This is Part 2 of the iOS8: Amazing New Features series. You can read Part 1 here.
With the release of the new iOS 8 SDK (Software Development Kit) in June 2014, the app developers are in for some really good news. This Developer’s kit includes 4000 new APIs (Application Programming Interface), which will help the developers to add new features and capabilities to their apps that will assist in enhancing the apps’ performance.
Following is a list of the various new kits and/or features that come with iOS 8 SDK.
Advantages of iOS 8 v/s iOS 7 Features:
Games:
Technology improvements in iOS 8 make it easy for iOS game developers to implement their game’s graphics and audio.
- SceneKit helps create 3D animated effects and scenes into apps.
- SceneKit integrated with SpriteKit helps create high-performing and battery-efficient 2D games.
- Metal offers streamlined API, a unified graphics and shading language. Modern architectural considerations, such as multiprocessing and shared memory, make it easy to parallelize the creation of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) commands.
App Extensions:
App extensions lets the developers create actions or buttons separately, which can be used in other apps as well.
- Your app can now share photos, videos, files and website links with social networking sites and other such websites.
- You can also customise your own action buttons to help users complete various functions like translating text into another language or editing documents, and so on.
- Developers can now get their apps to display widgets such as news stories, in the ‘Today’ section of the Notifications centre.
- Also, your apps can provide storage location which other apps can also access. This helps users to edit one file using several apps.
- Create custom keyboards that users can install and use universally.
CloudKit:
- Developers can now store and retrieve their app data in a more structured, secured and efficient manner directly on the iCloud.
- They can also make the users anonymously log in to their apps with their iCloud Apple IDs.
- Now there is no need to write server-side application logic. With CloudKit, developers can solely concentrate on client-side app development.
Touch ID:
- Developers can now make use of Touch ID, the way User IDs were used to gain access to certain contents in the app.
- Touch ID cannot be accessed by iOS or any other app, and is well protected.
PhotoKit:
- Now create apps that can directly edit photos in the camera roll. Previously, users had to first import the photos.
- Other attributes include fetching objects and requesting changes, thread-safe architecture for caching and loading thumbnails, and knowledge of changes made by other apps.
Manual Camera Controls:
- Now users can use your apps and directly control the exposure settings, camera focus and white balance.
- Also, they can click pictures with different exposure settings with the help of ‘bracketed exposure captures’.
HealthKit:
- With HealthKit, all health-related information shared by the users is stored in one secured location.
- iPhone or iPad App Developers can gain access to all the information as soon as the users share them with their app. This helps the developers to provide users with a complete health-report instantly.
HomeKit:
- Developers can now create apps that will help users to locate other iOS devices in their house, for quicker configuration.
- Your apps can also control the devices with the help of certain actions.
Handoff:
- iOS 8 can make users continue using an app on another device, from right where it left off on the previous one.
- Your apps also have the option of doing the same.
Swift:
- Swift, as the name suggests, is the new fast programming language which is highly secured and interactive.
- It is used for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
- Writing Swift code within Xcode 6 shows immediate results before compilation into native machine code.
- Code your apps in playgrounds before moving it into projects.
Here’s part 1 of the iOS: Amazing New Features series.
(image source: Any Geo blog)
