS 8, which allows for remote content delivery. Many MDM vendors already have content management functionality in their solutions, it will be interested to see if the managed books and PDFs functionality inherent to iOS 8 will be adopted widely. These are just a few of the enterprise level management features available with iOS 8.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn. Teri Grossheim will be speaking about Swift, HTML5, and developer resources for iOS with a tie into iOS app development for enterprise at Mobile+Web Devcon Chicago on July 16th.
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