Day three was loads of fun, the highlight of which was the Code-Along for WidgetKit. I also had my lab appointment on the problems I was having with SiriIntents and Shortcuts. While I was a able to get my Intents to work, we ran out of time for the Shortcut problem. But I do believe I have a better understanding of what I was doing wrong, AND I raised my third bug report for this cycle. So overall a win.
The sessions I did were all about getting better at the new stuff. First I watched the Design for iPad session. The key aspect of which was learning about sidebars verses the tab bar. For now, I don’t think Wasted Time needs to worry about this.
Then on to building complications in SwiftUI. They spent a lot of time explaining how the new Watch Face Tinting works. I assume this is because you want your new complications (which a user can use multiple complications from the same app to build a customized watch face and share it with others) to feel as if they belong to the watch face they are on. A really nice feature of Xcode is by using SwiftUI you can do the live preview function and see how your complication looks on multiple watch faces and with multiple tints all at the same time.
Session 3 was Visually editing SwiftUI views. This very quick tutorial was jammed packed with how to improve your productivity in building new views. I learned a lot!
Session 4 on Creating complications for Apple Watch got into the guts of the various providers you can use in complications. It also explained how the CLKDefaultComplicationHandler is necessary if you want users to be able to share your complications with others. The whole idea of which means that your users can be a great marketing arm for distributing your app to more people.
Session 5 – What’s new in WatchOS design. This session was more about explaining the new design principles of WatchOS. Apple really wants you to use their design principles so that you can be more forward compatible. They made the point multiple times to stop using gestured based menus, sounds like this will deprecated soon.
Session 6 – Secure you app: Threat modeling and anti-patterns. I have to confess, I am a security buff. I am fascinated by all things related to computer security and getting a perspective of how Apple sees you should test your app was cool. The basic premise was simple, understand your apps assets and those who which to get inappropriate access to those assets. This model then is used in a series of examples of where the coding practices many of us have developed may be inadvertently exposing those assets to bad actors. If you want to learn more about securing your apps, I highly recommend watching this one.
Session 7 – Explore the new system architecture of Apple Silicon Macs. Another must watch session. Apple is making major architectural changes with the new Macs and you should understand them. At one level you can just assume all the good and bad parts of the iPhone and iPad are coming to the Mac, but you’d be wrong. They understand the importance of developers having much deeper access to the hardware, and they will allow it… to a point. They do quickly flash a sudo command on the screen to turn off SIP. Got do a screen grab of that.
Session 8-10 were the Widgets Code-Along. I went thru these a few times to better understand Widgets. I think I will create a Wasted Time widget this summer to show the status of your meeting history.
Well today promises to be another jammed back day. Which Apple would drop the videos earlier in the day, but what can you do.