Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Releases Swift Playgrounds 4 With Support for Creating Apps on iPad

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,142
38,920


Apple today released Swift Playgrounds 4, an update to the Swift Playgrounds app that's been in the works for some time. The newest version of the app allows iPhone and iPad apps to be created directly on an iPad without the need for a Mac.

swift-banner.jpg

Swift Playgrounds 4 includes App Store Connect integration for uploading a finished app to the App Store, plus there is an App Preview feature that shows live updates as you make changes. Apple's release notes for the update are below:
Swift Playgrounds 4.0 features:
- Build iPhone and iPad apps with SwiftUI right on your iPad (requires iPadOS 15.2 or later)
- App Store Connect integration lets you upload your finished app to the App Store
- App Preview shows live updates as you make changes to your app
- Full-screen preview lets you see your app edge-to-edge
- Smart, inline code suggestions help you write code quickly and accurately
- App Projects make it easy to move projects to Xcode and back
- Project-wide search finds results across multiple files
- Snippets Library provides hundreds of SwiftUI controls, symbols, and colors
- Swift Package support lets you include publicly-available code to enhance your apps
Click to expand...
Designing and uploading an app on the iPad requires the iPadOS 15.2 update that was released earlier this week. Swift Playgrounds can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Apple has also released Swift Playgrounds 4 for the Mac, with support for Swift 5.5.

Article Link: Apple Releases Swift Playgrounds 4 With Support for Creating Apps on iPad
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/15/apple-releases-swift-playgrounds-4/
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Wow
  • Love
Reactions: AdonisSMU, Mr. Awesome, amartinez1660 and 2 others
DaPizzaMan said:
Seems to be the same on the iOS App Store.
Click to expand...
I'll keep checking back. It may not have populated yet, especially if it's not showing an update for iOS either. I miss messing around with code, though most of my experience was with classic mac OS, and BASIC, or the Apple //e, or GS, etc.
 
Great way to get people into programming and educate them. Awesome to see Apple continue to commit to this offering. Sure, it makes them more money by inspiring more developers, but it also means more people get into development and can make money themselves.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFjohn
Hmm, swift package support actually makes this somewhat more viable. One big miss is that I don't see anything about git/source control integration...hopefully at least it leaves the files exposed to the user so that a third party app can handle that.
 
I’ve always said that once development is possible on the iPad, that’s one of the three remaining things you NEED a Mac for. One of the remaining two is Final Cut Pro, and the last one is Logic Pro.

This isn’t perfect, but it’ll be iterated and will eventually be the engine of someone’s creativity.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SFjohn and Zaren
swm said:
this is amazing.
also raises a good question: if something has the tools, environment,means to create apps from scratch, does it finally qualify as a computer?
Click to expand...
I'd rather use Mac OS or some other desktop OS that isn't in a walled garden which will restrict the use of 3rd party development tools. The experience will be far better - having multiple applications being shown at once, more RAM, no walled garden.

If you are developing something basic, then an iPad will work for you, but much more, iPad will feel like a crippled / poor experience.

This is for XCode only. Developers use more IDEs than just XCode, outside of the Apple World, and XCode makes for a pretty poor IDE, if you need to use something other than Swift / ObjectiveC.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: ssspinball, freedomlinux, Moka Akashiya and 5 others
Unregistered 4U said:
I’ve always said that once development is possible on the iPad, that’s one of the three remaining things you NEED a Mac for. One of the remaining two is Final Cut Pro, and the last one is Logic Pro.

This isn’t perfect, but it’ll be iterated and will eventually be the engine of someone’s creativity.
Click to expand...

How about for developing non Apple Applications? Macs are popular among developers, who don't develop Apple applications. Due to iOS walled garden, it's going to make the necessary tooling very difficult to achieve this. Macs will still be necessary for non Apple developers.
 
  • Disagree
  • Like
Reactions: ssspinball and nvmls
Stella said:
I'd rather use Mac OS or some other desktop OS that isn't in a walled garden which will restrict the use of 3rd party development tools. The experience will be far better - having multiple applications being shown at once, more RAM, no walled garden.

If you are developing something basic, then an iPad will work for you, but much more, iPad will feel like a crippled / poor experience.

This is for XCode only. Developers use more IDEs than just XCode, outside of the Apple World, and XCode makes for a pretty poor IDE, if you need to use something other than Swift / ObjectiveC.
Click to expand...
Exactly, also the elephant in the room: ergonomics, but I'm sure there's plenty of devs dying to develop 6hrs per day fingering a tablet with "real" multitasking.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: ssspinball and Stella
Anyone have thoughts on how this will compare to Construct, Gamemaker, etc. for teaching kids game development? I guess it's nice that SP isn't limited to just games.
 
Last edited:
Stella said:
I'd rather use Mac OS or some other desktop OS that isn't in a walled garden which will restrict the use of 3rd party development tools. The experience will be far better - having multiple applications being shown at once, more RAM, no walled garden.

If you are developing something basic, then an iPad will work for you, but much more, iPad will feel like a crippled / poor experience.

This is for XCode only. Developers use more IDEs than just XCode, outside of the Apple World, and XCode makes for a pretty poor IDE, if you need to use something other than Swift / ObjectiveC.
Click to expand...
I am pretty sure this is part of Apple's plans to help children/youngsters to get into development more easily. All of those that you mentioned are not import to kids learning to build their very first apps. How many professional developers do you know that are actually using Swift Playgrounds? Let's not get rilled up for a feature that's probably not even going to have professional developers as it's target market.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ssspinball, ikir and SFjohn
DaPizzaMan said:
Seems to be the same on the iOS App Store.
Click to expand...
it's strange, it doesn't show an update, but wen you klick again on the app it does. But in the end I had to delete the updated app from my mac because it threw an error when loading a project. After re-installing everything worked…
 
Just tried it out. I figured to create a default Hello World app, but change it around a little.
The iPad environment crashed a couple of times but was able to ultimately run.

I then tried to 'share' it with a mac desktop:

XCode:
I couldn't preview the UX
I couldn't build it (missing a scheme)...

Playgrounds:
I couldn't open it (not compatible with this version)...

So - it needs work. I would think that's a pretty typical usage scenario, but evidently not for V1.
 
  • Like
Reactions: amartinez1660
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back