The often underestimated ability to use a web page as a standalone application is nevertheless at our service: if there are no special communication problems, and the application has simple functionality (displaying a table of data, or displaying a constantly updated list), then there is no reason not to use the good old web viewing information from the server.
The difference between opening the same page in a browser will be in the design of the screen: the browser controls (including the address bar) will be hidden, and the page content will be displayed on the entire screen of the device. Of the inconveniences, of course, we are waiting for a rather long time to open such an “application” (which is associated with the response speed of a remote web server), but for a number of applications this, I think, is not a problem at all.
Developing applications for mobile platforms has its own catch: at first you think that it’s not worth the effort and time, then people start using your application, and they literally carry it with them, and here you realize that the matter turned out to be deeper, and pulled you in more than you could imagine.
The market is getting more aggressive and hype
To truly keep your finger on the pulse of the industry, you need to put in a lot of effort: closely follow both official technical announcements and informal sentiments in the community.
In the case of iOS development, these efforts are made by Alexander Zimin. On the one hand, he watched the videos of the WWDC 2017 sessions so actively that he recently even compiled a guide for them for everyone. On the other hand, he organizes CocoaHeads meetings, speaks at various conferences, and at the upcoming Moscow Mobius he is also a member of the program committee – that is, he has a lot of contact with the community and sees how it lives.
Therefore, now, when the releases of iOS 11 and Swift 4 are inexorably approaching, we decided to ask Alexander about the current state of iOS development from two angles at once: both “what is happening with technologies” and “what is happening with people”.
– Opening question: how many applications are installed on your iPhone?
– Around 200. At the same time, once every one and a half to two months I clean those that I have not used during these two months. And at the same time, new ones are added periodically. That is, it varies somewhere from 175 to 225.
— The post in the wake of WWDC was published recently, when more than a month has passed since the event. How relevant is this topic for the community now – has interest cooled down, or vice versa, now, with the advent of stable iOS 11 betas, is everyone starting to figure it out in practice?
– I would break the developers into several groups. The first is generally far from WWDC, it is never interested in new items. There is nothing special to discuss here, they are not interested – well, it’s good, they have their own interests there.
The second group are those who follow Apple’s guidelines and support the last two operating systems. As I pointed out at the end of my article, they are now watching the previous year’s WWDC. Because if at the release of iOS 11 they drop support for iOS 9, support iOS 10 and higher, then they will be able to use the innovations that they showed a year ago in all their glory.
There are developers of their own applications who would like to release something new, interesting, related to augmented reality and machine learning – such have been studying WWDC materials from the very first days. Because here you either have time for the release, or you do not have time. And these developers (I know many of them personally) have their own projects, which they have been writing for a month, and in September they want to show the world. Mostly related to augmented reality.
Well, if we talk about companies, then it is very important for them that Apple supports them, add them to the main page, write about them. And one of the easiest ways to achieve this is to support the latest technologies from Apple. Therefore, the developers of large companies are just now starting to look at what was presented at WWDC in order to implement and get featured from Apple in August. Well, indeed, betas have become quite stable, so now it already makes sense to put them on devices.
— And how much did this WWDC impress the iOS community with its announcements?
— He quite surprised many developers. Because there was an opinion that in the field of machine learning or augmented reality, Apple works exclusively in experimental laboratories, and even in a small volume. And if they present them, it will be very late. And here Apple took and introduced a lot of new technologies (and their detection of objects in AR without sensors is one of the most accurate on the market), in iOS 11 the emphasis is much more on this than it was in iOS 10.
But, on the other hand, these technologies are now quite raw. In the case of CoreML, for example, one of the vulnerabilities turned out to be the ability to download your model from the device. That is, if you made some unique machine learning model and added it to the application through this format from Apple, then anyone can take it from there. Now in new betas, the situation with CoreML is getting better, but in general, early adopters face difficulties.
