Empower Apps

Adam Rush from SwiftLeeds comes on the show to prognosticate and dream with me the possibilities of WWDC 2024 and how advancements in AI as well as the new Vision Pro will affect this year's developer conference.

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  • (00:00) - What is Swift Leeds
  • (07:30) - WWDC 2024 and AI
  • (30:00) - Future of UIKit
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Creators & Guests

Host
Leo Dion
Swift developer for Apple devices and more; Founder of BrightDigit; husband and father of 6 adorable kids
Guest
Adam Rush
#iOSDev building iOS apps for over a decade. Founder of @swift_leeds, articles at https://t.co/Pob24FCKN6, built @vstackapp, currently @circuitapp

What is Empower Apps?

An exploration of Apple business news and technology. We talk about how businesses can use new technology to empower their business and employees, from Leo Dion, founder of BrightDigit.

[00:00:00] What is Swift Leeds
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[00:00:00] Leo Dion (host): ​welcome to another episode of Empower Apps. I'm your host, Leo Deanne. Today I'm joined by Adam Rush. Adam, so glad you can make it on today.

[00:00:12] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:14] Leo Dion (host): Adam and I met at Deep Dish, which I'll be going to this year, so I'm super excited about that. I don't know, are you going.

[00:00:21] Adam Rush (guest): Was it Deep Dish? We met, I think it was. I

[00:00:24] Leo Dion (host): Or was it 360? I dove.

[00:00:26] Adam Rush (guest): it was 360 iDev. Yeah.

[00:00:28] Leo Dion (host): Okay. Okay.

[00:00:30] Adam Rush (guest): Another conference.

[00:00:33] Leo Dion (host): So many.

[00:00:33] Leo Dion (host): Yeah.

[00:00:34] Leo Dion (host): So I'll let you start by introducing yourself.

[00:00:38] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah. So my name's Adam rush, as you've said. I live here in the uk and have done I was born here, of course. But I've traveled all over the world, speaking also working as well. But nowadays I try to live a slower pace of life, shall we say. I say a slower pace of life, but I dunno.

[00:00:56] Leo Dion (host): Putting a, hosting a conference, nothing big. Yeah, totally.

[00:00:59] Adam Rush (guest): yeah. I live here with my wife and two children. So that also keeps me, busy here at home. So yeah, I've been an iOS dev since the iPhone three GS came around so however many years that was. And I've been doing that ever since,

[00:01:14] Leo Dion (host): What what got you interested in iPhone development?

[00:01:18] Adam Rush (guest): so it was an interesting story. So I was doing, I was mainly messing around doing websites and, ting around with stuff like that. And it was my brother actually who bought the 3G the iPhone 3G. And he's a bit older than me, but he was like showing off, look at this phone.

[00:01:38] Adam Rush (guest): I've got this phone. And I was playing. Super ignorant. I was like, ah, terrible phone. I'd never want that phone, but deep down I was super jealous. And I was just so annoyed that he got this phone and and then I was like nagging my parents

[00:01:53] Adam Rush (guest): to, to buy me the next iPhone.

[00:01:56] Adam Rush (guest): And luckily they did which was the free gs. And then just by sheer

[00:02:01] Adam Rush (guest): curiosity, I started investigating what apps were and how they were built and all this sort of stuff. And that's how it spiraled into what it turned out to be.

[00:02:11] Leo Dion (host): What we will, we'll start by talking about the big event we have going on. I think as of the recording ticket sales have been out. So you have a big conference that you host. You wanna talk about that a little bit?

[00:02:26] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah so I'm the organizer, founder of Swift Leads. We're rolling onto our fourth year, fourth edition. And yeah, ticket sales have literally gone on sale yesterday as of today. But obviously this is going out further on. But we've just released tickets and yeah, super exciting time when we launch tickets, it's it's quite magical because, here I am launching a conference and.

[00:02:50] Adam Rush (guest): Five years ago I had this idea to do this, and I

[00:02:54] Adam Rush (guest): thought maybe 50 people will turn up. And maybe people I know and associate will, will support me and buy tickets. But now, we're at a level where we have people buying tickets who I'm not sure who they are, so it's quite overwhelming because I'm like, I don't know this person.

[00:03:08] Adam Rush (guest): What, how did they find swift leads,

[00:03:10] Leo Dion (host): what so why did you wanna start Swift Leads? What was your goal? I.

[00:03:15] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, so I've always been a huge fan of conferences. I think they're super important for the community for us all to have to for those to exist. And I. When I started doing iOS development, I was, reading tutorials and doing what everyone else does when they're starting out.

[00:03:31] Adam Rush (guest): And I found a conference in the uk iOS, WK and I thought, I should go to this and see what it's about. And from that moment, everything changed. I had such an amazing time and. I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna attend conferences. And I kept attending conferences and then I started getting into speaking and going to more conferences in different countries and stuff.

[00:03:52] Adam Rush (guest): And at that point I thought, I think we can do something different. I think there's a gap in conferences that we can or could be fulfilled. And I always had this idea for years and I just kept parking the idea. 'cause I thought, I'm not capable of doing something like that.

[00:04:07] Adam Rush (guest): It's a lot of work. Maybe there's

[00:04:08] Adam Rush (guest): not enough space in the UK for another conference. So my rationale was I saw a gap of a conference being a little bit different, and I thought, I've got a lot of ideas I can give to a conference. And that was the driver to, to, spinning up Swift, leads.

[00:04:25] Leo Dion (host): I want you to have that opportunity to make your sales pitch. Why should people go to swift leads. this year?

[00:04:31] Adam Rush (guest): Swift leads is different to, to most conferences, I would say. And there's quite a few reasons why that is. I'd say the number one reason is where non-profit. Nobody taking part in the conference is making money. The only people that make money is the venue and, people who provide equipment higher and all that kind of stuff.

[00:04:50] Adam Rush (guest): Otherwise we don't make money. So what that means is we can keep ticket prices affordable, so we could keep the ticket costs. Pretty low in comparison to other conferences, but then it also means everything we do generate, we pump back into the conference. And you've only gotta look at the swag that we hand out, is high quality.

[00:05:09] Adam Rush (guest): It's unique in, in many ways, we think people get the value of that or see the value of that when they come to the conference. So that's probably like the number one reason. The next reason is we give so many new first time speakers an opportunity. I. To be on stage and present.

[00:05:29] Adam Rush (guest): I think last year alone it was like 80% were first time speakers or something like that. So you don't see this? Yeah. You don't see the same typical speakers. We I. We get new people on stage we give them that training that they need and, we give 'em the opportunity they need.

[00:05:47] Adam Rush (guest): So that's another sort of unique u uniqueness to swift leads. And then the other thing I would say is the environment we create is very fun. It's very playful. We have the lights on the stage. We, we give a

[00:05:58] Adam Rush (guest): lot of energy into the conference. You're not in a lecture room.

[00:06:02] Adam Rush (guest): You're in a big theater. It's, it's,

[00:06:05] Adam Rush (guest): got that sort of playful element and we think that creates a,

[00:06:09] Adam Rush (guest): an environment where

[00:06:10] Adam Rush (guest): people can, network, they can learn, they can collaborate with others, a real sort of inclusive environment where people can thrive.

[00:06:18] Leo Dion (host): What are some topics you're interested in this year as far as what do you think is gonna be hot? As far as what people are interested in. I know there's a certain product that's coming out today that probably there's gonna be a few talks on today, the day of the recording.

[00:06:36] Leo Dion (host): So there's that. What else do you think is gonna be hot at Swift swift leads this year?

[00:06:42] Adam Rush (guest): I think for sure Vision Pro is gonna be it's gonna be up there and tap it into Vision Os. I'm not sure actually we're doing something slightly different this year in the sense that we're gonna open this is an exclusive by the way. We're gonna open call for papers twice.

[00:06:56] Adam Rush (guest): So we're gonna open it on, yeah, so we're gonna open it on the 1st of March, like we we normally do, but then we're gonna also open it after WW dc to see if there's any anything we might have missed that, that. That could be introduced this year because I don't know, I was looking at the I was looking at some articles over the course of this week and it looks like iOS 18 is getting a huge like undertaking.

[00:07:21] Adam Rush (guest): So I'm really curious about what AI

[00:07:23] Adam Rush (guest): stuff they're introducing into iOS and yeah, maybe that's gonna be some hot topic that could be at swift leads.

[00:07:30] WWDC 2024 and AI
---

[00:07:30] Leo Dion (host): Let's talk about that, we did the last episode about the Vision Pro and the EU stuff and the AppSource stuff with Kyle which was awesome. But today let's talk about like your expectations for dubbed up. What, so you've read I saw a few bits and pieces today about AI and iOS 18.

[00:07:49] Leo Dion (host): You wanna what if you read if much when it, in regards to that,

[00:07:53] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, so they, obviously this is very much speculation that,

[00:07:58] Leo Dion (host): and it could change by the time the episode comes out for all we know. Yeah. But go ahead.

[00:08:03] Adam Rush (guest): But it looks like a lot of the AI is getting. I guess like Syria in a nutshell, I think he's gonna be changing quite a lot in the sense that it's gonna be a lot more predictive in, in, in, and what it suggests to the user. So I think Siri is gonna be massively changing in this OS release. And I think we're gonna see a lot less emphasis on hardware and more emphasis on software. And I think AI is probably gonna be up there in, in that. That's what Apple is seeking to promote.

[00:08:37] Adam Rush (guest): So I think yeah we saw Siri starting to, predict hey you're going

[00:08:42] Adam Rush (guest): to,

[00:08:43] Adam Rush (guest): This location again are you visiting X place? And that's already built into the ls, but I think we'll see the next level of that where, perhaps, perhaps suey is, inserting calendar events for that place or little things like that and taking it to that next

[00:08:59] Adam Rush (guest): level.

[00:09:00] Leo Dion (host): It seems like Apple's kind of in an awkward position they've been doing machine learning for a while and they've been pushing it.

[00:09:07] Leo Dion (host): And chat GPT comes out and now we have all this other stuff that's come out since that has like skyrocketed and been super popular and useful and we've talked about how I've used it. Now it's like we're still like, if you try using Siri, it's like feeling like you're using something from 15 years ago and it's like an awkward position

[00:09:25] Leo Dion (host): like what do you think is different from I can, I know it's different, but I'm gonna ask you about what machine learning that Apple has been doing and the machine learning and the stuff that's been coming out in the last like year or so, and not just obviously it's better, but what do you think?

[00:09:42] Leo Dion (host): Why do you think Apple is behind in a way when they've invested so much time in it at the same time?

[00:09:50] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, I think, apple are very clever, right? In that they watch the market very closely and they're never too quick to, make a decision on fi, right? So like the Vision Pro, for example, we know they've been watching that space for many years.

[00:10:03] Adam Rush (guest): And perhaps they'd be doing the same here. Although I think chat, GPT was maybe an outlier in the sense that they just snuck up on everyone and went, Hey look at this. I think, but I think the real answer is probably. Apple has to be, I guess they've gotta tread very carefully with machine learning when it comes to, there's so much at stake, right on the device.

[00:10:24] Adam Rush (guest): There's so much personal information on the device. I think they've I think they've definitely got the capability to predict a lot of things, but I think

[00:10:34] Adam Rush (guest): at the same time they're probably very cautious about, what data they're using to predict that. How much data do they need to predict that?

[00:10:41] Adam Rush (guest): I think. That might be the fin, the very fin that's

[00:10:44] Leo Dion (host): Yep,

[00:10:45] Adam Rush (guest): holding back a little bit.

[00:10:47] Leo Dion (host): that's exactly what I was gonna say. I think like Apple has invested

[00:10:50] Leo Dion (host): all their time and money in on machine or on, excuse me, on device

[00:10:55] Leo Dion (host): machine

[00:10:55] Leo Dion (host): learning. And while that's very good for privacy purposes it really makes it much more

[00:11:03] Leo Dion (host): difficult to

[00:11:04] Leo Dion (host): do the heavy lifting that. Stuff like chat, GPT does, which is

[00:11:08] Leo Dion (host): all cloud-based essentially.

[00:11:10] Leo Dion (host): That's that was one of the things that like I didn't understand about chat. GPT was like, oh, like you have to you have to get a massive server to get it up and running and to do all that stuff. And like Microsoft is basically lending them a ton of Azure resources to get where they're going.

[00:11:26] Leo Dion (host): And that has severe limitations on privacy obviously, but also not, it's not really Apple's wheelhouse is like the cloud per se. Yeah, and I'm not so sure. Yeah I'm really curious to see how they're gonna get away with being still being the privacy company while also taking advantage of machine learning.

[00:11:48] Leo Dion (host): Right.

[00:11:48] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, I think it's gonna, be interesting to see how they do that. But I also know they've invested huge amounts of resources into the

[00:11:56] Adam Rush (guest): Siri team. So they, yeah, I think it's definitely I the horizon, I would say. But yeah

[00:12:02] Leo Dion (host): Do you think we're gonna do you think when you say they've invested a lot, like they've invested a lot and we haven't seen anything because they're hiding it or because they

[00:12:09] Leo Dion (host): haven't made many, much success.

[00:12:12] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, I dunno. I think

[00:12:14] Leo Dion (host): Okay. yeah,

[00:12:15] Leo Dion (host): Because that's why I'm not sure about either.

[00:12:18] Adam Rush (guest): yeah, I think it's probably the first one though because

[00:12:20] Adam Rush (guest): I don't I'm not sure they've been working on

[00:12:22] Adam Rush (guest): that for a huge amount of time. I think it's probably one to two years of. Of time that they've probably, do you know what I mean?

[00:12:30] Leo Dion (host): So you think they've like purposely not like they haven't done much and then all of a sudden, in the last one to two years, now they're gonna start investing

[00:12:37] Adam Rush (guest): the ramp up. Yeah.

[00:12:39] Leo Dion (host): Okay. Because it seems like it comes in fits and spurts with Siri. It's Yeah. And Go ahead.

[00:12:45] Adam Rush (guest): Now we're just gonna say, I think I think with the whole

[00:12:49] Adam Rush (guest): open AI and what's been going on, I think

[00:12:51] Adam Rush (guest): that's probably.

[00:12:52] Adam Rush (guest): Helped shift it into the priority list.

[00:12:55] Leo Dion (host): Yeah. Yep.

[00:12:57] Adam Rush (guest): got gone up because of what's gone on in the market.

[00:13:00] Leo Dion (host): The other thing I think that we don't recognize as much, especially with the cer the vision program is how much. Apple is already doing when it comes to machine learning in a lot of places that are not as obvious, which is Apple style anyway, when it comes to noticing the finger pinch and face recognition and all that on device stuff that we just take for granted that's behind the scenes.

[00:13:23] Leo Dion (host): Like Apple's been more invested in that space in the ton of machine learning that the Vision Pro and the iPhone and. those devices do as opposed to like the more obvious chat GPT where you're talking to someone. So I think that's another thing to recognize is like we think of machine learning and we think of AI just as talking to someone.

[00:13:47] Leo Dion (host): That's obvious, but there's a lot of other stuff that's going on behind the scenes.

[00:13:52] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, and they did a ton of work on Xcode, I think it was maybe three years ago or four years ago where they basically rebuilt the whole predictive side of Xcode. I can't remember what year it was. But yeah,

[00:14:04] Leo Dion (host): machine learning under the hood.

[00:14:06] Adam Rush (guest): yeah.

[00:14:07] Leo Dion (host): I did not

[00:14:07] Leo Dion (host): know that. That's pretty amazing.

[00:14:11] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, so

[00:14:11] Leo Dion (host): Go ahead.

[00:14:12] Adam Rush (guest): yeah. So I was just saying, or

[00:14:14] Adam Rush (guest): completing certain functions or like suggesting what's coming next. Yeah, I can't remember what it was. It was like

[00:14:22] Adam Rush (guest): maybe three years ago or so,

[00:14:23] Leo Dion (host): good. It is really good compared to the way it used to be. Even when it's not objective C or Swift code it's oh yeah. I get an idea what you're trying to Do here. Now, the question that a lot of devs will want to ask is, will we ever see a co-pilot essentially like with GitHub And Microsoft have in Xcode.

[00:14:42] Adam Rush (guest): I think I

[00:14:42] Leo Dion (host): like how would they get away with it for privacy reasons? Because a lot of people are like classic Apple now because privacy of their own work. What do you think

[00:14:52] Adam Rush (guest): I think it'll only happen if I. They build it themselves, so I don't think we'll see it anytime soon. I think maybe

[00:14:59] Adam Rush (guest): it could happen but I don't think it'll be soon because they're never gonna say, okay, we're gonna adopt, copilot for example.

[00:15:06] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, of course they build up themselves. Yeah.

[00:15:08] Adam Rush (guest): But obviously that's gonna take up, but who knows, right? They might come out in four months time and say, Hey,

[00:15:14] Adam Rush (guest): look at what, look what we've built.

[00:15:16] Leo Dion (host): Have you played around with copilot in Visual Studio Code?

[00:15:20] Adam Rush (guest): I've only used it a little bit.

[00:15:22] Adam Rush (guest): So I use VS quite a lot for the scripting side of stuff that I'm building. But I only trialed it. I've

[00:15:28] Adam Rush (guest): never built a whole project

[00:15:29] Adam Rush (guest): Or anything like that.

[00:15:31] Leo Dion (host): When I do web dev, I've been using it and I'm just amazed at its ability to know what CSS I'm gonna like a vi, CSS is rather visual, right? As far as oh, what you wanna do. And like knows, oh, you did this with this paragraph, so obviously you wanna do this.

[00:15:45] Leo Dion (host): And yeah I love it. It's amazing. I don't need it, but man, that's like really nice to have.

[00:15:52] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah. Yeah. I've been using chat GPT like sometimes I'll paste it like a snippet of a bash script and wow.

[00:16:00] Adam Rush (guest): It's it can just tweak it ever so slightly. Just based on

[00:16:03] Adam Rush (guest): The. Recommended, like, the best practice. But I don't

[00:16:06] Adam Rush (guest): know those best practices because I, it's not something I do all the

[00:16:09] Adam Rush (guest): time, so it's really nice.

[00:16:12] Adam Rush (guest): It would just be like, oh yeah, this is how you would format your

[00:16:14] Adam Rush (guest): arguments or whatever.

[00:16:16] Leo Dion (host): So I've taken my laziness to another level where I'll just ask Che GP write me a bash script that

[00:16:22] Adam Rush (guest): okay.

[00:16:23] Leo Dion (host): and I'd say it's pretty good. Honestly, it's when I like start being like can you do this too? Can you do this? I was recently, I was doing

[00:16:31] Leo Dion (host): I wanted to write a bunch of unit tests for a library I'm working on, and I was like.

[00:16:36] Leo Dion (host): Write a bash script that finds every public function and creates a corresponding test file with the same directory story. Pretty complicated. And I just wanted to, I was like, yeah, screw it. Let it do it. And it was okay. It's the, it was fine at first, but the more and more I added more caveats, the more it was like, yeah, this isn't working.

[00:16:56] Leo Dion (host): It is what it is.

[00:16:57] Adam Rush (guest): yeah, and I've

[00:16:58] Adam Rush (guest): experienced that as well. I was doing

[00:17:00] Adam Rush (guest): some RegX on, on

[00:17:03] Leo Dion (host): oh, yeah, that's another good one.

[00:17:05] Adam Rush (guest): and it

[00:17:06] Adam Rush (guest): I was like, yeah, but you've not covered this case. So it would tweak the RegX slightly and then it would break. And I was like, yeah, that don't work. And then it'd tweak it again and it's yeah, that don't work.

[00:17:15] Adam Rush (guest): So it just wasn't

[00:17:16] Leo Dion (host): W it.

[00:17:17] Leo Dion (host): feels like whack-a-mole where, it's like you tell it, fix this thing, and then something breaks and then you're like oh, fix that thing. But then the other thing breaks that affix previously and it's like it doesn't, yeah. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good.

[00:17:31] Adam Rush (guest): it's pretty good. Yeah, we, I don't think we, we can complain too much. Know, it's it is pretty amazing, but yeah, it is not, it's not perfect.

[00:17:39] Leo Dion (host): So let's talk a little bit more about our expectations. What do you think where do you think more of like the generative AI stuff might fit in with iOS 18?

[00:17:50] Adam Rush (guest): I think a lot more. I think we might see a lot more suggestive activity in, in iOS. I think sometimes you might see in iOS 17, you've got your notification screen. Or the home screen. And you might see a suggestion like I got one other day I think it was, I can't remember what it was, but it, I don't think it was the journal 'cause that, I think that was like a push notification.

[00:18:11] Adam Rush (guest): I think that was like a scheduled push, but

[00:18:13] Leo Dion (host): Okay.

[00:18:14] Adam Rush (guest): it was something like, you normally do this right? This is what you normally do at this time of day. I think that'll get a lot more powerful in terms of. Better at predicting what you do throughout the day. I think we'll see a lot more suggestive, um, behavior there.

[00:18:32] Adam Rush (guest): I think we'll also see, like the journal is a great example where they're using like notifications. I think we'll see the next level of notification. Center we've already seen how they've overhauled that, right? Where the grouping notifications, they're also muting. You can mute notifications, but I think maybe is there a little bit more they can do there?

[00:18:49] Adam Rush (guest): 'cause it can still be quite noisy. Perhaps you just don't respond to a notification, so they'll

[00:18:54] Adam Rush (guest): just never give you it. That kinda behavior. So

[00:18:59] Adam Rush (guest): I think that might be something we'll see. I think overall we'll just see a more stable platform. I think it'll be a lot more polished.

[00:19:07] Adam Rush (guest): I don't think there'll be anything

[00:19:09] Adam Rush (guest): massive, but I think it'll be a lot more kind of polished.

[00:19:12] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Anything else as far as iPhone is concerned you wanna talk about

[00:19:18] Adam Rush (guest): No, I don't think honestly, I don't think the iPhone is gonna be

[00:19:22] Adam Rush (guest): hugely different, to be honest. I don't think.

[00:19:26] Leo Dion (host): other than the,

[00:19:26] Leo Dion (host): AI sprinkled

[00:19:28] Adam Rush (guest): the yeah, I think the

[00:19:30] Adam Rush (guest): look, look, I don't think we can dispute that the focus is gonna be on the

[00:19:34] Adam Rush (guest): Vision Pro, right? It is. I just think it's gonna dominate every part of dub.

[00:19:39] Adam Rush (guest): Right.

[00:19:40] Leo Dion (host): Do you. So you haven't done much. I. neither of us have done much with Vision Os so unfortunately I don't think we can really speak about what we expect per se in the next six months. I'm sure there's stuff that they have on the back burner that they were waiting to do on Vision Os too, but Yeah.

[00:19:57] Leo Dion (host): What, is there anything you can think of?

[00:19:59] Adam Rush (guest): I think what we're gonna see is we're gonna see I. They very released a pr this week, yesterday or this morning a press release showing 600 apps for Vision Pro or something like that. I think we're gonna see I, we're gonna see the usual marketing right around, this device being sold out, it's now in the hands of real people. This is how it's helping people day to day

[00:20:22] Adam Rush (guest): We've already got developers building apps. We've got 600 apps built specifically for vision product. We're gonna see this this usual push from from Apple. And then I think looking forward I think they'll just keep building on that.

[00:20:34] Adam Rush (guest): And then I'm just banking on a cheaper device, like I'm just waiting for this cheaper, more affordable vision pro.

[00:20:41] Leo Dion (host): I just saw a post today. We, I was talking to Kyle in the

[00:20:44] Leo Dion (host): last episode, like I didn't see any like

[00:20:47] Leo Dion (host): business apps, but it sounds like Microsoft is gonna start building teams and office

[00:20:53] Leo Dion (host): for vision os.

[00:20:54] Leo Dion (host): That's a really good sign.

[00:20:55] Leo Dion (host): I think two might see more like tutorials of

[00:20:58] Leo Dion (host): Here's how to bring your iPhone app to the Vision, vision Os, or here's how to bring your iPad app to Vision Os.

[00:21:05] Leo Dion (host): 'cause I think that's probably where they'll push it more, supposed to adding more features is trying to help people transition to Vision Os 'cause that's really what they want. I think I could see a lot of tutorials like that.

[00:21:17] Adam Rush (guest): I think we will, but I. think the vision press slightly different. These days because if you support iPad, you're pretty much fine. Like it'll look great on Vision Pro, Right,

[00:21:30] Leo Dion (host): But I think there could be like bells and whistles where it's like I don't, I'm not as familiar with Mac Catalyst, but I would assume

[00:21:35] Leo Dion (host): it's something like that where it's yeah, you can just bring your iPad app over, but here are some things you could do to make it better on the

[00:21:41] Leo Dion (host): Mac.

[00:21:43] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, it

[00:21:43] Leo Dion (host): that.

[00:21:44] Adam Rush (guest): exactly that. And then I think we'll see a lot of tutorials of just building for Vision Pro, right? Building a brand new app for Vision Pro. And that's when you really could take advantage of all the, I. Uniqueness to Vision Pro.

[00:21:58] Adam Rush (guest): But I think it's slightly different in the sense that yeah, you could, if you've got an app,

[00:22:02] Adam Rush (guest): Already and it's, using Swifty Wire, then it's pretty much gonna render pretty nicely in, in Vision Pro.

[00:22:09] Adam Rush (guest): Granted, it's gonna be a window, right? It's gonna look like the iPad or however. Big, you make the window in the in the Vision Pro Screen. What do we call it?

[00:22:20] Leo Dion (host): Yeah.

[00:22:20] Adam Rush (guest): Then it'll look fine. It'll work fine. It, it responds to all of the same touches keyboard interactions, that kind of thing.

[00:22:26] Adam Rush (guest): It's

[00:22:26] Adam Rush (guest): basically the same. But I think, yeah, we'll see a lot of tutorials

[00:22:30] Adam Rush (guest): of how to build a Vision Pro app, that, that kind of thing.

[00:22:34] Leo Dion (host): What do you think we'll see with the other oss as far as last year was a big watch here, so I don't feel like we're gonna get a lot there. TV is always there, it's a thing. The Mac are we gonna see anything on the Mac front? I don't know,

[00:22:49] Leo Dion (host): what I wish they keep fixing bugs, but good luck with that.

[00:22:54] Adam Rush (guest): yeah it's interesting that I think we'll just see the small additions that we tend to see. And it's funny, isn't it? 'cause like for people who have been around

[00:23:02] Adam Rush (guest): For many years, they used to make a,

[00:23:03] Adam Rush (guest): big song, a dance about,

[00:23:05] Adam Rush (guest): big features, right? Where, because they were big at the time, but now we're getting to a point where, features like small improvements are like big features. I remember they, they brought out like stickers on iMessage or something like that. And it was

[00:23:18] Leo Dion (host): Oh, there's always those things, right?

[00:23:20] Adam Rush (guest): WWDC. It was

[00:23:21] Leo Dion (host): Was it animos?

[00:23:23] Adam Rush (guest): that, yeah, something like

[00:23:25] Leo Dion (host): I mean there's always these things that they push that kind of people forget about. What's the, what is the thing that came out either last year or two years ago that was like on the iPad and Mac, where you could

[00:23:35] Leo Dion (host): See all your apps?

[00:23:37] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah. Yes.

[00:23:38] Leo Dion (host): I don't know anybody that

[00:23:39] Leo Dion (host): uses

[00:23:40] Leo Dion (host): stage manager. Do you?

[00:23:42] Adam Rush (guest): No.

[00:23:43] Leo Dion (host): That's actually I wanted, do you wanna talk about one other device that we have mentioned, but the iPad? Yeah. I'm like, I feel every year they try to make it a thing, and I know they're like desperate to make a

[00:23:55] Leo Dion (host): big redesign of it.

[00:23:57] Leo Dion (host): And I

[00:23:57] Leo Dion (host): know there's this rumor about a 13 inch iPad air, but I don't know what they're gonna do with the iPad. It's you know what I mean?

[00:24:04] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, it's it's in that middle ground of it is almost doing. What a Mac can do, but it's also a device you can hold and touch. And it's like a, it's a difficult 'cause I remember Microsoft did this right? With the I can't remember. Yeah. Was it the surface or the one before that? Yeah, but it was a version of Microsoft and it was like, yeah, this don't work for any device that isn't touch.

[00:24:30] Adam Rush (guest): So I think it's a tough challenge to, I, it's a hard nut to crack, but I think I think we'll see the usual improvements and changes to make it better for working for an environment to, to work in. But I'm not sure.

[00:24:45] Adam Rush (guest): Actually it is, I think the feature where you can have the split screen, right?

[00:24:50] Adam Rush (guest): So you can have two apps open. I think there's a lot more they could do that, like even having more of a grid. So you could have a split screen vertically, but maybe horizontal. Can you do that?

[00:25:00] Adam Rush (guest): I don't think that's,

[00:25:01] Leo Dion (host): no, you cannot do horizontal. You can only do

[00:25:03] Adam Rush (guest): So maybe. Maybe there's more

[00:25:06] Adam Rush (guest): layout fins they could do to improve the

[00:25:10] Adam Rush (guest): working side of it, people that work on the iPad so maybe we'll see things like that and it would be really nice if they could open that up as well for

[00:25:18] Adam Rush (guest): developers so you can,

[00:25:20] Leo Dion (host): I think like to me, like the biggest hurdle. Is the business case and the lack of cross application like sharing. I think those are the two big hurdles with the iPad and if they can figure those out somehow I. I think it, it could be better, but it's just hard. Especially, I've been saying this, especially since the Apple silicon transition, like it's, you can get a Mac cheaper that does more than you can for an iPad Pro, and it's yeah,

[00:25:52] Adam Rush (guest): yeah. it's who's, who's buying the iPad? What's the target market for the

[00:25:56] Adam Rush (guest): iPad? Because like you say, if you're working, you could get, a Mac for

[00:26:00] Adam Rush (guest): the, yeah,

[00:26:02] Leo Dion (host): cheaper.

[00:26:03] Adam Rush (guest): So yeah, always the target

[00:26:06] Adam Rush (guest): market,

[00:26:07] Adam Rush (guest): more the casual

[00:26:09] Adam Rush (guest): playing games or, taking notes, studying that, that kind of thing.

[00:26:13] Leo Dion (host): Look, I did notice yesterday at the coffee shop that there were a couple people, at least two or three people with iPads and keyboards,

[00:26:19] Adam Rush (guest): oh, okay. Yeah,

[00:26:21] Leo Dion (host): It's still a thing, I guess so, yeah, we'll see about this here. You wanna talk, I wanna talk about SWIFT and X code. There is one big feature I'm looking forward to.

[00:26:31] Leo Dion (host): I don't, so we got five 10 coming out pretty soon in X code. 15 three I believe.

[00:26:39] Leo Dion (host): I don't know if. X code 16 will be I don't think it's gonna be six. Six is gonna be a while, but I do think it'll probably be five 11 or five 12 or something. The big feature I'm really looking forward to is typed throws.

[00:26:53] Leo Dion (host): Have you seen this?

[00:26:54] Adam Rush (guest): I've not, no.

[00:26:56] Leo Dion (host): So we're getting typed throws pretty soon where we can specify the type of error that gets thrown. I think that's

[00:27:04] Adam Rush (guest): Ah,

[00:27:04] Leo Dion (host): really looking forward to.

[00:27:07] Adam Rush (guest): I think I did see this actually on something. Yeah,

[00:27:09] Leo Dion (host): the big problems with errors is like we don't know what type, like we don't know what error gets thrown. And so if it's, if you know what error is gonna actually be thrown, because you're the one defining the function, when you catch it, there's no way you have to have a catch. For for every error type, even though you'll never throw

[00:27:32] Leo Dion (host): those other error types. Does that make

[00:27:34] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense? Yeah.

[00:27:36] Adam Rush (guest): It almost feels like why is it only just coming now? Like it feels

[00:27:40] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, I think it's like a oversight when they started adding truck catch and like they're finally getting it in now that now that they have the time to do it, go ahead.

[00:27:49] Adam Rush (guest): not real, I've not really been keeping an eye on like the proposals and stuff. Is, there any other is that the sort of key takeaway for you? I've not really seen

[00:27:59] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, that's the one that I know in the public. I don't know that we have a macro or a swift UI type thing that's gonna

[00:28:07] Leo Dion (host): be, that's

[00:28:09] Leo Dion (host): on the docket. I think a lot of where SWIFT is at is preparing for

[00:28:14] Leo Dion (host): Swift six and Swift six is essentially like more

[00:28:18] Leo Dion (host): and more tightening on the async away front.

[00:28:22] Leo Dion (host): If you enable. Some of the, like the checks that go in with Swift six, I think I posted an article about that before. But you can enable that and get warnings and see what issues you will see in the future. It's a lot of it is like more strict concurrency checking.

[00:28:42] Adam Rush (guest): Okay.

[00:28:43] Leo Dion (host): so yeah, it's gonna be, I think they're just getting ready for, excuse me.

[00:28:48] Leo Dion (host): I think they're getting ready for that. 'cause I don't know of any. Rumored or proposed changes to Swift that are like kind of hints to what big features might be coming out, if so we had DSL before Swift UI and we had macros before SWIFT data.

[00:29:04] Leo Dion (host): So I don't see anything like that this year.

[00:29:06] Leo Dion (host): It was already a big year last year with macros and swift data. I just can't imagine that we're gonna get something else big.

[00:29:12] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah.

[00:29:13] Adam Rush (guest): I don't think so. I think it'll be like a. I think it'll be like any other year where we've

[00:29:19] Adam Rush (guest): seen previously.

[00:29:21] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah,

[00:29:21] Leo Dion (host): I think it's the off year. 'cause last year was so

[00:29:24] Adam Rush (guest): it's exactly, yeah. I think it, and we see this approach quite a lot, where there's like big, huge changes and then it's we need to slow down.

[00:29:34] Adam Rush (guest): We need to fix fix issues, get it stable.

[00:29:37] Leo Dion (host): Fix swift data that's

[00:29:40] Adam Rush (guest): I've not used, I've not done to, to be honest. I, in my day job, I we're still UI kit. We have a little bit of Swift UI stuff. Like we've just built the live activity, the dynamic island. We've built all that in Swift y and we're also looking at the watch

[00:29:55] Adam Rush (guest): which is probably gonna be in, in swift y but we've not we've not.

[00:29:59] Adam Rush (guest): Done a

[00:29:59] Leo Dion (host): So

[00:29:59] Adam Rush (guest): be honest.

[00:30:00] Future of UIKit
---

[00:30:00] Leo Dion (host): That's interesting 'cause it's like the stuff you've done in Swift y, swift UI is the stuff you have to do in Swift ui, right? Like live activities is not available on UI

[00:30:11] Leo Dion (host): kit. If you want it, if you want to torture yourself and do a watch kit, you

[00:30:14] Leo Dion (host): could, but,

[00:30:16] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah.

[00:30:17] Leo Dion (host): Swift ui, is basically

[00:30:18] Leo Dion (host): the way to

[00:30:19] Leo Dion (host): develop in the watch. And do you, what do you think so you do a lot of UI kit right now? Correct.

[00:30:26] Adam Rush (guest): Yep.

[00:30:27] Leo Dion (host): Where how does it feel, how does it feel to still be a UI kit developer? What. What's the game plan and what do you think is gonna happen with UI Kit this year? Do, like I don't follow UI kit as much 'cause I've, once Swift UI came out, I pretty much have gone all in.

[00:30:45] Leo Dion (host): But UI kit's awesome. It works it's smooth. You don't have performance issues, things like that. Do they still come out with talks for UI kit? Are you like, do you feel like you're lagging behind by continuing to have to support UI kit? Like how do you feel about it right

[00:31:00] Leo Dion (host): now?

[00:31:01] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, no, this is a real interesting question. We actually had so there's only four of us on the iOS team here. We had a catch up yesterday. Actually, we were chatting on a similar topic about this. I don't know, like I think I. I think Swift UI and UI kit is very different to where we were with Swift in objective C.

[00:31:18] Adam Rush (guest): So I think that's a, I think that's something we have to mention straight away because often I think they can be in a similar debate right when it comes to this. I think it's very different. And I think that'll be reflected in how Apple approaches

[00:31:33] Adam Rush (guest): this. I think. UI kit will still be maintained.

[00:31:36] Adam Rush (guest): It'll still have bugs fixed new features, new improvements. I think we'll see that for some time. But of course, apple will always recommend swift UI as as the way to build apps going forward. And I think Apple will keep,

[00:31:50] Leo Dion (host): They clearly, was it.

[00:31:51] Leo Dion (host): last year or two years ago when they had the thing where it's like we see Swift UI as the future? Yeah.

[00:31:56] Adam Rush (guest): yeah. And that, that makes complete sense. However. I think I think people who have been building on UI kit moving to Swift UI is fine. Like I, I don't think that's a huge task, but I think people from Swift UI to UI kit is a huge

[00:32:12] Adam Rush (guest): task. So I think actually we're probably a, an advantage in, in that there's a lot of apps out there that are fully UI kit.

[00:32:21] Adam Rush (guest): Still relying on UI kit. So I think we've probably got an advantage in the in the industry in terms of attracting that work, right? Because if there's a lot of people who are, just entering iOS in there, only dudes with ui, I think. There's a huge opportunity of apps out there that, that need you, like it development.

[00:32:43] Adam Rush (guest): I think that's one thing to

[00:32:44] Adam Rush (guest): consider. And then I think the next thing to think about is because there's so many apps still using UI kit I can't see a world where

[00:32:53] Adam Rush (guest): Apple says.

[00:32:55] Adam Rush (guest): Guys, we're not gonna maintain this. We're not gonna I just

[00:32:58] Adam Rush (guest): think it's gonna be years and years

[00:33:01] Adam Rush (guest): before.

[00:33:03] Leo Dion (host): new. New widgets will always be swift ui, like not new views, but new widgets, new like brand new outside of the app infrastructure. Things will be. We'll only be in swift UI widgets and live activities and stuff like that. But then, yeah, I think you're right. I think UI could still be available on a, on the app.

[00:33:27] Leo Dion (host): I think they'll still come out with tweaks and improvements to it. It seems like that like especially what's a big one? Moving a UI collection view for pretty much everything. That's been a big thing. Yeah, I agree 100%. It's yeah, I was just gonna say I have a talk that I did about transitioning from Objective C to Swift.

[00:33:46] Leo Dion (host): 'cause there's still objective C code out there and it's yeah, there's still a market for apps that like that to me is a much more bigger push to get off a objective C than it is to get off of ui. Could totally.

[00:33:59] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah.

[00:33:59] Adam Rush (guest): You're talking like a fundamental I. Language

[00:34:02] Adam Rush (guest): versus, building UI

[00:34:04] Adam Rush (guest): effectively. So I think it is different, but what was I gonna say?

[00:34:08] Leo Dion (host): Do you vision Pro, is That's UI kit or is it just Swift ui?

[00:34:13] Adam Rush (guest): oh, that's a really good question.

[00:34:15] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, UI Collection View is in Vision os

[00:34:18] Leo Dion (host): yep. There you

[00:34:18] Adam Rush (guest): yeah.

[00:34:19] Leo Dion (host): Yeah, so that's iOS, iPad, os

[00:34:23] Leo Dion (host): Mac, catalyst tv, and Vision os. Yeah, because it's a, I was saying that because with TV os, it's UI kit as well,

[00:34:30] Leo Dion (host): it's the watch and Mac that are the outliers that have their own system.

[00:34:35] Adam Rush (guest): yeah, exactly. Yeah. But most people are gonna choose swifty y, right? it's.

[00:34:40] Adam Rush (guest): And even me

[00:34:41] Leo Dion (host): It's for people who already have an existing app. Like we said, apple wants to make it as easy as possible for people to transition their apps over, and that's makes total sense to go with UI

[00:34:51] Adam Rush (guest): I was trying it. So the company I work for at Circuit I basically compiled the app that we have for Vision Pro, and it works fine. It looks like an iPad

[00:35:01] Adam Rush (guest): just in front of you. So yeah, it's, yeah, like you said, they just wanna they just want it to work.

[00:35:06] Adam Rush (guest): And as well, I think the Vision Pro is ticked on by default in App Store Connect. So yeah, they just

[00:35:13] Adam Rush (guest): want most apps available

[00:35:15] Leo Dion (host): I.

[00:35:16] Adam Rush (guest): As possible.

[00:35:17] Leo Dion (host): Adam was there anything else you wanted to mention before we close out?

[00:35:21] Adam Rush (guest): No, just it's been great. I know we, we chatted right at 360 8

[00:35:25] Adam Rush (guest): and you was like, oh, it'd be great to have you on the podcast. And here we are, like one year

[00:35:29] Adam Rush (guest): later. But but

[00:35:30] Leo Dion (host): Hopefully I'll see you in person at some conference soon. We'll see. Maybe I'll make it to leads we'll see.

[00:35:37] Adam Rush (guest): That, that'd be awesome.

[00:35:38] Leo Dion (host): Yeah.

[00:35:38] Leo Dion (host): and people can buy a ticket, fill out A CFP, they'll be out in a few days. So definitely check that out and Yeah. Thank you Adam, for coming

[00:35:46] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, no, thanks for having me.

[00:35:48] Leo Dion (host): Where can people find

[00:35:49] Leo Dion (host): you online?

[00:35:50] Adam Rush (guest): So I'm on I was gonna say Twitter. I'm on x as Adam nine Rush, and I'm also on LinkedIn and

[00:35:57] Adam Rush (guest): Yeah, you can grab me on those

[00:35:58] Adam Rush (guest): platforms and the website is Swift leads.credit you gave, you

[00:36:01] Adam Rush (guest): wanna check out the

[00:36:03] Adam Rush (guest): conference.

[00:36:04] Leo Dion (host): Awesome. Thank you again, Adam.

[00:36:06] Adam Rush (guest): Thanks for having me.

[00:36:07] Leo Dion (host): People can find me on X at Leo Dion Macon at Leo Dion dot C et c dot. Im my company is Bright Digit. Take a look there. We got some new blog posts on the new Swift Open, API Generator if you're interested in using that. Updates to Swift or Swift Architecture Guide, so definitely check that out.

[00:36:28] Leo Dion (host): If you enjoyed this episode, please take some time to post a review and if you're watching this on YouTube, and subscribe. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day. Bye everyone.