Swift

Swift Playgrounds, Apple's software developing toolkit intended to encourage kids to learn code, is breaking out of the iPad and connecting with educational toys from LEGO, Parrot, and more. Launched at WWDC 2016 a year ago, Swift Playgrounds took Apple's programming language and wrapped it up in an iPad app that aimed to be equal parts education and entertainment. Now, the fruits of Swift Playgrounds will be able to engage with devices in the real-world.

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Apple is adding real-time collaboration to iWork, allowing multiple people to make changes to a document in the cloud at the same time. The update, one of the most requested for Apple's document suite, ticks a significant box which until now rival platforms like Google Docs have had as an advantage over iWork.

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Apple's goal of squeezing Windows out of the workplace and replacing PCs with iPads continues, with a new deal with SAP to drive business-level app development. The partnership, announced today, is a double-pronged attack on an industry that might traditionally have assumed Windows was the only way to go.

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Apple has officially made Swift, its programming language that it first announced at WWDC 2014, an open source project. The company announced its intentions to do so earlier this year, and has now posted the Swift compiler's source code and standard library functions and objects online at its own website, Swift.org. By making Swift open source, it allows developers to use language as they please, making things other than apps for iOS and Mac OS X if they wish.

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Apple announces that Swift of iOS will be open source from this point on. WWDC 2015 is home to this announcement, the honor of announcing goes to Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi. This open source bit will be married to the release of iOS 9. This software will be released for developers in a public beta starting in July. This will be a free upgrade as all IOS upgrades are, and "all currently supported devices" will be included. Developers rejoice, change is afoot.

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The last year or so has been an exciting one for Apple, with significant product refreshes made across the board. We’ve also seen two new products introduced with Apple Watch and MacBook. Some of the whispers circulating after Apple’s second Watch event suggested they’d exhausted themselves, and there would be little left for WWDC. Though a lot has come to pass lately, maybe Apple got some of their light work off the desks around campus, and are about to make even bigger things happen. Curious what may be in store? Read on.

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Swift is Apple’s new programming language that I (and clearly plenty of others) am extremely excited about. Nimble, quick, and increasingly powerful with every iteration, Swift is quickly (swiftly?) becoming the iOS language of choice. At WWDC this year, Apple is also making it requisite. Though propped up as a 'language for a later time' by many, Apple is forcing learners to pick it up yesterday. If you’re a student interested in going to WWDC on a scholarship, you have to know Swift.

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Apple’s new programming language, Swift, has achieved widespread acclaim. While some deride it for not being a “finished product” out of the box, others see the promise of a simpler, cleaner language that can be used for native iOS apps (and hopefully beyond). In a recent survey of Developers via social forum and crowdsourced help center Stack Overflow, Swift was voted the “Most Loved” language. Over 77% of those polled said they already Develop with Swift and will continue to do so.

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Swift, or Objective-C? That’s a choice many Developers and learning the craft are entertaining, and it’s quickly (swiftly?) becoming harder to decide. Though Objective-C is still dug-in and widely used for iOS and OS X development, Swift is coming up fast (pun intended). A new report by Red Monk details the performance of programming languages on sites like GitHub and Stack Overflow. Though nowhere near dominant, Swift is already charging hard, and its rise is being heralded as perhaps the speediest ever.

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Apple has launched a new Swift blog to guide iOS and OS X developers through the new programming language, while at the same time throwing open the Xcode 6 beta to anybody who has registered. Swift, announced to no small degree of surprise at WWDC 2014 last month, replaces Objective C as Apple's preferred programming language, and developers still have plenty of questions.

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If you’d like to pick up some programming know-how, there are several methods for doing so. One of the neatest ways is iTunes U, which offers up several ways to learn on your own time. Often free, you can get up to speed in no time — and on your time.

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This week Game of Thrones is getting its own unofficial keyboard with Hodor. This keyboard was born this week in the wake of the introduction of Swift, Apple’s new mobile operating system developer language. You’ll find two iterations of this keyboard out in the wild - at least two, at this point - another appearing made by a completely different developer for Android.

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