Apple unleashed a number of new updates at its annual Worldide Developer Conference in San Francisco yesterday, and developers for the Mac, iPhone and iPad are still digesting much of what was said.
GeekWire went down to Moscone West in San Francisco to see what announcements piqued developers’ interest, and here’s what they had to say.
What was your favorite announcement from Apple’s keynote on Monday?
Justin Bolter: All the developer tools. It’s going to be a lot easier to build apps now. The new Swift language is really exciting. As far as (features) for consumers, I love the Continuity stuff. I love being able to answer my phone on my laptop when my phone is downstairs, charging.
Bryan Williams: I thought the development of the Swift programming language was pretty cool. I think it’s going to be a lot easier for people to get into iOS and start making apps.
Bill Chute: I think it was very good that they filled in a lot of the things that people thought should have been in both operating systems a few years ago. Things like interaction among applications on iOS, being able to pass things from one to another using Extensions.
Also, I think it’s really interesting, the way that they’re not adding telephone capability to an iPad, but you can hook up to your iPhone from your iPad or your Mac. I think that’s really clever, instead of doing it in the hardware. Software is eating the world.
Johnny Chan: Continuity. I think they finally have cross-platform solutions for regular people. You don’t see anything (similar) offered from Windows or Google. By far, I think Apple finally put together the right tools for cross-platform communications, and continuity.
Jeff Kunzelman: Probably the new programming language, Swift. It looks a lot simpler. Objective-C is kind of hard to learn if you’re a newcomer to it. So I think Swift is going to bring a lot of new people to (iOS and Mac development).
