iOS 6 and Developers

Over at TidBITS, Matt Neuburg has posted a clear and concise overview of what iOS 6 means for third-party developers. Among the mentioned technical changes, he talks about UICollectionView:

The major new widget that will have the biggest impact on app interfaces is the collection view. A collection view is like a table view on steroids. A table view is the scrolling column of cells commonly seen in any master–detail app where a list must be displayed; Settings, Mail, and Music are familiar examples. A collection view breaks the bonds of the single vertically scrolling column, so you can expect, in short order, to see horizontally scrollable rows of data, multicolumn tables, and grids of information.

While web-based, some of the conventions of the new App Store in iOS 6 (horizontal-scrolling lists, grids) could be replicated with UICollectionView. I’d argue that many of the changes brought to the App Store are actually making some parts of search and discovery worse, but that’s not the point.

What matters is that, with each new version of iOS, developers are given more powerful tools to build new apps and refine existing ones. As I wrote in my piece about iOS 6, Apple understands “the importance of a healthy developer ecosystem that sets iOS apart from the competition”.

To get a good overview of the changes for developers in iOS 6, I recommend reading Matt’s article.