Leo Dion (host): welcome to a very special live episode of Empower Apps.
With all the technical difficulties you can imagine, this is not as
professionally, this is why Apple doesn't do live events anymore.
in case you're wondering it wasn't a pandemic, it was cuz of this.
I'm your host, Leo Dion once again, episode 151.
Joined by our annual and sometimes semi-annual guest Peter with them
to talk about today's events.
Mostly platform, state of the union, but also a little bit of keynote thrown in
because there was a lot of stuff today.
Peter, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, Leo.
Always a pleasure.
And it's nice that we got this book marked in our calendar, right?
This agreement that we have with Apple every year they'll do their thing,
then they'll let us do our thing.
So thank you for having me back on.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
So we'll have a link to the recording we just did on Compile Swift on the
keynote mostly complaining about wh what, why the Mac Pro is a thing.
And now we'll talk about platform, state of the Union.
So what did you think of the platform, state of the Union, Peter?
Peter Witham (guest): I, I liked it.
There was a few things, that we'll go through here that,
that caught my attention.
I think we get a lot of gifts every year as developers, but I feel this
year we were given a whole bunch of extra gifts to work through, some of
which I'm sure we will cover in this episode, but I came away from the
State of the Union this year feeling
Pretty darned excited to play with some of the things.
Some of the topics we'll talk about here, reworking some old stuff,
embracing lots of new things.
What did you think?
Leo Dion (host): I think there's a lot, I think we've seen the
fruition of years of work.
And I think for us it was a, I think you're gonna see this in the
news stories tomorrow about the big thing Apple revealed this year.
And of course I'm talking about swift macros.
Just amazing.
Swift macros are amazing.
They're gonna change technology forever.
But in all serious let's jump into it.
I wanna talk about swift macros actually, because I've been hearing
about this for a year and I'm like what the heck is the point in swift macros?
And it was like Holly talked about swift macros and explain it, and
it's we're doing swift macros for SWIFT ui, we're doing swift
macros for core, the new core data.
We're doing SWIFT macros for this.
We're, it's like when when we heard about SWIFT DSL and we're like, what
the heck's the point in Swift dsl?
And then SWIFT UI came out and it was like, oh, okay.
It's like the same thing all over again.
It's like they, they like, we're gonna, we just, we really
like this language feature.
It's really nice.
We're gonna add swift macros.
And then it's okay, whatever Apple, that's what you want to do.
It's funny too with the fact that like swift language is open source
and I'm a totally different.
and like Apple stuff is like secretive and not anything you know about.
And then you're like, come to dub and it's oh, this is, we with macros
is such a big deal to people and especially at Apple, which is fine.
Like I see it, I see a lot of it.
It's gonna, I think it's gonna make a lot of the swift Jen and like the whole
swift co-generation stuff in a good way.
Sher sherlocked.
But yeah.
What do you think.
Peter Witham (guest): I was fascinated by this because I had actually, I, so
I'd read about this before and then got busy, and pretty much forgot about it.
And then I rushed to the state of the Union today and I joined it as
they were talking about swift macros, and I'm like, wait this sounds
familiar, and I'm trying to rack my brain and I'm watching them do this.
And they're like you just put this macro at the beginning.
And I'm like, okay.
And the point is, and I, and they're, and then they're like, say you don't
have to do these rappers and things.
And I'm like, Okay.
And the point is, and then I was like, I need to go back and watch this again.
And then our sort of the second time rounds were like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Because it, the first time was like, did you just wanna put an
ax symbol in front of something?
What's that about?
Leo Dion (host): Right, yeah.
Yeah.
And think it's, I think it's gonna be super useful.
I haven't been had the chance to wrap my head around it, but like
I'm really excited to try it out and see how it just how it's gonna
work and how those pieces fit.
So we've got attributes and then you have freestanding, like
pound based, hash based macros.
They did a great example with url, which is a classic example of just compile.
Now we have compile, we can do compile time URLs, which is awesome.
And I think it just brings a lot of that strong type safety that we've taken
for granted with SWIFT and moved over.
I think, yeah, we'll get into Swift ui.
Was there anything else about macros you wanted to talk
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
No I think it, it feels like one of those things where I think the more I
use it, the more I'm gonna be, oh, okay.
I see how this is filling the gaps.
Those, like you say, those little awkward spots that we've
had to deal with for a few years and we've all got our own
workarounds and things like that.
And it feels like now there's apples come back and said, okay,
we accept and we feel your pain.
We think this is gonna do it for you.
Take it and see what it does.
So I'm gonna be playing around with it.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): There was a, there was something else
I was gonna say about macros.
Oh.
I think there's gonna be a lot of use cases of macros being useful in
the sense of swift package plugins.
I think now they're gonna be a little bit more useful.
I could see that.
Especially with co-generation, yeah.
The other thing we're finally getting that I forgot about cuz I haven't done
anything with it in a long time, but c plus on interoperability is a big deal.
I don't think people can understand how big of a deal it is.
There's a ton of libraries out there that are c plus base that
we've had to bridge over using c I did a tutorial on it years ago.
When I dabbled into it, and luckily now that's no longer useful.
We can actually directly work with c plus and I'm really curious about that.
I'm looking forward to some of those talks cuz there's just a ton.
There's like a ton of c plus libraries out there that that now
we can take advantage of and use.
And you can, you could have c plus code along with your swift,
I think, in a package or app.
So yeah, I think it's gonna be useful.
Peter Witham (guest): it's gonna save a lot of that, tho those discussions you
have with yourself of I need this thing.
Oh, do you know?
I don't want to have to rewrite it though, or I don't have the time.
Guess what?
Now you don't have to.
Hopefully.
So yeah, like you say, it's like great, you can go back to that massive
bank of useful code and just use it,
Leo Dion (host): yep.
Yeah.
All right.
Do you wanna talk about the Swift UI stuff?
There's a
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): There's a lot.
There's a lot.
But I don't feel well.
There's one big gap that I think it filled this year.
But there's a lot of small stuff too.
You want to cover the small stuff.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And I think we needed, this was one of the things I was hoping for this year
was okay, I think you and I had even spoken about it just in conversations
about, hey Apple, if you really want people to use Swift ui, rather than just
forcing it on them, make it something that people should use and want to use.
And I feel that's what we got this year.
Things like, the z incremental adoption.
I think a big one, funny enough pie charts.
I know that kind of sounds a bit funny and a bit weird, but if you stop and
you think about the amount of apps you use and things like that, I'm betting
that as a users, you come across pie charts a lot more than you think you
do, and so to make life easier there with this and a nice addition to
the swift charting, it's like great.
Keep growing that package.
Leo Dion (host): I, I totally I didn't touch Swift pa,
swift UI charts last year.
I just never had that time.
So I wasn't aware that was even missing, but I'm not surprised.
So I'm happy
to see that.
Peter Witham (guest): See, that's the funny part, right?
That's what I was saying about, one of those filling the gaps where it's it
seems logical that you'd look and go that must have been there since day one.
And then you're like, you discover it's not,
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): so plug in a lot of those gaps is good, that,
that makes it feel more mature.
And more more like you want to use it because you're not gonna get that
Leo Dion (host): a, you can use it out of the box.
Yeah,
Peter Witham (guest): yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I like the new inspector view that I'm really
curious about using macOS, map kit.
Looks like they really moved that over to Swift UI with like custom overlays,
but it seems like the big thing this year that they tried to cover.
And I'm really I attended a talk with Adam Bell swift Heroes on he
mostly dabbled in core foundation stuff there, CF and all that
or core animation I should say.
Being that they really dumped into animations this year on Swift ui.
We got the spring default, we got animated SF symbols, which is awesome.
This new phase animator, there's a lot here.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Yeah.
Funny enough for me, the big one I use a lot of, I, I'm sure everybody
does, but I use a lot of SF symbols, so having animated ones Yeah, please.
I think that, that's another thing where it's great, I now don't have to
make my own third party version or do it, scripting or something like that.
It's if you can just give me one out of the box and I can trust that
it's optimized and just go with it that's what I would prefer to
do and spend my time working on the, that thing that Apple says.
Focus on the parts of the app that make it your app.
And I feel like that's what, we got a lot of that with the animation stuff.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, I think, yeah, there's gonna
be a lot of good stuff there.
Was there anything else on animation you want to cover?
Peter Witham (guest): no, I think that covers it.
Funny enough, I think over the years, people have going to appreciate it more,
but I think it's also clear, like this year with Apple putting this in the
subtle things like the animations, to quote Apple, they give it your apps.
That extra bit of delight doesn't seem like much on the surface, but
when you're using an app and it does something in a nice way, even
with a simple animation, it makes you stop and go, oh, that's cute.
That's cool.
And so these things are super important, and they make it
stand out from just feeling like, every other app that you see.
Do you know what I mean?
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Completely.
So we got some interesting behind the scene changes in Swift ui.
Speaking of swift macros with this new observable macro,
They're, Donnie had a really good post saying, is this like the
beginning of the end of combined.
They've like really simplified is it state objects, state
this, da, published da.
Like all that stuff.
They really simplified it a lot.
And I am really curious going this route in the future with Swift ui
because I do think, Donnie has a page and I think there's a few other ones
that are just like, swift ey property wrappers.com that like lists out all the
different property and how you use 'em.
And I think this is gonna simplify that a lot.
Seriously.
I think, gosh, I wish I remembered who said who was the presenter on that one,
but he said we've made it simpler to use swift ey, but I don't remember the
exact quote, but now we're doing it, the simple way is the right way to do it
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Encourages better behavior in that case.
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, absolutely.
And it's I'm glad that we got this because I had never really fully
appreciated this problem until I think this year where I found a lot
of people when I'm doing my livestream coding and things like that the
topics of, state binding environment, objects, observables, all these things
would come up over and over again.
And that's when I started to realize, yeah, you know what, if you don't keep
up using these all the time or if you're new to it, yeah, there's a lot of them.
They can get confusing real fast as to which one you should, it's it's
which, which tie goes with these socks?
That kind of problem.
So I
Leo Dion (host): that's exactly it.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah, so by having
Leo Dion (host): O'Reilly.
SH O'Reilly should come out with a book or Koko with a book.
What's the right tie with the right socks?
Peter's Peter Rhythms Guide to Swift UI Property wrappers.
I like it.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
That's it.
I'll just fill it with metaphors.
Your data is the sock, yeah.
And your view is the waist coat.
And now you wanna, you want to put the socks on?
I th there's probably is a whole book right there I could do, yeah.
Or just so you never thought rappers were fashionable, but they are.
Yeah.
I, that's when I realized, yeah, this actually is very confusing for people.
So it's gonna be interesting now though, because now it, for those of
you that have been using these for a while, we're gonna have to switch
our brains around to not doing it the way we've got used to doing it.
And
Leo Dion (host): Or we, the classic problem of real world people who
are still have to support iOS 15.
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Leo Dion (host): I don't know.
Okay, I'm overthinking this, but sorry, this, if it's a
macro, it's built by Xcode.
It's not really a thing.
I don't know.
Peter Witham (guest): See, that's the thing, right?
Leo Dion (host): If it's compiler side, if it's compiler side,
I don't think it ma I don't think that should be a problem.
We,
Peter Witham (guest): It shouldn't
Leo Dion (host): this like one hour after I downloaded code 15,
so I apologize for my audience not knowing this, but yeah
Peter Witham (guest): So that's gonna be one of those.
Tune in tomorrow and Leo's gonna explain it,
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
So anyway, yeah.
I don't know, but I have a feeling.
Yeah it's gonna be there's definitely some stuff here that's
gonna take a while to be adopted,
Peter Witham (guest): Oh yeah.
Yeah.
But this was a ne I think this one is a necessary thing, so I'm
glad that they've done it Now, I don't, I will, I'll put this
out there for everybody now.
Don't freak out.
It's not like going from Swift two to Swift three or something like that.
It's not that bad.
This is
Leo Dion (host): no going,
Peter Witham (guest): this is gonna take less code.
Leo Dion (host): spoiler alert, going to Swift six is going to be like going
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Swift four.
Trust me.
I looked at that.
I've been looking at Swift six and I've been testing my apps for Swift six and
there's a lot, there's a lot there.
Good in the long term, but that short bump of.
Having to do type thread safety and dealing with inex existential types.
It's, there's gonna be some pain there.
So I'm glad they, I'm glad they delayed that for next year.
Hopefully
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
That keeps you employed for another year.
So that, thank you Apple for thinking about us, and saying look, if we
keep changing everything, it keeps everybody employed rewriting their
same code over and over again.
Thanks Apple.
Leo Dion (host): Thank you Apple.
Okay, I'm gonna cover the easy iOS stuff.
We already talked about game development and game porting in the previous in
your compiled Swift episode and the keynote, we talked about gaming and
all that, so please check that out.
I'm not gonna talk about here.
Airdrop, we talked, we hinted at that, but there's an airdrop API now we
can do with, I think using, touching Your phone tip Kitt is really cool.
I'm gonna try that out where you can post tips and it uses a native ui.
Siri more stuff with app.
Hence they've been talking about Appin, hence for years heavily
hinting that we should all be using app intents, I think like AR kit and
hundreds of other APIs that they've kept telling us we should be using.
I think a Siri and app intensive are another thing there.
Air and share play and things like that.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Have you done anything with widgets?
Peter Witham (guest): I haven't, but now I want to, because, now
having seen, based on what we've seen so far they feel useful.
And not to say that they weren't useful before, but widgets, to me, on any
of the platforms was always like a read only information kind of event.
I'm gonna look, see
it, forget
Leo Dion (host): was a black box as far as how it gets updated.
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Yep.
So for now that they're doing, in particular the desktop on, on the
Mac for the widgets, across all the platforms yeah, I think I would say that
they may finally feel useful enough that I should give it some time and I think
there's, off the top of my head, one app that I support that has a widget in it,
and even there the widget is just to get you over into the app, but now I can do
something with it, something meaningful.
Leo Dion (host): And like we had talked about in your episode, there's
a lot to iOS, a lot of, just like you said, quality of life, improvements
with messages and iPhone and FaceTime.
I think people are gonna see, so that's awesome.
And I'm sure we could tap into that.
Alright, last and not least when it comes to Swift is this year that
they migrate core data over Peter.
What's the answer to that?
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, swift dad of, I, I don't know you yet,
but you're my new best friend.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): You're the honey.
We're still in the honeymoon period.
Peter Witham (guest): Yes, but let's just stay
Leo Dion (host): until you open up, until you open up
Xcode and you find the five
Peter Witham (guest): Oh yeah.
Leo Dion (host): oh wait, you can't do that.
What?
Oh,
Peter Witham (guest): I just,
Leo Dion (host): I'll write
Peter Witham (guest): use it, it's my best thing ever.
Leo Dion (host): I wonder how it works underneath.
Is it just to sql, a light database?
Can I just hack it to do what I want it to do?
And post a new library on GitHub?
That's what you're gonna end up doing.
Peter Witham (guest): that, that's what it is.
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be optimistic and say if it
can do 50% of the things that I feel like it should or I wanted to, then
it's a win for year one of Swift Data V one Oh, I guess it's a case of.
Okay.
At least we've got it right.
We ripped off the Band-Aid.
It might bleed a little bit, but at least we're on the path,
but I think it's exciting.
I think that finally having something that doesn't feel it
was just let's push it under the carpet of Swifty Eye and hope for
the best, and call it core data.
I think that it's gonna be interesting.
I will certainly, as someone who just released an app with Core Data
and Cloud Kit and was surprised how easy it was with Swift ui.
I want to see how much easier it is with SWIFT data.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Core data is okay, so we've, we'll have
an episode about tourist.
I'm gonna have Pedro on from tourist,
but,
I've had, I've used xcodegen, so you've got storyboards are dead, right?
So that's one big get merge nightmare.
You don't have to deal with if you migrate over to exco gen or two,
that removes another merge problem.
And I don't know a lot about these model files in cor core data, but
they all seem like a black box to me.
They're probably some XML stuff that scares me.
And now that's gone, right?
Because you could do the whole scheme, I would assume, in Swift,
which I think is fantastic.
So I'm trying to look up, there's a library I used I'm gonna look for it.
Maybe you gotta here delay me.
Talk about some something else with Swift Data, while I look that up.
Peter Witham (guest): All right.
No, that's cool.
No, because th this is the thing, right?
With the Swift data again, this is a topic that comes up a lot
that people ask me about where's my data in my Swift UI app?
And how do I get it?
How do I make it available to different scenes different views or, what?
Why doesn't exist in this context or, what is context?
That's another one, right?
With core data.
And so if it can deal with even a fraction of that with the swift data and
simplify almost kind of one of those, can you simplify the sales's pitch to
make it understandable and meaningful for folks so that they don't within five
minutes say, you know what, screw this.
I'm gonna go back to my sequel light, or my realm, or, whatever it may be.
Firebase or whatever.
You gotta give us the sales pitch Apple that, that makes people want to use
this because it doesn't sound as scary as core data and from at least just
the preliminary code that they tried to sell me on in the State of the Union.
I'm willing to buy into it if it is that simple.
And I don't find that, oh it isn't just a couple of lines and I've
gotta write all this, but the idea of building my models right
there, In Swift appeals to me.
It's great, you've kept me in the language.
I know, and feel comfortable as opposed to going over to anyone
who's ever gone to Core Data and is we're gonna edit the files now.
And, you open up that view and it's what's this?
How does this work?
So being able to define it, I think will help
Leo Dion (host): I found the swift package.
I was gonna mention.
So there is a really good swift package called Core Store by John Troia that
I've used before as a way not to do model files and essentially could do the
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, okay.
Leo Dion (host): And Swift.
This is as close to the ideal of what I was looking for.
If you're still supporting an older os this is available to
you.
But thank, thankfully, and no, no disservice to John, but I'm glad
this is Sherlock to now because this is something that's been
a long time coming that we've
But yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): at that one.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
Because now we have, so the question I posted on Twitter actually was
like, how, what if I wanted my model in Core data and I wanted to use it
in Vapor, like how would I be able, is there a way I can like, take that
model even though it's a model in.
Using Swift Macro and then extend it so it's Codeable and then also it's
content, which is the protocol that vapor requires for content delivery.
So I'm like curious if we could still go with that route with
Core data now, or swift data.
Excuse me.
I'm assuming it should be a issue, but that would be awesome.
Just be able to have your data The way I do it, you have your data in one spot.
You say that data is able to be used in swift data.
It's codeable, it's also content and vapor.
And now like you have the same model shirt in a full stack
application, which is really
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
As we both know, the creators of Vaper are fantastic and very responsive.
I am super confident if they don't do it, someone in the community is
gonna figure out some translation
Leo Dion (host): at Apple will do it
Peter Witham (guest): That would be great.
Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): Apple's been fully supportive of Vapor and so
yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.
I wonder if there's any Yeah, just, I'm gonna check, is there any server?
Peter Witham (guest): on it, me.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, I'm looking if there's any server stuff.
There's some stuff about App store server, like checking receipts and
stuff, but I don't see anything
Peter Witham (guest): Oh.
Leo Dion (host): And nothing this here on server side, which is fine.
Peter Witham (guest): Okay.
Leo Dion (host): they've done Lambda talks and they've done Vapor,
so I'm totally okay with that.
But yeah.
Anything else on Swift data?
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, no, I think we've got a, this is gonna
be one of those 1.0 years for it.
And it might be a little painful at first, but I, you get that feeling.
It's gonna be one of those that Apple's gonna want you to embrace.
Might as well start practicing it now.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Do you wanna say, there was one talk this week called
Meet Swift Open API generator.
I've been working on something like this,
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, you
Leo Dion (host): Apple Sherlock me on that, so I'm really happy about that.
So
Peter Witham (guest): you know you are onto a good thing.
Know you got it,
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
That's gonna be interesting.
I'm excited about that talk.
Okay.
Cool.
That's swift.
I think we covered all the swift stuff.
Hardware camera.
There was some camera stuff.
I don't have a lot to say about the camera stuff, just enhancements.
They have a standard now for HDR photos,
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
That's
good.
Leo Dion (host): Api, you can tap screen, kick screen
capture kit, apple TV stuff.
Do you wanna talk about any of that?
Peter Witham (guest): I think that, any of those is good, right?
Because there's, just like there's a million camera apps,
but every so often there's a real gem of an app comes along.
So the more of that stuff, they expose nothing.
The built-in camera app and everything is fine, if you look at the Halli app
or and things like that, there are folks that take it to the next level.
So I'm always glad to see that they get access to these APIs.
Leo Dion (host): I'm gonna skip to values.
So a lot of stuff about accessibility, about a certain piece of hardware.
They're doing a lot of stuff there for accessibility, which is nice to see.
Peter Witham (guest): Yes, always
Leo Dion (host): animated images.
I didn't know that was a thing that people needed.
Makes totally sense cuz I'm super ignorant to that stuff.
I'm curious about the privacy manifest
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, that caught my eye.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I'm really happy to see that.
I hope people actually use it.
I hope App Store approval actually enforces it
Peter Witham (guest): That's what I was gonna say.
I hope that actually Apple forces you to, so
Leo Dion (host): Sensitive content analysis that is a whole can of worms.
As a parent, I am interested in highly and I trust Apple with
privacy, so that's good to see.
I, what I may not trust is machine learning, cuz it can be weird at times.
I know there's YouTubers who've had weird issues of what's been
marked as inappropriate, when it isn't inappropriate or if it's
inappropriate, but it's not it's a piece of art, like a statue of David or
something,
and it's yeah.
Anyways, so that's I'm really, I'm curious about it also, I'm
curious if this has anything to do with, gosh, what was that thing
you remember That they were gonna put it in one of the 0.3 releases
Peter Witham (guest): Oh the one that they, they decided since
people don't seem more keen on this, it was gonna scan all your photo
library or something like that.
Leo Dion (host): That thing.
Peter Witham (guest): that's what,
Leo Dion (host): I don't know the name.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Google already does it and I think a few other companies
already do it with your stuff.
And Apple was gonna do it, and then they
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And I will say, it's gonna be interesting to see how this works
out for Apple because without going into any details in my
day job we have to scan media.
Ex for ex exactly as being described here, and as we just discussed.
And it's actually an incredibly difficult problem because more often
than not it's not get, getting the, catching the right things is not
easy, but relatively straightforward.
The problem is, like you said, catching a lot of the wrong
things is actually very hard to train this software for this.
So it'd be interesting.
Leo Dion (host): so I don't know if you've read any stories about
the stuff at Facebook, but when people talk about jobs that we want
to automate and people don't want to have to do, I feel like this is
probably at the top of that list.
Peter Witham (guest): Oh yeah.
Now,
Leo Dion (host): you've followed any of the horror stories about Facebook in
Peter Witham (guest): Oh I hadn't seen specific stories, but I work
Leo Dion (host): but they basically farm out.
They farm out people who have to go through this stuff and find garbage.
And there's some pretty awful things out there.
And I think that's a great candidate for ai.
If we can outsource it to a non feeling non-conscious person, a non-person
that just can identify it, I think that would make a lot of people
mental health better and a lot easier.
And so hopefully, this is a move in that direction.
We'll see.
Peter Witham (guest): Is a, it is a very real serious problem because yeah.
Some of the stuff, the, again, the day job has to be reviewed by human
beings and like anything, yeah.
Who, some of these things, who in their right mind would
want to be exposed to this?
Who would want that job?
I'm glad
Leo Dion (host): There's a lot of money,
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
Yeah, but this is definitely something that a machine like you
say, won't burn out from doing.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): That would be a good job for to have a severance surg
surgical procedure done on you, if
Peter Witham (guest): oh yeah.
Leo Dion (host): if you've watched that
Peter Witham (guest): No,
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
So there's some stuff about Ad network.
I didn't, I don't understand that stuff, so I'm not gonna even jump into
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
It left me scratching my head.
Leo Dion (host): sounds interesting.
I'm really curious about that.
And I'm sure there's gonna be some good stuff out from
Revenue Cap to talk about that.
Peter Witham (guest): good point.
Leo Dion (host): But yeah, so there's that.
And then Xcode, I wanna cover Xcode before I jump to one of the oss.
Xcode Swift Eye previews has a macros now, which is funny.
This weekend I was working on like swift Eye previews and like I wanted
to see my preview in Two or three different iPhone models and it was like
I have to code this boiler play code to do it and then I like refactor it
into a function and blah blah blah.
And I'm curious to see if this makes it a lot easier because like
switch I previews, I get what it is and it makes sense, but at the
same time I could see how it would be a lot easier with a macro.
Also, if you look at the talk on developer tools, you'll see that they
also mentioned UI kit and AppKit.
So I think previews is gonna be a thing for UI kit and AppKit
Peter Witham (guest): That would be nice.
Yeah.
Despite all the rumors, we still have to support those things, folks.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, we do.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
Leo Dion (host): What else did you see with Xcode?
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
They gave some interesting examples with the test reports with the full videos.
So you can literally replay the experience of the test
along with the data in there.
Yeah.
That QA folks should be loving that.
One less thing for a third party tool to take care of.
And it's all your reports are right in there with your repo
code and everything else.
So that's interesting.
And of course, they touched on Xcode Cloud, which I still have
Leo Dion (host): Remember it?
Peter Witham (guest): yet, yeah.
Remember it.
And I still have not used it.
And I was gonna ask you how's that going for you?
Leo Dion (host): I don't, I like using GitHub and GitLab CI and GitHub actions.
I don't want to have to use another system.
I want, and I use Fastline.
And so far,
Peter Witham (guest): Fast Lane
Leo Dion (host): as they're getting funded, God willing I'm
gonna be sticking with Fastline.
Like I, there's just so much I can do and it's pluggable anywhere.
If I go to Xcode Cloud, I'm stuck with Xcode Cloud yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And that's my problem with some of these things too, is it's not
that I have an issue with EXCO Cloud, it's just that issue of
something that's gonna lock me in.
Not because I'm saying Apple's gonna do bad things or anything like that,
but anytime you are locked into something, One or two outcomes, you're
gonna be good for a really long time and it then it's gonna bite you or
you're gonna be good for a short term and then it's gonna bite you.
So keeping your options open, like you said, like something like Fastly,
it really is one of those fast Lane solved the problem, why is everybody
else still try it, but that said, I still think Xcode Cloud plays into the
bigger picture of not Xcode on an iPad, but offloading of the heavy duty so
that some other device can, make the
Leo Dion (host): You just buy another Mac Mini.
That's what I did,
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Yeah.
We were just talking about that.
Get yourself the bank mini or the Mac Studio.
You got all the power you ever needed.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Link speed and mergeable li I don't know what Mergeable libraries is.
I'll figure
Peter Witham (guest): don't.
Leo Dion (host): out this week, but I'm really
Peter Witham (guest): that was one
Leo Dion (host): what's the selling point?
Yeah.
And then link speed is five times faster.
Just, I just want Until, what's it called?
Auto complete.
I just want that
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, in tele
Leo Dion (host): I don't want any more swift.
Yeah.
I don't want any more of these weird swift errors that don't make any sense.
I don't want swift errors that are there, and then when
I click on it, it goes away.
Like just fix that Xcode.
That's we'll see.
I just download the beta.
We'll see if that's gonna happen.
Peter Witham (guest): I'll share a quick story here of a funny example of that.
It happened to me on, I was doing a live stream recently and it was with
a Sprite kit app and just out of the blue, suddenly Xcode decided I can't,
I'm gonna give you an error that I can't load the underlying Sprite kit module.
I was like, ah, what?
Did the usual thing closed, Xcode opened it.
Nope.
Still there.
And then someone in the stream said, Hey change the order of your imports.
So I did.
And sure enough, the certain ones, as soon as it was the first import,
like I think it was game kit or something, it complained about it.
And now Swift Sprite kit was okay.
And then we put foundation in, but foundation was okay.
Yes, thank you.
X code for another weird errors that don't really exist.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I know, but I'm just like,
Peter Witham (guest): I know.
It drives you crazy.
I'm like, what?
Leo Dion (host): Andy do spray kit.
You said spray kit.
And I'm just like, oh no, like now you're really Okay.
I gonna start cresting off stuff on our
Peter Witham (guest): Sure.
Leo Dion (host): just cuz I don't want to make sure that we did cover
the important, the non-important, the important, non-important stuff.
Before we get into my favorite os and then we'll get into your favorite os ha.
Peter Witham (guest): All right.
Leo Dion (host): Okay, do that.
one thing I do wanna note is I noticed that I mean I think I did mention
this in the previous sep, the previous recording, but Xcode 15, you download
only Xcode 15, I think, and then you have to download the separate SDKs.
Not only for watch and tv, but now iOS as a separate install too, which
of course, 90% of 99% of people who use X credit are doing iOS.
But in any case, that's the way they make Xcode smaller.
So good for them.
Peter Witham (guest): I, I totally get why you make watch OS TV os separate.
I'm glad you did that, apple.
Thank you for that.
But why make you know iOS separate?
Like you said, it's easily gotta be the most used.
Why would you do that?
Leave it in there,
Leo Dion (host): maybe it's because, so the other OS wasn't listed and I'm
wondering if Mac OS covers the new OS
Peter Witham (guest): Oh,
okay.
Leo Dion (host): oh if you're gonna do, we want you to do the new OS and
then if you do the new os, I don't,
Peter Witham (guest): Thinking like those ones are like the core, right?
We want you to have the core and then maybe you are an iOS
developer or maybe you're, yeah.
Okay.
That does make sense.
Leo Dion (host): Maybe that's what it is.
Anyway.
Okay.
My favorite OS finally is updated after years and years of neglect.
Watch OS is here.
Watch o s 10.
There's a new way of doing watch faces.
Like the Siri face is now Preeminent and like the way they're doing
like widgets and smart stacks and stuff and changing the way.
So watch os zero whatever, watch os one.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): It was all about glanceable, glance
this, glanceable that.
And so their idea is okay, glanceable, you just can't get everything on there.
And I don't know why they're this way, but I, they're not
comfortable with creating watch faces that have a lot of data.
There's like a limit to the amount of data that they're willing to put, which
I feel is not necessarily the case.
So they say, okay, there could be a little bit of interactivity.
So basically you go to the Siri face and then you flip using
the crown to see what the widget smart stack decides is important.
And then that's why you can see your calendar, your weather, whatever
other widgets you wanna show.
Stop that.
It was just about to do Siri.
So I think that's interesting.
Like I, I'm not sure, I'm definitely gonna be installing the beta at some
point on my watch, watch or watches.
But that was really interesting.
What did you think?
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, no I thought this was interesting too.
You'd be forgiven if you was, pardon the phrase, an average user thinking
like, oh, okay, they gave me some new watch faces and that was about it.
But no, that's not the case at all.
Yes, you got some new watch faces.
That's a given, that's every year knowing that they're
gonna improve the camera.
In the iPhone it's a given.
You're gonna get watch faces, but the.
Leo Dion (host): Snoopy is not a shock, right?
It's all, they're always as a snoopy watch face.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And I think I might use that one.
Yeah.
Because they targeted me.
They're like, oh, this is for the old people.
I was like, oh, wait, you're talking to me now?
Yeah, but, the widget part of it, I think is a bigger deal than perhaps
a lot of people are thinking it is on the surface, because really on the
watch, at least the way I use it the widgets is a massive part of my day.
I don't use, quote apps a lot in Soma as it's an information
screen and so therefore Exactly.
Widgets and being handled to interact quickly with those widgets for me
just made my watch a lot more useful,
Leo Dion (host): we didn't talk about this total tangent, but the standby
mode on the iPhone is that, it's like big widget on the screen that
just shows like whatever you like, information dump, like you said.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, I, and I'm real happy about that, that actually
for me was one of the big sort of silent features, because I do that
with my watch all the time at night.
If I'm not wearing it, I take it off, put it on its side.
Fantastic.
There it is.
It's my alarm.
It's got the clock and everything else, plus the always on screen.
Just to touch on it with the phone.
Yeah.
Why not make my phone a mini dashboard on my desktop or my bedside cabinet.
Perfect use case, but yeah, no, on the watch, the widgets and the
interactive widgets to me is great.
I think I just found the new justification for keeping
this thing on my wrist,
Leo Dion (host): yeah, big enhancements, the cycling there's
a whole custom workout api.
I don't know what that means, but I'm curious.
You've used health kit for workouts.
What does workout kit?
I don't know.
I'm really curious about that.
Hiking, there's some features that I don't know where if there were, like,
I don't even know if some of this stuff is exclusive to the Ultra, but there
were some stuff with like tracking, cell reception and if you, cuz so
I've, I have one watch that has LTE but doesn't have a cell phone plan on it.
And technically on that I could just do an SOS call on any solve network work.
Fyi, if you have an iPhone, it's your legal I think it's the legal
obligation that like you can at least call 9 1 1 on it even if you don't
have a cell phone plan and you don't have a sim card or EIM card in it.
So that would be the same idea with this is it'll tell you if you have
cell reception period even if you don't have a SIM attached to it.
And then that way you'll know,
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): call 9 1 1 essentially here in the
Peter Witham (guest): and it had,
Leo Dion (host): your emergency number is.
Peter Witham (guest): it also was interesting that it, I think
it would be useful for these folks that sort of pseudo 3D view
where not only am I getting the direction, I'm getting a sort of
high estimate relative to where I am.
Yeah.
I actually think that that is gonna be very useful.
Now, you do touch on an interesting thing there, though, as far as I recall,
not once did they say, this is the, which version of the watch this is for.
I
wonder if it's okay, take them with their word.
Does that mean I get this on all of the watches?
And then maybe later
Leo Dion (host): because the co,
Peter Witham (guest): watch hardware, you tell me about some special thing,
Leo Dion (host): well cuz the Compass is like a Al is an ultra only thing
I thought, but I'm not, I don't know.
Like they didn't say that.
So I don't know.
We'll find out,
Peter Witham (guest): no, I got a compass on my one, I think.
But it might not be the same kind of compass.
Yeah, no.
I got a compass but maybe it can't do all of that functionality.
Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): I'm just looking at this real quick.
Da Smart stack.
There's that pallet, there's Snoopy Cycling, hiking with
Watch Compass app on it, LA.
It doesn't say only, it just sh in the marketing material.
It only shows the ultra, but it doesn't yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): We may have to
Leo Dion (host): all the market, on all the marketing material,
it's only showing well, for the cycling and the hiking.
It only shows the ultra interesting.
Okay.
Peter Witham (guest): Maybe that's one of those subliminal things of you
should buy the ultra if that's what
Leo Dion (host): right exactly.
Mental health the jour, was it the, was that the journaling thing or
Peter Witham (guest): They, yeah, they bundled the, that
in with the journaling there.
And I, it's one of those things as someone who does journal, but
does it, I think I mentioned in our previous discussion, I do it
with pen and paper just because it forces me to slow down, be, and
also because I type all day, right?
So it won't feel as special to me if I'm just typing a journal thing.
It's just another document.
I do think it is interesting, and I always appreciate any of
these companies, but especially Apple, anytime they do more,
introducing new health related.
Issues and data and things like that.
And so having the mental health one in there you, as I'd mentioned
before, I'm still waiting for the the A1C check, but one day, but anytime
they add these things here I gotta do j just say thank you, well done.
Because as we all know, life is complicated these days and
anything that may help you, great.
Leo Dion (host): It is.
So like you can log your mood essentially, and then they try to
look at your mood and associate, whether sleep or exercise is, has an
effect on your anxiety and depression.
So that's the point in that there's a
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And I think that's good.
Yep.
Leo Dion (host): And about getting daylight.
Oh, just looking at the list on the press release, I'll find maps.
Oh, that's only on iPhone.
Custom workouts, we talked about that.
Lastly I want to go back.
Swift D y Swift ui.
We got.
Vertical tab views and the toolbar and navigation split view, which
originally was for the iPad and the Mac.
Now we have that on the watch, which is really cool.
I think they showed some real I could see the whole vertical scroll thing.
Like they definitely push that and we're like, this is the
new paradigm on the watch.
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Leo Dion (host): yeah, I'm excited.
No independent watch that was not, they never talked about that.
That was one of the rumors.
So we're not quite there yet,
Peter Witham (guest): But I also think that is still one of those things
where and I get it, it's just not in their best interest to do that.
Like we all said from
Leo Dion (host): Or they're just gonna wait until the September
event when they reveal the
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
Possibly.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): the new watch hardware and be like, oh yeah, you now only
in the series nine will we support.
Into.
Yeah, even though it's a software thing so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised about
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And we didn't mention it, but we should mention the, while we
were talking about the health the health app is on the iPad now.
So
Leo Dion (host): that's right.
Which I think is really cool.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, I do too.
So for those it's like my health dashboard right there.
Fantastic.
Leo Dion (host): I don't, did you know that Ventura was the
first os Macco first version of Mac os to support health kit?
Peter Witham (guest): I did not, no.
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
So
Peter Witham (guest): feels like it's been
Leo Dion (host): the health,
Yeah, no health kit was never on Mac Os now it's on iPad.
So now it's on, it was on Mac OS with Ventura.
Now it looks like they're moving that over to the iPad, which is
Peter Witham (guest): Great.
Yep.
Leo Dion (host): Alright, do it.
Peter Witham (guest): So there was one other thing.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): let's talk about the new.
Newton let's talk about the new $3,500 pair of glasses.
Peter Witham (guest): Starting at 3,500
Leo Dion (host): What does that mean?
Starting out?
What would you even
Peter Witham (guest): That, there's
Leo Dion (host): oh, I want a M two.
I'm about M two Pro.
Yeah, Stuart.
Okay.
But see, I think it's more they did say it's modular.
Yeah.
They did say it's modular, so there you go.
Oh, this pan is not comfortable enough.
Or, oh, can I get the glasses and golds, whatever.
Yeah.
Okay.
Fair enough.
I see that now.
Okay.
What's your fir just first impressions go.
Peter Witham (guest): First impressions?
No.
No, thank you.
Because it's too creepy looking when if someone walks to me with a headset on
like that, with that facial expression coming through the panel, I'm gonna
feel like I'm in like an episode of The Walking Dead or something.
It's too creepy.
Leo Dion (host): I think you'd get used to it.
I think you'd get used to it.
Peter Witham (guest): So here's
Leo Dion (host): It's not for me.
I'm not disagreeing.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah.
No, oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): you'd get used to it.
I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Peter Witham (guest): H here's my second take on it.
Which is very closely linked with the first one.
And I think I tweeted this immediately when they showed it and they showed the
how your face looks through the thing.
I felt like I was looking at Either, either a, an early generation or a
next generation of someone that I would expect to find walking around
in Blade Runner movies or cyber punk because it just felt like that.
And immediately I felt is this the future?
Is it really?
Leo Dion (host): I'm gonna be devil's advocate.
I agree.
It's not for me.
We'll get into the why that is, but I'm maybe devil's advocate.
So the thing with the glasses, I think is a technology limitation
that Apple has tried its best to overcome an Apple way.
And I mean that as a compliment.
Google glasses just don't work.
They're not that good.
Apple says, fine, this is just, this is a limitation.
We're gonna allow you to see the eyes through this display.
Think of it like the notch.
It's a notch.
Not even, no, not a notch.
It's a dynamic island.
Okay.
It's we have this issue,
Peter Witham (guest): Oh, I see what you did.
Dynamic Island.
Well done.
Leo Dion (host): I, I didn't mean to do that.
But it's a, it is, it's like apple's okay, this isn't what.
Great.
We're just going to do, we're gonna work with it instead of against it.
And I think that's what they've done here, and I applaud them for that.
I will say the fa the, what is it?
Persona, what is it called?
Spatial
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
What?
Yeah, spacial.
Leo Dion (host): Pre persona, I think is that, I think is gonna
be it's better than the Facebook avatar on the Oculus, I'll say that.
Spatial.
But yeah, it's still creepy.
Watch my episode
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah,
Leo Dion (host): talk to chat G P t, if you want to get an idea how I think
Peter Witham (guest): I think I saw some of that.
Yeah.
Yeah
you.
Yeah
Leo Dion (host): where I think it is just and for me, I don't.
I don't want, so let me get the good stuff outta the way cuz
that's just the easiest part.
I, this is classic Apple taking a totally different take on
a device class, platform, whatever you wanna call it.
They don't like black Blackberry.
Blackberry had its thing.
Blackberry was very successful, but the iPhone totally went
in a different direction.
It didn't have a keyboard on it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It had a multi-touch, oculus, whatever the 500 other VR companies that
we've had, they're like, it's all immersive, it's all 3d, it's weird.
And buggy and I don't know buggy, but just it's a totally different
take this, like they've, they don't have a keyboard, right?
They've taken out the Blackberry keyboard of what the Oculus does
and said, no, we're just gonna be like, it's going to, we're just gonna
put a UI in three, in a 3D space.
That's essentially what they've done.
They've taken a totally different angle and a classic apple, and
I think it looks really cool.
So you have like windows, you have your web browser.
You have it's we're not like gonna make everything 3d.
We're not gonna put you in an N F T forest in the middle of Whatever crap.
It's no, you're still in your space and we have this clever
little digital crown, like a volume where you could say how immersive
you want to be in that space.
It's very clever.
I think it's great.
I think it's great from a developer perspective that pretty
much every iOS app and I think back at maybe can be moved over.
I think that, I think they make an interesting selling point with hey,
you spend thousands of dollars on a home theater when you could just buy
these glasses for only thir 3,500.
Just I know, but this is what they said, and I think that's as
good of a point as you can make.
They have a new.
The all that work on tracking your eye, li your eyes and your motion, the
interface looks immersive and intuitive.
All the stuff with spatial audio that we've been seeing them do it feels
like it's been the end result of all this work that they've been doing with
ML that we've all known oh, checking your motion and things like that.
They have even have lenses for folks like us who are
blind spaces, absence spaces.
But having said all that, like I don't.
don't want it.
I don't want to have a pair of glasses on my face all day.
And I, like I, and I don't want to put 'em on, take 'em
off, put 'em on, take 'em off.
I don't want I'd rather wa when I'm watching a movie with someone, I
wanna watch a movie with someone.
I don't want us to help both have a pair of glasses on.
I wanna be there together for real, not like virtually.
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Leo Dion (host): there that's my spiel.
It's yeah, just, I don't, I still don't get it.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah, let me dive more into my, no, because I agree with
an awful lot of what you said and so I wanna put my No in context, right?
First of all let's talk.
Let's talk about the hardware.
It is, like you said, the absolute pinnacle of of what Apple's been
working towards with all of its different products, all of its research
both user research, engineering research and everything else.
There is no question in my mind this is an absolute shining example of
the pinnacle excellence of what Apple can do at a hardware level, right?
Absolutely not.
No question in my mind that I absolutely get why it's got the price
tag it's got, because the amount of.
Cleverness in that headset.
Oh my gosh.
Can't even imagine how you got, how did you get all of that in there?
So that at a hardware level, yes.
This is the shining example of Apple being Apple in the best possible way.
Price tag, it's always gonna be an Apple price tag, we knew that,
it was never gonna be a surprise.
But I do think you, you're getting a lot of value for your money Now,
software wise, I, it's difficult to know without actually using it
because they were very careful to show us a lot of simulated imagery
of, this is what it's gonna look like.
Okay.
But you haven't actually shown me what it looks like, but I'm gonna
assume it's gonna be at least very close to what you showed me.
Which is great, the pinching like your fingers, so I guess we're all
gonna be doing crab impressions once we've got one of these things.
I guess that's what we'll be calling it.
Do the apple crab.
I should trademark that right now.
That's gonna work great, I think until you put it in a real world scenario
with pets and kids running around in the room in front of you, and
then I think it's gonna have a hell of a time trying to figure it out.
I hope I'm wrong, but the, I think for me, the key reason for the
no is I just feel this was making the absolute perfection answer to
a question that was never asked.
And that's where I feel with it, because.
Up until now, I think it's, would be fair to say vr, ar, headsets, whatever,
are primarily for gaming, right?
Because they're perfect for that.
Three and a half thousand dollars gaming headset.
I don't think so, but I could see other uses like I was proposing to someone
the other day perfect for medical.
Something like that.
But I still feel this is one of those, like I say, an absolute perfection of an
answer to a question that nobody asked.
And I feel, that's why I'm saying no, is you may be a few years ahead
of yourself, apple, one day this will be great, but right now I'm
scratching my head as to, the people that are gonna buy this are gonna be
the people that bought the solid gold apple watches to say they've got one.
Leo Dion (host): I think, I, or app developers
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Don't get me wrong.
If someone wants to buy me one, I'll use that darn thing,
Leo Dion (host): like I've been a I've told people like if Apple
offered a developer kit where I could borrow it for a few months and
build an app and return it and get a nice little What do you call it?
Like a little ch like a gift card from it?
I'd do that.
I have ideas to do that, but I'm not like it's gen one, especially.
I would definitely not buy this.
Like it's, yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): But see, that's
Leo Dion (host): I wanna see it.
I wanna see it in the Apple store.
I wanna see like, how good is the resolution on this thing?
Is it really look that good?
If I put this on, will it look like I am looking through a piece
of glass or will it look like I'm looking at a video that's okay.
Resolution, but not really
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Will I be able to tell that I'm quote, seeing reality or not?
Because if I'm not, I could buy an awful lot of Nintendo
switches for the same price.
And have a lot more fun with those probably.
But I think you touched on something there because I neglected to look at
it from the perspective of a developer when I was gonna say of course as
developers, it's in our best interest to make something for this platform
because there'll be enough people buy one that, early days of the app
store, if you can get yours out early, doesn't matter what it is you're in,
Leo Dion (host): yeah, as an Apple Watch app, as an Apple Watch app developer,
I disagree with that statement because we've all been burnt on it.
Or t ask your average Apple TV app developer
Peter Witham (guest): sure.
Yeah.
That's actually a better example.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): yeah, not every platform is gonna be like, I think
for this, I think most of the built-in apps are gonna cover what people
need, and then anything else is just gonna be migrated over, like Disney
plus for instance, or whatever else.
They wanna showcase and look at the end of the day, it's just it's
almost an Apple TV replacement
It is
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Leo Dion (host): Because yeah, and I don't understand
the whole Mac thing too.
Like I'm really curious about that.
Like how does it work with the Mac?
Cuz you have the external monitor and like I, it's, I have a lot of questions
cuz there's a lot of technology that has to work perfectly all the time.
And if you're using the iPhone without internet reception or cell reception
or you le there's this weird quirks like, oh, like touch ID when after
you get your hands wet or anything.
There's all these little quirks where if something goes wrong it's just not
gonna work out to be a great experience.
Peter Witham (guest): Yep.
Especially
Leo Dion (host): feel like the three,
Peter Witham (guest): right?
Leo Dion (host): yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): Because you're right.
Leo Dion (host): I'm sur I'm surprised they didn't make the battery pack into
a fashion accessory or This battery pack
also has the capability of doing MagSafe charging and like I'm surprised they
didn't go that route, or they didn't even mention the battery pack, yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): because
Leo Dion (host): by u s BBC or Lightning?
I don't know.
Peter Witham (guest): exactly.
That was something else that came to mind, because I can see, as you were
describing it just now, the use cases, I'm thinking, okay, if I use it as an
external screen, And I'm halfway through my day and the battery goes flat, or I'm
sitting there watching a movie halfway through a Lord of the Rings movie.
Good luck if the battery lasts that long.
And he goes flat.
Sorry kids, we gotta stop watching the movie now until we
charge these things up again.
So
Leo Dion (host): can you plug can the battery be plugged in?
If you're sitting at the couch and you
Peter Witham (guest): I'm wondering the same thing.
Leo Dion (host): Can, do they allow that?
Yeah, there's a lot.
There's just a lot of like
real
Peter Witham (guest): of questions.
Leo Dion (host): And it's not a challenge to Apple is like, how
do you explain to people what the experience of this is like
in a video, let an own line of
Peter Witham (guest): I don't
Leo Dion (host): I need to be at the Apple store to
actually look at this thing.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
That, see, okay, so that's the other question, right?
I guess I gotta go there.
Not to scare people, but yeah, we should all go to an Apple store and try one.
But don't be thinking too much about the hundreds of people that tried the
headset before you put it on your face.
Just something to think about.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, that's true.
Peter Witham (guest): But that's why I say, that's why I'm saying
no is I think it's a solution to a problem we don't have at this time,
Leo Dion (host): and the technology is not we'll see, but the
technology might not even be there.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
We are basing this on,
Leo Dion (host): we're potentially looking at an Apple Watch SE series zero
Peter Witham (guest): exactly.
That is what I, the comparison I drew earlier was, yeah, the first
Apple Watch seemed great until you tried to use it for a day, and then
it's like, why have I got this?
Leo Dion (host): What was the first iPhone you got?
Peter Witham (guest): was the 3g the 3G version
Leo Dion (host): like the third, that's the third version
Peter Witham (guest): I think it was the third one.
Actually it, so it was the one, wait, I've got it right here.
Let's have a look.
Hang on.
Leo Dion (host): Question.
I'm a, the reason I'm asking that is
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I think with the iPhone it took a few
versions before it got popular.
Like very few.
I don't think a lot of people bought the iPhone I, me, it was
iPhone four or, yeah, it was iPhone four was my first iPhone
Peter Witham (guest): it's that one with the curved.
Yeah.
3g.
Leo Dion (host): So I think with a lot of folks, like this first version
is not gonna be ready for primetime, quite frankly, and Apple, apple has
time to, to work on this and figure out what the space for this is, like the
Apple watch.
So I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's a failure.
I'm not saying it's a failure by any means.
I
Peter Witham (guest): oh, it won't be,
Leo Dion (host): It won't.
No, it won't be
Peter Witham (guest): it'll be hugely successful cause PE people just buy
Apple products without question.
Let's be honest.
If you break it down, if you think about it, it's only really the
equivalent of buying three iPhones, suddenly it doesn't sound so expensive
when you think about it that way, but like you said in my notes here, it's
not available to early next year.
So who knows what could happen to it between now and then, right?
Leo Dion (host): So I'm gonna go over the API stuff.
We got this idea of Windows volumes and spaces for putting 3D stuff in.
Right out of the box iOS apps are supported and Swift ui and
you could do a lot more with Zac.
Zac is the Swift UI equivalent of the Z level, I guess so to speak
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And that has bitten me.
Yeah, that has bitten me a few times with Zack.
So I'm glad that they got a tweak.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): do you do anything with Unity?
Okay.
Peter Witham (guest): the other thing I absolutely wanted to mention.
Yeah.
I do for those who keep up with my staff, I have a Unity game that I've
been working on for a long time.
Sit out there in beta.
But yes I do stuff with Unity and it was last year, IEV 360.
There was a course there was a video, I forget the gentleman's name about
using Unity with thrift, which was like, great, cuz all I ever want to do
is have Swift in unity and I'm happy.
So I was really happy to see that Apple continues to embrace unity.
I will say I can't help myself.
Yeah.
I'm sure some of it's to get it Epic and the Unreal Engine.
Of course,
Leo Dion (host): You think?
You think so?
Peter Witham (guest): It's gotta be, it's Apple,
Leo Dion (host): What's the, I?
No, I'm kidding.
What's the market?
What's the market share between Unity and Unreal?
Do you know?
Peter Witham (guest): I, based on my non-scientific folks that I know in
that Unity is definitely a lot more popular with the indie devs, right?
Even though it's not to tech technically not totally free, like
Unreal engineers until you get over whatever it is, a million dollars.
But it's a lot more, it's easier to get into, so the fact, yeah, the
fact that, they essentially said let me check my note here, that
Unity sits on top of the reality.
Yeah.
The reality kit.
Unity can sit on top of that is a massive deal for Unity, right?
That is essentially the official seal of a, of endorsement
from Apple saying, use Unity,
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Peter Witham (guest): Great.
That, that makes me nothing but happy.
Leo Dion (host): Are you gonna be doing any tutorials on this stuff and Unity?
Peter Witham (guest): I think I'm gonna have to at this point, right?
I'm actually learning on Real Engine because I just want to, but
I am still building, with Unity.
And clearly I have every good reason now to embrace, cuz the u the VR
and AR in Unity is really good.
Now there's a reason to go back and look at it again.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah I asked him, had a really good talk and he was on the
show talking about reality Composer.
I played around with it.
It's a really easy to use.
and I did, what is it not 3D Studio Max, I did 20 years ago.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah, me too.
Leo Dion (host): I know a little bit about 3D stuff, but not a lot.
But I'm really curious about this stuff here
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
And I
was just relearning.
Leo Dion (host): there's a lot of amazing stuff you can do in Reality
Kit that you're like, oh, I gotta Nope, it does it all for you.
Like typical Apple, so anchoring things to walls and stuff like that.
So yeah,
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
No,
Leo Dion (host): as intimidating as you think it is.
So definitely take a look at that.
Peter Witham (guest): So combine that with Unity and I was gonna
say I've recently started Learning Blender because I was a 3D Studio
Max guy, and I was like, why have I never learned Blender?
And I've done a couple of basic things, but again, all of this is yeah, okay.
3D models in any kind of vr, ar even with my phone, I added some ideas
I wanted to make some AR stuff.
And so I was like, I should learn Blender again.
So that plus Unity sitting on top of, reality kit and that I'm all for it,
Leo Dion (host): are you, do you say you have an Nintendo Switch?
Peter Witham (guest): I do have an Nintendo switch.
And there's no reason in the world that I've not thought
about publishing my game to it.
I should.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I don't want to make this too much of an episode, but
have you played tears of the kingdom?
Peter Witham (guest): I haven't.
No.
You like
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Peter Witham (guest): Okay.
That's good enough.
Leo Dion (host): be ge I'll be geeking about it in a future
episode when Adrian is on.
But
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): you like breath of the wild?
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Did I sound excited?
Leo Dion (host): the kingdom,
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): then you'll
Peter Witham (guest): That's what a, I've not found anyone yet that's
gone oh no, that was, that sucks.
Yeah, that's why I haven't got it.
Cause if I get it, That's gonna be it.
No more streams from me except that.
Leo Dion (host): no, there'll be streams.
It's just be streams of you play in the game.
Peter Witham (guest): Exactly.
Yeah.
Not making my game as people tell me you should be making your game,
Leo Dion (host): what do you think?
Okay, I wanna, was there anything else you wanna talk about?
Peter Witham (guest): No I think, yeah.
I think we covered all of the major,
Leo Dion (host): what do you think of the 2D on 3d like interface
like, To me, like that's, I think that's a really interesting
take on VR or AR or whatever.
Not su not surprising in some ways, but
Peter Witham (guest): I think it's a good idea.
Leo Dion (host): it's, yeah.
Golf clap, apple, like dynamic island.
This I think there, it's a very good, interesting take on UI
and that's why Apple is Apple.
So I like that.
I think that's cool.
Peter Witham (guest): And I also, I think it's very
comfortable for people, right?
We're used to a 2D in a interaction with our machines and to do to put you
in 3D with, that keeps me comfortable.
No weird
Leo Dion (host): we've
Peter Witham (guest): to adapt to.
Leo Dion (host): human beings are like evolution, whatever
we do 2d, much easier, period.
We've always done 2d.
It like, so like we have whiteboards, we have paper, we have The idea that
like, 3D is like a great way to do stuff all the time is not necessarily true.
And so I think like Apple sees that and is okay, yeah.
Like it makes sense to have a web browser be flat on a screen
and you scroll up with your finger and stuff like that.
It makes sense.
And then they have 3D stuff in iOS, like 3D effects, but they've
made that a little bit more actual 3d cuz we have two eyeballs
instead of, just a flat screen.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): So it'll be interesting to see their evolution on that.
Peter Witham (guest): No I agree.
And I think the other thing with 2d, especially with this,
the vision pro, and that is you can do 2D anywhere, right?
There's nothing distracting about it.
It doesn't, the fact that I've got a, I'm seeing a 3D environment in the
background, my brain just automatically filters that out to the 2d.
So I, I think that doing it, choosing to do it the way
they're doing it, is brilliant.
I can't think of a better way to onboard someone than to take the
familiar and put it in the unfamiliar and say, just don't worry about it.
I
Leo Dion (host): next year.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Next year.
So leg kit.
We're gonna get leg kit where we can put legs on spatial personas.
Peter Witham (guest): That's it.
That's what we need.
Leo Dion (host): And swift UI charts with like 3D topographic
curves or something, so
Peter Witham (guest): wouldn't that be?
Yeah.
And
Leo Dion (host): up with that swift package.
Peter Witham (guest): yeah let's, what they want us to do is all
of, they want all of us to forget.
Was it last year or the year before that?
Really?
No, it was on stage.
So it was a couple years ago that really awkward demonstration
with the 3D city, with the spacecraft coming over the table.
They want us to all just forget that version of 3D ar that never happened.
Leo Dion (host): They do real, they've done, say what
you will about the pandemic.
We're Apple's been a lot better at doing game demos, so
that's been
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
I think they learned a lot.
Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
Peter, is there anything else?
Peter Witham (guest): No
Leo Dion (host): of me bookmarking
Peter Witham (guest): I hear
you.
Leo Dion (host): tomorrow,
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, no, that's un until we get to go through
our sessions now, I think that's one of those whew, we survived day one.
Leo Dion (host): yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a big one, like we said in that episode, two episodes ago.
Take your time, guys, gals be picky about what you're gonna watch.
These videos are gonna be out there for a while.
I'm gonna be, are you gonna be streaming any of this stuff?
Peter Witham (guest): I think I will, I think what I'm gonna do is
download, do like you did, download Xcode make sure I can run it, and
then if I can run it, see if some of the new stuff is available, and then
I'll probably live stream playing around with some of that stuff.
Some of my fellow live streamers that we have on our Discord, I
have no doubt they will, because they are just amazing folks.
I'm confident that if anyone's interested, go out there looking,
you're gonna find a ton of people playing with this stuff, and as we
Leo Dion (host): already video tutorials posted on swift data.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): I'm not that quick.
Sorry folks.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah, me too.
I was like, no, I'm just barely catching up on my notes.
But worst case, we will go out there and totally destroy our machines by breaking
all these things so you don't have to.
Leo Dion (host): Enough.
And now following your advice on backing up.
Peter Witham (guest): Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Don't bother with that.
Don't listen to that guy.
Yeah
Leo Dion (host): so people could follow Peter on his YouTube channel.
What's the name?
Is it Compile Swift or Peter?
Peter Witham (guest): No, it's Peter Whitham, actually.
Just YouTube slash Peter Whitham.
And then with, for everything else, yeah.
Leo Dion (host): yep.
And then I'm here on YouTube at Bright Digit.
So if you are listening to this, you can go to YouTube slash
youtube.com/bright digit to catch any stuff I'm be posting this week.
I have a ton of recordings next week.
We'll be talking with Pedro Panera Tu.
We're gonna be talking about build tools.
Hiday the great designer Hiday Vanderplug is gonna be on.
We're gonna talk about watch o s 10.
Adrian Eaves is gonna come on and we'll probably talk about
how to implement ultra hand with.
Vision that's a, this azel forever.
Sorry.
We'll see.
We'll talk about something about this year.
And maybe I'll might get some surprise guests on to talk about
reality kit ar, kit vision, something like that this summer.
So I have a busy summer ahead of me.
Thank you Peter for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
Peter Witham (guest): pleasure.
As always, Leo you and I, we could sit here for days talking about
this stuff again, thank you for having me come back yet again.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you.
Leo Dion (host): Peter with them at YouTube, a Andal Swift Twitter.
People can if you watching this on YouTube, please and
subscribe, share this with folks.
I'll be and then if you're listening to us on Podcast Player,
please give me a good review and share it with others as well.
I look forward to talking to you.
Hopefully I'll have another episode out next week.
We'll see.
Everybody enjoy your day.
Take it easy.
Enjoy WWDC week.
Talk to you later.
Bye everybody.