WWDC 2017 Keynote Wishlist Followup

The WWDC keynote came and went, and I thought I’d review here which of my wishes came true:

Xcode

• Statically linked swift libraries: ❌
  • Though there are some WWDC sessions on how to improve dylib loading time, which might be enough.
• No more need for the simulator to run application unit tests: ❌
• Better Refactoring (renaming, extract method, etc) ✅
• More Xcode extension options: ❌
• Better swift migrator: ✅
  • I’ve run this on one moderately-sized OSS project so far, and the process seems very smooth compared to the 2 to 3 migrator. Time will tell how much better it is for very large codebases but I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be a win.

iOS

• Better inter-app communication: ✅
  • Drag & Drop looks awesome for this, and the document improvements along with the new files app will be really nice.
• Allow non-webkit browser rendering engines for browsers: ❌
  • I didn’t expect this but I can dream!
• Allow users to completely turn off internet access per-app: ❌

Deployment

• An officially supported, unrestricted way to sideload apps outside of the app store: ❌
  • Didn’t expect this one either 🤷‍♂️
• If we can’t get that, then less restrictions on app provisioning: ✅
  • I haven’t read into the details but apparently testflight is going to have fewer restrictions which is nice. I need to look into how they’ll shape up though. Xcode 9 also has more fine-grained configuration options for controlling provisioning/signing which is a welcome addition, so I’ll call this one a wish that came true.

Final Score: 4/10

Not too shabby, though it would have been awesome to get even more.

The Xcode 9 improvements are also very welcome. I love the source editor changes for warnings/alerts, the new speedy indexing is awesome, and the github/better git integration is welcome. I wish I could start using this day to day! 😄