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'Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS, OS X GM Coming with Yosemite

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Apr 12, 2001
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Following yesterday's special media event, Apple has announced that its Swift programming language has hit GM status for iOS. With this latest milestone, Apple is now inviting developers to submit Swift apps to the App Store for review.
You can now submit your apps that use Swift to the App Store. Whether your app uses Swift for a small feature or a complete application, now is the time to share your app with the world. It's your turn to excite everyone with your new creations.
Click to expand...
Regarding Swift for OS X, Apple states the language will hit GM status for the Mac when Yosemite ships later this fall. Until that time, Apple notes that developers can keep developing Mac apps with Swift by downloading the latest beta of Xcode 6.1.

Apple adds that GM status does not mean that language is in a finalized form, as it plans to adds new features, improved performance, and refined syntax. However, Apple notes that apps embedding a version of the new Swift GM runtime will continue to run well into the future.

Article Link: 'Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS, OS X GM Coming with Yosemite
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/09/10/swift-gm-ios-os-x-with-yosemite/
Watabou

Watabou

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Personally, I've been writing a Notification Center widget (one that displays iTunes Lyrics -> pic) using Swift and have been absolutely loving it.

The language has already evolved a lot during the betas for the better. I wonder what's next for Swift 2.0 or when that will be released. It would be really nice if Apple starts rewriting Cocoa/UIKit using Swift too.
 
the8thark

the8thark

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Apr 18, 2011
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MacRumors said:
Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS, OS X GM Coming with Yosemite
Click to expand...
Punctuation needs fixing up.

Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS and OS X, GM Coming with Yosemite

That what I typed is better. The actual title is wrong cause of the incorrect punctuation.
 
Watabou

Watabou

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the8thark said:
Punctuation needs fixing up.

Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS and OS X, GM Coming with Yosemite

That what I typed is better. The actual title is wrong cause of the incorrect punctuation.
Click to expand...

Title is correct. Swift is not GM yet for OS X. It's GM only for iOS
 
mdriftmeyer

mdriftmeyer

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Feb 2, 2004
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Watabou said:
Personally, I've been writing a Notification Center widget (one that displays iTunes Lyrics -> pic) using Swift and have been absolutely loving it.

The language has already evolved a lot during the betas for the better. I wonder what's next for Swift 2.0 or when that will be released. It would be really nice if Apple starts rewriting Cocoa/UIKit using Swift too.
Click to expand...

Apple isn't going to rewrite Cocoa to Swift without the runtime being fully functional with ObjC 2.0 for years.
 
Reason077

Reason077

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Aug 14, 2007
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Watabou said:
It would be really nice if Apple starts rewriting Cocoa/UIKit using Swift too.
Click to expand...

Why? From the perspective of a Swift developer, it doesn't matter what language Cocoa/UIKit is implemented in internally.
 
ArtOfWarfare

ArtOfWarfare

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Nov 26, 2007
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Watabou said:
I've been writing a Notification Center widget (one that displays iTunes Lyrics -> pic)
Click to expand...

Not to burst your bubble but...

Spotify -> App Finder -> TuneWiki

It shows synchronized lyrics in Spotify. After you find it once, it automatically gets added to the sidebar in Spotify.
 
springsup

springsup

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Feb 14, 2013
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the8thark said:
Punctuation needs fixing up.

Swift' Programming Language Hits GM Status for iOS and OS X, GM Coming with Yosemite

That what I typed is better. The actual title is wrong cause of the incorrect punctuation.
Click to expand...

The title is correct. The linked blog post explicitly mentions that Swift is not yet final for OS X:

Today is the GM date for Swift on iOS. We have one more GM date to go for Mac.
Click to expand...

Swift still has lots of issues - there are features which don't work, language oddities, compiler crashes, performance issues, etc.

However, the Swift language is still, in many respects, better than Objective-C. It includes features which developers have long been asking for in Obj-C including namespaces, generics and more. It has removed Obj-C's message dispatch system which, while incredibly flexible, is not necessary for the vast majority of applications and which is responsible for significant overhead.

I like the fact that Apps currently embed the Swift runtime within them; it means that OS updates are not necessary to take advantage of runtime changes or new features. It adds about 9MB to App sizes, but it's a good solution until things settle down a bit.
 
U

usarioclave

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Sep 26, 2003
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springsup said:
features which don't work, language oddities, compiler crashes, performance issues, etc.
Click to expand...

Do you have any actual data on features that don't work, crashes, performance, etc or is that just from reading random stuff online? Language oddities will never go away, because that's how languages are.

Synthetic swift performance benchmark vs obj-c

http://www.jessesquires.com/apples-to-apples-part-two/
 
Watabou

Watabou

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ArtOfWarfare said:
Not to burst your bubble but...

Spotify -> App Finder -> TuneWiki

It shows synchronized lyrics in Spotify. After you find it once, it automatically gets added to the sidebar in Spotify.
Click to expand...


That:

1. is only for Spotify.
2. Doesn't work too perfectly
3. Doesn't work at all for some less popular songs.
4. Doesn't show up in Notification Center.

So, I'm not sure what this has to do with my widget but thanks for the concern.
 
springsup

springsup

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usarioclave said:
Do you have any actual data on features that don't work, crashes, performance, etc or is that just from reading random stuff online? Language oddities will never go away, because that's how languages are.

Synthetic swift performance benchmark vs obj-c

http://www.jessesquires.com/apples-to-apples-part-two/
Click to expand...

Yes, I do have actual information about features which don't work - tuple-to-tuple casting, for instance (I mentioned this recently in the Swift forums and a member of their team said it should work, and it's in the language reference, but they didn't have time to do it for 1.0). You can look at those same forums for reports of code which can (still) crash the compiler. Of course I've been reporting bugs for the things I come across.

I wasn't talking about performance against Obj-C; of course Swift is faster in many benchmarks because it doesn't go through Obj-C's message dispatch and doesn't need to wrap its primitive types in objects. What I was talking about was performance issues in plain Swift code - for example, there is a significant performance difference when compiling code which spans multiple files as opposed to it being in the same file (of course they're in the same module). It seems that the compiler is less effective at inlining that code.

Language oddities can be changed and minimised. For example, it takes way too much boilerplate code to declare a bitmask. That's something which could be made much easier in a later release, but wasn't a priority for 1.0.
 
ArtOfWarfare

ArtOfWarfare

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Watabou said:
3. Doesn't work at all for some less popular songs.
Click to expand...

So add them in. I've added / synchronized the tracks for plenty of hole in the wall songs ("less popular"? I generally have to get pretty obscure to find tracks that are missing lyrics.)
 
Watabou

Watabou

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ArtOfWarfare said:
So add them in. I've added / synchronized the tracks for plenty of hole in the wall songs ("less popular"? I generally have to get pretty obscure to find tracks that are missing lyrics.)
Click to expand...


Why? I don't use Spotify, and don't plan to in the future. I just thought reading lyrics off of iTunes was a chore and the apps that did it are now basically dead (eg. Harmonic, tunestext) so I just decided to create it in Notification Center. And it scrobbles to Last.fm, so you don't have to use lastfm's horrible official app.

I'll support Spotify in the future if there's enough demand for it, I suppose. But I plan to ship this when Swift is GM for the Mac as it is now and then add the features, since this is my first app and I've never been motivated enough to put an app on the App Store. :D
 
deathnite

deathnite

macrumors member
Aug 26, 2010
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Europe
Watabou said:
That's Apple's, not mine. That's the default Weather widget.
Click to expand...
How is that possible? I'm only getting the simple weather widget as seen in the WWDC keynote, although I have more than one city added in the weather app.

ios-8-widgets.jpg
 
Last edited:
deathnite

deathnite

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Aug 26, 2010
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Europe
Wished the weather widget on iOS would look the same as on OS X.
Here's hoping someone makes a weather app on iOS with a similar widget.
 
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