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InfoQ Homepage Articles Article Series: iOS 9 for Developers

Article Series: iOS 9 for Developers

Introduction

At WWDC 2015, Apple introduced iOS 9. Although the new SDK does not introduce as many new or enhanced features as iOS 8, which included more than 4,000 new APIs, it does still provide a wealth of new functionality and enhancements. Along with the new SDK, iOS 9 is also marked by new developer tools to support some of its features, and new releases of Apple’s major programming languages, Swift and Objective-C.

This series aims at introducing all that is essential for developers to know about building apps for the latest release of Apple’s mobile OS. It comprises six articles that cover what’s new in iOS 9 SDK, new features in Swift, Objective-C, and developer tools, and Apple’s new bitcode.

 

Contents

What's New in iOS 9: New SDK Frameworks

At WWDC 2015, Apple introduced iOS 9. Although the new SDK does not introduce as many new or enhanced features as iOS 8, which included more than 4,000 new APIs, it does still provide a wealth of new functionality and enhancements. In this article, Sergio de Simone reviews a number of new frameworks that Apple has included with its new mobile OS.

 

What's New in iOS 9: Enhancements to Existing Frameworks

iOS 9 SDK includes many enhancements to existing frameworks, including WKWebView, UIKit, Core Data, and several others. In this article, Sergio de Simone provides an essential roadmap into new features as well as links to the updated documentation.

 

Safari Content Blockers Under The Hood

With iOS 9, Apple introduced a content blocker mechanism into Safari, which will also be part of OSX El Capitan. Alex Blewitt goes under the hood to find out how they work, and how Apple's privacy goals has resulted in certain choices in the way that the content blocker is implemented, and some ways in which a Swift content blocker can be written.

 

What's new in iOS 9: Swift and Objective-C

In this article, Sergio de Simone is going to examine new features added to iOS and OS X El Capitan main programming languages: the recently open sourced Swift, which extends pattern matching syntax, adds feature availability and protocol extension, and overhauls error handing; Objective-C, with new interoperability features as generic collections.

 

What's new in iOS 9: Xcode 7 and Other Developer Tools

With every new iOS release, Apple provide new versions of their developer tools that aim to improve how developers build apps. In this article, Sergio de Simone is going to focus on: Xcode's new app thinning mechanism, debugging and profiling features, and unit testing support; Interface Builder’s Stack views and storyboard references.

 

Understanding Bitcode for iOS Applications

When Apple released Xcode 7, they also enabled applications to be distributed to the AppStore through bitcode, instead of per-processor target files. Alex Blewitt looks under the covers at what Bitcode is, what advantages it may offer, and why developers should consider enabling bitcode projects for their iOS targets.

 

Series Manager

Sergio de Simone is a software engineer.

Sergio has been working as a software engineer for over fifteen years across a range of different projects and companies, including such different work environments as Siemens, HP, and small startups.

For the last few years, his focus has been on development for mobile platforms and related technologies.

He is currently working for BigML, Inc., where he leads iOS and OS X development.

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