From the presentation of Apple, which was supposed to take place on September 12, we did not expect anything special: three new iPhone models and a new version of the Apple Watch - they knew about these updates beforehand. However, we in Avito could not miss this event. When a couple of days before the Very Special Event we realized that a company was formed from those who do not want to watch the broadcast alone, we decided to invite our friends, iOS developers from other companies, to visit. View the event together, discuss new products (and how they will affect the development of applications for iOS), eat shawarma, drink a smoothie, that's all.

I tell under the cut, as we watched the Apple Special Event, and what my colleagues think about the new devices and features of the company from Cupertino.

Photos of the new devices that Apple introduced, the 9to5mac edition showed two weeks before the presentation. In addition, there were many rumors from "trusted sources" about the technical characteristics of new models of phones and watches. Nothing new - such leaks occur every year. Of course, when all the innovations are known in advance, no one practically had any enthusiasm to watch the presentation. But here it is like with football: even if you are not very interested, when you watch a match in a company, you always get pleasure and a lot of emotions. Therefore, we spontaneously decided to organize a joint viewing of the broadcast in our office. It turned out fun.

We started with a cultural program - predictions about the presentation. Our guests had to tell what Apple would show, without using words with the letter “n”. As it turned out, this is very difficult (after all, “p” is a presentation, predictability). Managed only one person. As a reward received fashionable sweatpants with large pockets - to make it easier to wear the new iPhone XS Max.

Like real lovers of fashionable gadgets from Apple, watched the presentation with shawarma and smoothies - hipster dinner.

The main feature of the new Apple Watch was the ability to create an electrocardiogram directly to them, which you can send to your doctor. Good technology, but in Russia it is not available. In addition, both our guests at the meeting, and the Internet managed to joke that even this innovation would work for us with its own specifics.

_{The novelty does not cause any reaction from our guests.}

The appearance of two SIM cards in the new iPhone models was also embarrassing. Especially that in the Chinese market there will be two physical SIM cards - in other countries (Russia is not one of them), one of the SIM cards will be virtual. Many people jokingly thought that Apple was inspired by the manufacturers of Chinese fake phones. In the next iPhone, as we joked at the meeting, waiting for the retractable antenna and TV.

_{Apple presents the new iPhone in 2019.}

After the presentation, Apple Watch, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, the presentation ceased to be so dynamic - from the stage they talked about minor improvements in devices, their environmental friendliness. I wanted to believe that the insiders, which everyone learned, are not true, and they will not show anything new. Or we will wait for the “One more thing” and something quite cool. But suddenly the iPhone XR is presented in several colors - and everyone exhaled. The presentation and this time turned out without surprises.

Despite Apple’s expected releases, it’s very cool to get together and watch a presentation in a small company of fellow developers, joking at how many times Tim Cook or Phil Schiller uttered the word “innovative”.

Now a little about technology. I talked with colleagues from Avito, with whom we watched the presentation, about how the emergence of new devices and technologies will affect iOS development and why Apple still has a lot to strive to improve the lives of iOS professionals.

Will the release of three new devices with a large screen size on the update of our application?

Alexey Kudryavtsev, iOS developer

“It seems not. The biggest changes were with the release of the iPhone X. Not only the screen size, but also its format has changed there. We had to maintain a new form of angles ("ears"), safe area. This required fairly large modifications. Now Apple has just introduced enlarged versions of the same phone. In addition, the company has long presented tools for dynamic layout on different screen sizes. The development should not affect anything - it is for the gland. "

Vladislav Alekseev, leading iOS developer

“I think the minimum some tunings will be required. We will not have a headache with new devices. In terms of UI, the only pain possible is the iPhone XS Max, because other devices have the same screen size as previous ones. But I think we’ll just switch one of our simulators to the iPhone XS Max, and the UI tests will not change. ”

Vadim Smal, leading iOS developer

“Each release of the new device is a little bit, but it complicates the work. The device needs to be tested, updated the whole environment, put a new Xcode. This increases the time to develop new features. But almost nothing has changed on the phones - for example, even the aspect ratio remains the same. Only the iPhone XS Max resolution has increased. And therefore, it may be necessary to generate new images for greater resolution, so that they look better. But in general, Apple has not introduced any new features that could affect the product part. Except for Siri shortcuts. ”

Technology in new devices and in iOS 12, which you would like to use: from AR, Siri shortcuts to ECG for Apple Watch

“It's all pretty sad. If we talk about AR in iOS - the topic is hyip, of course. Many have tried it, there are some applications for this, but there isn’t anything really interesting. We tried Siri shortcuts. Pretty simple and uninteresting thing - you can write down certain commands and only in a certain sequence. Just improved automation of the old Siri. ”

“Nothing really came up with Apple. Of course, machine learning in iOS in terms of technology works very well in some places. For example, it's cool that a model is automatically trained only by simply putting a group of files on Xcode. But AR, though presented as a finished product, is unlikely to be fully used by anyone. ”

“AR has not changed much in this version - it has become a bit faster. Minor changes in essence. Under the clock, few people make applications. A good device - you wear it on your hand, you look at the notifications, but to make a full-fledged application under it is rather pointless. Siri shortcuts are a fairly lightweight technology for development, and it will be useful in certain applications. Say for an alarm clock. Probably, this is the only thing that I would try, even in the Avito application. ”

What technology, feature or device was waiting for the most

“Any cache for swift files. Swift compiles on a local machine, but Google, for example, has something like Gradle. You can raise the distributed cache. Apple has never had anything like this, and because of this, we all suffer. ”

“Perhaps the dark mode on iOS. The latest iPhone is equipped with an OLED display, which would affect both convenience and battery life. Improved Do Not Disturb. Now you can turn on the mode, for example, for an hour, you can by geolocation, but for half an hour, as it should be me, this can not be done. I even started a support bug when it was the first beta. But Apple is still ignoring my request. ”

“I really want wireless charging. They all will not let her out. They wrote that they have a problem with overheating. And I want the bugs to be finally fixed. ”

A bug that was never cut, although I really wanted to

“I do testing, which is why the instability of their infrastructure is the most annoying. We have to invent crutches in order to run the tests normally and run Xcode to work fine. Xcode itself slows down. Each time pressing the start button takes 30 seconds. It is too long. Therefore, instead of one hundred tests a day, only ten can be done. ”

“Curtain notification works crookedly. In general, there are some bugs that are seven years old. For example, with core data. In place of database repositories there are relations between objects in the database. Relations are generated incorrectly, and you need to use a special crutch so that it is correctly generated. ”

What most did not like in the presentation

“They did not introduce a smaller iPhone. "Ten" is quite large and it is not always convenient to use it. But Apple, unfortunately, presented even larger phones. If this continues, I will have to buy a separate bag for the phone. ”

“Everything was known in advance, and nothing surprised. At least some “One more thing“: the new AirPods with sound insulation, the new Mac Mini - it would be very useful for us in Avito ”.

“Apple boasted that they had increased their iPhone battery life by 15 minutes. It seems to be just an error, which they once measured and decided that this can be represented as an achievement. ”