Apple Announces New iOS 8 SDK and Developer Tools
At its 2014 Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced its new mobile operating system, iOS 8, alongside new SDKs and development tools. New Apple software includes over 4000 new APIs, including all new frameworks such as HealthKit, HomeKit, and CloudKit, and enhancements to the platform gaming capabilities. Apple also announced a new language aiming at being the successor to Objective-C.
Online Resources to Learn Apple's Swift Language [Updated Sept, 9 2014]
Apple introduction of Swift, a new programming language for the OS X and iOS platform, has sparked some interest from the developers’ community. If you are interested in learning more about Swift, here you can find some useful online resources.
Swift Might Not Be As Fast As Apple Claims It To Be: First Benchmarks
Performance is one of the benefits that Apple claims its new Swift programming language should bring to OS X and iOS developers, and being in beta hasn’t prevented independent developers from running benchmarks and reporting their findings. Perhaps unsurprisingly these show that in some cases Swift performance is not yet satisfactory.
Google Announces Development Kit for a Tablet with Advanced Vision Capabilities
Google has announced the availability of Project Tango Development Kit, which should allow developers to make applications that track full 3-dimensional motion and capture surfaces in the environment. Tango development kit, created in collaboration with NVDIA, includes the new Tegra K1 mobile processor and aims at providing a platform designed for computer vision and 3D sensing.
Amazon Announces Mobile Associates API for iOS
Amazon has announced that it has started exploring integration of the Mobile Associates API (MAA) into iOS apps. Amazon encourages developers to present their use cases for them to participate in a private beta program that will guarantee early access to MAA for iOS. Interested developers will be selected by Amazon based on their use case and their willingness to provide feedback.