Posted on 06/04/2019 1:23:36 PM PDT by ImJustAnotherOkie
San Jose, California — Apple today unveiled several innovative technologies that make it dramatically easier and faster for developers to create powerful new apps. SwiftUI is a revolutionary development framework that makes building powerful user interfaces easier than ever before. ARKit 3, RealityKit and Reality Composer are advanced tools designed to make it even easier for developers to create compelling AR experiences for consumer and business apps. New tools and APIs greatly simplify the process of bringing iPad apps to Mac. And updates to Core ML and Create ML allow for more powerful and streamlined on-device machine learning apps.
(Excerpt) Read more at apple.com ...
It doesn't seem Ground Breaking but more Derivative, but we'll have to see.
I hope they don't go ass crazy like Microsoft did on WPF which can get so complicated and wordy.
It looks like you build a STRUCT instead of an XAML document. Microsoft could have taken this approach too but didn't. It should load a lot quicker.
AND - what does it cost to buy into the Apple dev systems?
Well, they just introduced some new equipment.
$5000 for the monitor and $999 for the stand, or if you have your own stand the Vesa adapter is a mere $200.
The New Big box can support up to 8 of those monitors, can I sign you up?
If you already have a Mac, nothing to start. If you get to the point you want to publish your app in the AppStore, then it’s $100/year.
Wow
They have a AR-Kit 3!
Make my AR build much easier, im sure...
Just bought a DPMS Buttstock and tube kit....
(/s...fir those who can’t read)
Don’t forget that Magpull power connectors.
Hardware or XCode, as noted XCode is free until you want to distribute apps.
I didn’t like it much. It’s ok. Of course I was using Objective-C and that sucked big time.
And I remember when the Borland compiler was the hot new ticket. And that was long after the DOS/CPM battle.
$1K for the optional stand is indeed asinine, but then again my desk already has movable monitor arms, so I don't use stands, anyways, nor do many others, and inexpensive ones are plentiful.
However, you are leaving out the highly unusual specs that make the $5K "Pro Display XDR" worth $5K, for those producing HDR video:
You have to compare this to other "reference monitors", which are also in a different league.
Besides, it isn't like you can't just run into Fry's and get the best 4K 32" monitor on sale that day. All these parts have commodity options these days.
No, Xcode is free, period. Distributing apps on the Mac is free, I do it all the time.
Limited distribution of apps on the iPhone might still be free, I need to check.
Now, if you want to go on about Apple management being SJW pinheads, and that they're in bed with dictatorial mainland China, etc., etc., you'll get no argument from me.
Oh yes, I’m sure it’s just Jim Dandy. I wonder what the market is for all this Workstation Horsepower.
It makes me wonder, since these workstations are so freaking powerful, were all the super specialized MacOS applications just loping along in slow motion all this time.
Why Now?
Are they trying to carve out a new nitch?
How can their development tools/compilers take advantage of this new hardware?
Did MS .Net 5 put the fear into them?
For Apple, video, mostly, as well as some product design requiring high-speed rendering.
It makes me wonder, since these workstations are so freaking powerful, were all the super specialized MacOS applications just loping along in slow motion all this time.
Yes, Apple stupidly ignored the high-end Mac workstation market for a long time, so video editors started abandoning them, as high-speed options were there on Windows.
Why Now?
The better question is: why not 5 years ago? That "Garbage Can Mac Pro" was a really stupid move, and they didn't correct it for a long time.
How can their development tools/compilers take advantage of this new hardware?
For the CPU and GPU, of course! You claim to be a coder with experience with XCode, but you wonder if a standards-compliant, open-source C++ compiler (Clang or GNU C++, available on all platforms) can utilize multiple CPU and GPU cores?
For the FPGA in the "Afterburner" card, I suspect a separate dev environment is needed. That's digital hardware design.
Did MS .Net 5 put the fear into them?
No, their existing customers yelled and screamed at them, and started to leave them. It wasn't clear if they're coming back, so Apple needed to:
1. make a big splash (done) and
2. show ongoing, sustained commitment (not yet done).
LOL!
It Just Works.
I learned on Borland Turbo Pascal and still have a copy of the years later version for Windows.
It was cool, then.
It's a safe assumption that the new Screen UI will be GPU Only and it will not be C++ code. It's going to take a long, long time for the new GUI tools to mature. The WPF learning curve is horrendous because it's impossible to write drag and drop design tool. It's 80% hand coding of the screens. It's supremely flexible, but that's what makes it complicated. Will Apple find some magic middle ground?
I never got that good with it. To my thinking it was kind of a Macro based wrapper for C++.
Considering Swift Version 2 came out in 2015 (35+- years old), does Objective-C qualify as the COBOL of the Microprocessor?
Whua, what?
Did you mean that the new SwiftUI framework will be "GPU Only"?
Even though Apple announced the UI stuff and the AR stuff at the same time, let's be clear:
1. (normal) UIs require programming to the framework, and that code runs on the CPU (GPU speedups might happen behind the scenes), and
2. while true, a lot of AR stuff requires strong GPUs to run effectively or at all, again, you're programming to an Apple-supplied framework that generally hides the gory GPU details from you.
Now, with regard to "it will not be C++ code": Yes, absolutely, this is true. It is the point. Swift is a new language, first released 5 years ago, where the whole point is to make programming easier. SwiftUI requires programming in Swift.
What do I think about this, being a Mac (and Linux, and Android) C++ programmer, and not knowing Swift?
The truth is that when it comes to consumer-level user interfaces, ON MOST PLATFORMS, there has been a strong "binding" created between specialty languages and GUIs. Mac OS X and iOS have required the GUI to be done in Objective-C for a long time. Android requires the UI be done in Java. When I program for certain electronic design systems on Linux, I might need to do it in TCL or LISP. I suspect Windows may have an affinity for Csharp, but maybe they have full bindings for C++.
Of course, there is always "Qt", but it never feels like a native app.
So, the rule for me (and thousands others) has been for the past 20 years: program logic and hard-core calculation gets done in C++. The GUI - or any other interfacing with a non-unix-standard framework - is whatever language the system requires. I then have to set up the linker flags and shared data structures so the two mesh together, which initially can be a pain.
Regarding SwiftUI in particular: As I only use Objective-C for the UI, I welcome a solution that greatly simplifies the code, presuming the language is easy to learn. I don't like that I'd be using Swift for UI, Obj-C for other system interfacing, and C++ for my program logic. I worry about linker issues, and filling my head full of language issues when I want to focus on typically very challenging subject matter, which is WHY I'm creating the program in the first place.
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