Today, Apple released the latest update for macOS. High Sierra 10.13.5 primarily adds Messages in iCloud support, but it also includes some enterprise and security updates. Users of supported Macs can download and install it from the Mac App Store now.
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10.13.5 includes some security updates as well, which Apple has detailed on its support website. For example, the update addresses vulnerabilities in graphics drivers for Intel and AMD chips that allowed applications to read restricted memory, and it fixes a vulnerability in the Mail app that that allowed attackers to access the contents of encrypted emails.
Soghoian says x-callback-url was a great start in bringing automation to iOS, but he thinks the next step is finding better ways for our devices to talk to each other. Things have changed since the early days of Automator and Workflow. Web-based productivity tools have accelerated the move to the cloud, where services like IFTTT and Zapier tie various services together. So Soghoian and The Omni Group are focused on bridging the gap between those web-based tools and the apps that live on your devices. The company has crafted a way for its apps to read JavaScript—a versatile and ubiquitous web-scripting language—so an automation script can run in Omni's macOS and iOS apps without any fuss.
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Soghoian's convinced automation fills a continuing need in computing. His forced departure from Apple took him by surprise, but he thinks his work in the field is just getting started. "I'd like to be an old guy, looking back at things, and say I did something that made people's lives better, that they were able to control their destiny to some degree because of the work that I and people that I worked with produced," he says.
When I asked Yashvardhan Mulki what he did on his iPhone for fun — in between a full slate of high school classes, after-school club memberships, and building iOS apps in his spare time — he told me he reads the news. "No games?" I asked him. "No," he said. He downloaded Mario Run and played it a bit, but spends what little free time he has in apps like Nuzzel and Google News brushing up on politics.
I was already pretty impressed with this young man, who taught himself Apple's Swift programming language at age 11 by watching YouTube videos, and published his first app, a Canadian elections assistant (under his father's name, because remember, he's only 15), in May. But this just sealed it for me — Yashvardhan, or Yash, as he prefers to be called, is going places.
Apple is featuring apps from WWDC 2018 scholarship winners in a special editorial piece in the Today tab of the iOS 11 App Store. It’s a cool gesture that gives some exposure to apps from upcoming developers. The feature highlights scholarship winners from various regions, with a list of names and links to their apps already on the App Store.
If you're a Web developer, you probably have noticed that our industry is thriving on extremely rapid change. You step away from the Web world for a month and you come back and there are 20 new things you need to look at. The pace of change is exhilarating and frustrating both at the same time.
But these days most of the focus in front end Web development is on code - JavaScript code in particular. By comparison, the Web UI - HTML and CSS and the browser DOM and support features - feels like it has been stuck in the mud and stagnating for a long time. We now have all the advanced coding tools to do cool stuff, but it seems that HTML and the Web Browser's feature set are really what is holding us back.
Apple has likely sold between 45 million and 50 million of the devices, estimates show. But credible reports (and my own conversations) say many developers have stopped creating and improving Watch apps. Why? It’s a number of things, but the overarching theme is this: Developers perceive that the Apple Watch has yet to emerge as a mature, free-standing platform, independent of the iPhone and iOS. There’s also the fact that apps on the Watch are often just not that useful.
I don't think the upcoming WWDC will be boring. The relatively lack of rumors may be unexciting, but that doesn't mean anything.
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Thanks for reading.