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Posts tagged with "developers"

Apple Recognizes Developer Community Leaders→

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Yesterday, Apple published a new page on its Developer site highlighting the contributions of 50 prominent members in the Apple developer community. The page recognizes individuals from around the world and across a variety of disciplines, from technical writing, content creation, and education to event organizing and accessibility advocacy. Each profile includes a photo, a short biography, and a link to the person’s LinkedIn profile.

It’s great to see Apple give this well-earned special recognition to those who do so much to improve the lives of users everywhere through their apps and other work. The community of developers that has grown around Apple’s platforms is a priceless asset to the company and its customers, and they deserve to be honored. I hope we’ll see even more of this public positive engagement with developers out of Apple going into and following WWDC.

I highly recommend browsing through the page on the Developer site. You’ll likely see some faces you recognize from our coverage and apps you love, including Hacking with Swift’s Paul Hudson, visionOS educator Joseph Simpson, previous First, Last, Everything guest Robin Kanatzar, Mercury Weather’s Malin Sundberg, and many more. If there’s another developer you think should be recognized in the future, the page includes a link to submit their name to Apple for consideration as well.

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A Look at Apple’s 2026 Swift Student Challenge Winners

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Earlier today, Apple profiled the accomplishments of Swift Student Challenge winners. The 350 students who built the winning app playgrounds come from 37 countries and were chosen from the largest pool of participants ever. Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations said of the competition’s entries:

The breadth of creativity we see in the Swift Student Challenge never ceases to amaze us. This year’s winners found remarkable ways to harness the power of Apple platforms, Swift, and AI tools to build app playgrounds that are as technically impressive as they are meaningful. We’re incredibly proud to support their journey and can’t wait to see what they create next.

Of the 350 winners, 50 have been invited to attend WWDC, which kicks off next month.

Apple’s press release spotlights four winners who built app playgrounds. Among those profiled is Gayatri Goundadkar, who built an app called Steady Hands that uses the Apple Pencil’s stabilization technology so people with hand tremors can draw more easily. As Goundadkar says:

When a person draws, my app uses Apple’s PencilKit and Accelerate frameworks to analyze stroke data and recognize tremors. It detects what is intentional and what is not, and removes the tremor component. Every drawing is then displayed in a personal 3D museum, because I wanted them to feel like artists, not patients. When users saw the stabilization working, they felt more confident.

Another winner, Karen-Happuch Peprah Henneh, was inspired by floods in her home country of Ghana to build a real-time pathfinding app called Asuo to help people in flood-prone areas to stay out of harm’s way.

Sign & Say by Courey Jimenez (left) and NodeLab by Aayush Mehrotra (right).

Sign & Say by Courey Jimenez (left) and NodeLab by Aayush Mehrotra (right).

Earlier today, I had a chance to talk to Susan Prescott and two student winners: Courey Jimenez and Aayush Mehrotra. Jimenez drew on her experience working with nonverbal children as a behavioral technician to create an app that combines American Sign Language and Picture Exchange Communication Systems. As Jimenez explained to me:

When you can’t speak your needs, it’s a frustrating thing. So I knew I wanted to build something that was very user friendly and appealing to help mitigate that stress.

Mehrotra, who is just 14, built an app that allows students to explore the complexities of neural networks in a visual and interactive way. He was driven to build something friendly and approachable for students like himself who are interested in machine learning, too.

Every year I’m struck by the creativity of the students who participate in the Swift Student Challenge. Their inspiration is drawn from personal, family, and community experiences and their own passions. And, while their projects vary widely, they all have one thing in common: the excitement of building something and sharing it with others. It’s the same infectious enthusiasm we see over and over in the developers whose apps we cover, which propels the app world forward. Like the students I spoke to today, I can’t wait for WWDC.

GameHub’s Desktop Beta Promises to Expand Mac Gaming→

If you follow our show NPC: Next Portable Console, you probably know about GameHub, an app from controller maker GameSir. GameHub first appeared on Android, where it has become one of the hottest recent developments in handheld gaming because it lets you play Windows PC games on Android devices. That’s not something that’s possible on iOS or iPadOS, which Apple tightly controls through the App Store, but macOS is a different story altogether, which is why GameSir is bringing GameHub to the Mac.

Currently in beta, GameHub isn’t the first to bring PC games to the Mac using a software compatibility layer, but it’s one of the more user-friendly implementations, thanks to tight integration with Steam and the Epic Games Store. In fact, GameHub itself is a fork of the Winlator open-source project. And, while it’s still early days for PC games on Android and even earlier for PC games on the Mac, GameHub’s beta is making steady progress as Russ Crandall of Retro Game Corps showed off in his most recent YouTube video:

Of the 20 games Crandall tried, none of which are otherwise available on the Mac, about 60% were playable. As on Android, some games required some tweaking to get them working, but overall, the results were impressive, especially when it comes to games like Pragmata, which has only been out for about a week.

What GameHub for Mac demonstrates is just how capable Apple silicon is. The compatibility layers built to run Windows games on Android, and now the Mac, are complex, but at its core, it’s the sheer horsepower of ARM-based processors that makes this possible, regardless of the OS they run. It also makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t turn its Game Porting Toolkit that helps developers translate PC games to the Mac into a consumer product. It’s been done before with Whisky, a SwiftUI wrapper around the Game Porting Toolkit and Wine, but that project is no longer maintained. It strikes me as a great way to expand the gaming universe on the Mac and encourage more developers to support macOS directly. Maybe we’ll hear something from Apple on the topic at WWDC in June.

In the meantime, you can visit the GameHub website and join its Discord server where you’ll find instructions on joining the beta. And, if you’re interested in learning more about how GameHub and similar solutions work on Android and Mac, a good place to start is with NPC, Episode 48, Steam Emulation on Android Gets Real.

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Coding Agents Are Reshaping the App Store→

While I think it’s fair to take reports from Appfigures and its cohorts with a large grain of salt, its latest report that the App Store is booming rings true to me. As Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch, first quarter 2026 app releases were up 60% year-over-year. That’s in line with a surge that occurred at the end of last year and just so happened to coincide with the release of Claude Opus 4.5, the model that ignited a coding boom.

Another interesting tidbit from Appfigures is that the Utilities app category moved up the top five chart and Productivity apps, which were missing from the Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 top fives, made it into this past quarter’s top five.

As Perez reports:

The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, like Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the surge of new launches. It also seems possible that we’re hitting some sort of tipping point in terms of AI usability, where it’s easy enough for people to leverage these tools to build their own desired mobile apps more quickly — or even build their first apps ever.

That hypothesis lines up well with the deluge of app pitches we’ve received at MacStories since the end of last year. At first, 2025 just seemed like an unusually busy fall. We always see lots of new apps when Apple refreshes its OSes after all. However, this year, the pace never let up. In fact, the pace accelerated into 2026.

From the view on the ground, this is absolutely the result of AI coding tools. Seasoned developers are releasing new apps more often and updating existing ones faster, and there are more new developers releasing their first apps than ever. Lower barriers to entry and tighter development cycles juiced by coding agents are clearly major factors.

What’s most interesting to me, though, is that the mix of quality apps hasn’t suffered meaningfully. We’ve always been sent a healthy portion of poor quality apps. But from where I sit today, the tidal wave we’ve seen so far isn’t slop. Maybe that will change, and perhaps we’re insulated from it to some degree, but I would have thought that at the pace App Store submissions have increased that there would have been a big difference in the pitches we receive. So far, not so much. Weird, right?

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Apple Overhauls App Store Connect

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Overnight, Apple rolled out a big update to App Store Connect with new sales and analytics tools for developers. App Store Connect is the online portal that developers use to manage everything related to selling apps from TestFlight betas, to managing their App Store listings and tracking sales data and analytics.

It’s that last piece that was overhauled with this release. In fact, Apple’s post on its developer site says there are over 100 new metrics developers can use to measure the performance of their apps, all of which have been designed in a privacy-first way to protect users.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The granularity is impressive. For example, developers can track where their sales are coming from, including search, App Store browsing, web sources, and more. Conversion rates are a big part of the analytics, allowing developers to see how many people have seen their apps on the Store and downloaded them, breaking down first-time downloads and re-downloads. Analytics also tie into App Store features like In-App Events, custom product pages, and developer marketing efforts across a multitude of channels using campaign links. There’s a lot more, including metrics that track app pre-orders, user engagement and retention, and good old-fashioned sales data sliced and diced to allow developers to better understand the sources of their income.

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg of what has changed in App Store Connect. So if you’re a developer, it’s worth spending some time with your app data and reading the new guide Apple published that covers it all.

Some data reported in App Store Connect is being deprecated later this year and next.

Some data reported in App Store Connect is being deprecated later this year and next.

Since the changes rolled out, a couple of concerns I’ve seen expressed online are that there will no longer be a single place to view the aggregate performance of multiple apps and that the new default reporting period is three months. Those concerns are well founded. The changes are organized on an app-by-app basis, and as Apple says in a banner on App Store Connect, the Dashboards in the Trends section of Connect and related reports where that data was available are being deprecated later this year and next. So, while the data Apple offers is deep for each app, the aggregate data falls short by not providing a birds-eye view of a developer’s entire app catalog.

For what it’s worth, Apple is aware of the feedback regarding cross-app reporting. Also, the shorter sales reporting periods, such as the past 24 hours and seven days, are still available, but they’re less visible because three months is the new default.

This is a big update to App Store Connect that will take developers time to get used to, but it’s also a welcome change that provides meaningful new insights into App Store performance. I expect that there will be more areas where the changes fall short of developers’ expectations. However, it’s also clear to me that Apple has heard the early feedback, so I wouldn’t be surprised if adjustments are made in the future. On balance, though, I think the changes give developers valuable new ways to think about and manage their businesses across the increasingly competitive app landscape, which is welcome.

Apple Schedules WWDC 2026 for June 8–12 Along with a Special Event at Apple Park

WWDC26 will be held from June 8–12 this year and include both an online and in-person event that will provide a limited number of developers the opportunity to watch the keynote at Apple Park, meet with Apple engineers, and take part in other activities. Details on eligibility and how to apply to attend WWDC can be found on the Apple Developer site and app.

In a press release issued by Apple today, Susan Prescott, the company’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing, said:

“WWDC is one of the most exciting times for us at Apple because it’s a chance for our incredible global developer community to come together for an electrifying week that celebrates technology, innovation, and collaboration,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “We can’t wait to see many of you online and in person for what is sure to be one of our best WWDC events yet.”

Although Apple hasn’t said so specifically, those not attending in person will undoubtedly be able to stream the WWDC keynote and Platforms State of the Union, watch dozens of videos explaining the new technologies being introduced later in the year, and meet with Apple engineers for online Q&A sessions.

As always, I’m excited for WWDC. I haven’t missed one since I first started attending in 2013, and I’m not going to start this year. It’s a time to catch up with family in the area, get together with developers and media people I rarely see in person, and meet new people, too. Despite the event being smaller than when it was held in San Francisco and San Jose, it’s still energizing to get together with others who are as excited as I am for what Apple has in store for its OSes in the fall.

Of course, MacStories readers can expect the same kind of comprehensive WWDC coverage we deliver every year. We’ll have extensive coverage on MacStories, AppStories, and MacStories Unwind that will extend to Club MacStories too.

A Developer’s Month with OpenAI’s Codex→

An eye-opening story from Steve Troughton-Smith, who tested Codex for a month and ended up rewriting a bunch of his apps and shipping versions for Windows and Android:

I spent one month battle-testing Codex 5.3, the latest model from OpenAI, since I was already paying for the $20 ChatGPT Plus plan and already had access to it at no additional cost, with task after task. It didn’t just blow away my expectations, it showed me the world has changed: we’ve just undergone a permanent, irreversible abstraction level shift. I think it will be nigh-impossible to convince somebody who grows up with this stuff that they should ever drop down and write code the old way, like we do, akin to trying to convince the average Swift developer to use assembly language.

From his conclusion:

This story is unfinished; this feels like a first foray into what software development will look like for the rest of my life. Transitioning from the instrument player to the conductor of the orchestra. I can acknowledge that this is both incredibly exciting, and deeply terrifying.

I have perused the source code of some of these projects, especially during the first few days. But very quickly I learned there’s simply nothing gained from that. Code is trivial, implementations are ephemeral, and something like Codex can chew through and rewrite a thousand lines of code in a second. Eventually, I just trusted it. Granted, I almost always had a handwritten source of truth, as detailed a spec as any, so it had patterns and structure to follow.

The models are good now. A year ago, none of them could do any of this, certainly not to this quality level. But they don’t do it alone. A ton of work went into everything here, just a different kind of work to before. Above all, what mattered most in all of the above examples was taste. My taste, the human touch. I fear for the companies, oblivious to this, that trade their priceless human resources for OpenClaw nodes in a box.

The entire story is well-documented, rich in screenshots, and full of practical details for developers who may want to attempt a similar experiment.

It’s undeniable that programming is undergoing a massive shift that has possibly already changed the profession forever. Knowing what code is and does is still essential; writing it by hand does not seem to be anymore. And it sounds like the developers who are embracing this shift are happier than ever.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot: why are some of us okay with the concept of AI displacing humans in writing code, but not so much when it comes to, say, writing prose or music? I certainly wouldn’t want AI to replace me writing this, and I absolutely cannot stand the whole concept of “AI music” (here’s a great Rick Beato video on the matter). I don’t think I have a good answer to this, but the closest I can get is: code was always a means to an end – an abstraction layer to get to the actual user experience of a digital artifact. It just so happened that humans created it and had to learn it first. With text and storytelling, the raw material is the art form itself: what you read is the experience itself. But even then, what happens when the human-sourced art form gets augmented by AI in ways that increasingly blur the lines between what is real and artificial? What happens when a videogame gets enhanced by DLSS 5 or an article is a hybrid mesh of human- and AI-generated text? I don’t have answers to these questions.

I find what’s happening to software development so scary and fascinating at the same time: developers are reinventing themselves as “orchestrators” of tools and following new agentic engineering patterns. The results, like with Steve’s story, are out there and speak for themselves. I wish more people in our community were willing to have nuanced and pragmatic conversations about it rather than blindly taking sides.

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Submissions Open for the 2026 Swift Student Challenge

Today, Apple opened up applications for the Swift Student Challenge. Students have until the end of February to submit an app playground built with Xcode or Swift Playground. According to Apple’s developer website:

  • No prior experience is needed. The Challenge is open to students of all levels who meet the eligibility requirements.
  • The Challenge is free to enter — all you need is access to a Mac or iPad with Xcode or Swift Playground.
  • Your app playground can be on any topic of your choice. The best app ideas come from subjects or experiences that you’re passionate about. 
  • Your app playground should be experienced within 3 minutes or less.
  • The Swift Student Challenge is a great opportunity for students to build their skills and create something great.

Apple also released a video explaining the Challenge, and additional resources are available for both students and educators.

After the submission period closes, Apple will pick 350 winners, who will receive a one-year membership in the Apple Developer Program and a gift. Of those winners, 50 will be selected as Distinguished Winners who will be invited to visit Apple Park in Cupertino for a three-day visit, which in past years was held during WWDC.

for me, the kickoff of the Swift Student Challenge is the beginning of the build-up to WWDC, which is likely just four months away. It’s a great program that I know has inspired a lot of students to become the developers whose apps we cover at MacStories. Federico and I have also had the pleasure of interviewing many of the winners in the past and have always come away impressed and inspired what they create as part of the Challenge. I’m sure this year will be no different.