Objective-C

Six 'Objective-C' stories June 2012 - February 2015

Long-time NeXT/Apple Developer exalts Swift after 1.2 update

Ben Lovejoy Feb 10 2015 - 6:34 am PT

[tweet https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/565001293975257091]

Wil Shipley, a developer whose association with Apple began with a contract for NeXT, has posted two tweets in praise of Swift shortly after Apple’s “significant update” to the programming language.

Shipley says he feels the same way about Swift that he did when he first saw Cocoa on the NeXT platform, and that Objective-C is a “crapshack” of a language in comparison.

The developer co-founded The Omni Group in 1991, one of the few companies to create apps for NeXT and eventually OS X. He won a record five Apple Design Awards while at Omni, winning three more at the second company he founded, Delicious Monster. All of Delicious Monster’s other staff were later hired by Apple.

Shipley spoke at WWDC in 2005 and 2007, and was listed as one of the most influential members of the Mac community by MacTech Magazine for two years running.

While Swift has been very well received by other developers, its rapidly-changing nature does pose some challenges. New versions are backwards-compatible, but developers have to make changes to code in order to fully support new versions of iOS.

Grab a $29 Swift Assets+ Tutorial Here or jump on Stanford’s iTunes Swift Course for free.

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Apple’s new coding language Swift receives significant update for developers alongside new Yosemite and iOS seeds

Benjamin Mayo Jul 7 2014 - 11:37 am PT

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As part of the updates to the Yosemite and iOS betas today, Apple’s new coding language Swift has received several major improvements and tweaks to make the language more consistent and help developers make better, safer apps. The intricacies of the changes are very gibberish to non-developers, but the fixes resolve many of the issues that developers had been requesting. In particular, the new value type model of arrays fixes several inconsistencies and prevents many potential code ‘gotchas’ that could arise in previous Swift builds.

Apple has also updated the ‘Introducing Swift’ iBook to reflect the improvements, if you want to learn in more detail about the changes.

Apple announces new Xcode, ‘Swift’ programming language

Benjamin Mayo Jun 2 2014 - 11:51 am PT

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Apple has introduced a brand new programming language alongside a brand new version of Xcode.

Swift is a big deal for developers. The language includes loads of features third-party developers have been asking for. It sits alongside Objective-C and C, meaning developers can interchange between languages in the same project.

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Facebook releases SDK 3.0 for iOS, will maintain beta version with iOS 6 integration

Jordan Kahn Aug 7 2012 - 2:50 pm PT

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We told you a few weeks ago that Facebook was rolling out the beta of its SDK 3.0 for iOS that included iOS 6 integration for native Facebook login, modern Objective-C language features support, pre-built UI components, and a new iOS Dev Center. Version 3.0 of the Facebook iOS SDK is coming out of beta today, and it is ready for developers to download and use in their apps. However, Facebook will continue to maintain a beta version that includes iOS 6 FB integration features. It will ultimately merge the two versions when iOS is released to the public. We already went through much of what you can find in the Facebook SDK for iOS, but a blog post on the Facebook Developers blog announcing its release explained some of the new improvements and updates since the beta release:

This release enables several new features: ready-to-use native UI controls, better session management, improved support for calling Facebook APIs and support for modern Objective-C language features…The SDK also includes a variety of pre-built user interface (UI) components for common functions, such as Login, Friend Picker and Place Picker. Simply drop them into your apps for a fast, native and consistent way to build common features.

Updates since the beta release, according to Facebook:

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Facebook releases SDK 3.0 Beta with iOS 6 integration & new iOS Dev Center

Jordan Kahn Jul 11 2012 - 11:34 am PT

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Facebook announced today that it is releasing its biggest iOS SDK update yet with the release of SDK 3.0 Beta for iOS, which also includes iOS 6 integration for native Facebook login. It is also rolling out a completely refreshed iOS Dev Center with tutorials, concepts, and reference docs to help iOS app developers build great Facebook-integrated apps for iOS devices.
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Facebook launching “blazing fast”, rebuilt iPhone app next month

Jordan Kahn Jun 27 2012 - 9:18 am PT

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The New York Times’ Nick Bilton reported today that Facebook is planning on doing something about its “painfully slow” iPhone app. Citing unnamed FB engineers, the report claimed Facebook is going to release a new, “blazing fast” iOS app that is rebuilt “primarily using Objective-C”. However, according to Bilton who tested the unreleased app, it will be largely the same design as the current iOS app:

According to two Facebook engineers who asked not be named because they are not authorized to speak about unreleased products, Facebook has completely rebuilt its iOS application to optimize for one thing: speed… Many of the components of the current version of the Facebook app are built using HTML5, a Web-based programming language… The current version of the app is essentially an Objective-C shell with a Web browser inside. When it comes to speed, this is like putting the engine of a Smart Car in the body of a Ferrari…. Objective-C takes the opposite approach, taking full advantage of the hardware in the iPhone and then building most of the functionality directly into the application so it has to collect less information from the Web.