Joining a wider industry shift, Apple announced that it is working to replace exclusionary language in its developer documentation and APIs with alternative terminology.

Renaming things takes time and effort as large parts of infrastructure have to migrate in response. For third-party developers in the App Store, Apple will be changing the names of APIs used in their code where appropriate, which will also necessitate engineering work to migrate.

expand full story

Apple developers have started receiving their Developer Transition Kit hardware, which Apple is distributing to developers to help them get their apps ready for the upcoming range of Apple Silicon Macs, which will replace Intel CPUs with Apple-designed ARM CPUs.

Despite the confidentiality clauses in the developer agreement, benchmarks for the Developer Transition Kit have already surfaced on Geekbench. Note that these tests are running under virtualization, using Apple’s Rosetta technology, as the Geekbench testing software has not yet been optimised for Apple Silicon.

expand full story

Following the Platforms State of the Union address this afternoon at WWDC20 Apple has shared some highlights on its new developer tech and tools to “foster the next generation of apps.” These include Xcode 12, new features in SwiftUI, App Clips and Widgets in iOS and iPadOS 14, improved access to Apple’s platforms like Find My and HomePod, as well as a new App Store Review process that gives developers a way to “challenge” guidelines.

expand full story

Right about a year ago, Apple began enforcing its enterprise certificate policy for developers more strictly. It all started with Facebook who was abusing its certificate but it didn’t end there. Google’s account was pulled temporarily among a wave of others. Now another developer who was found to be abusing Apple’s policies has seen its account disabled.

expand full story