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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1134553
Developers, developers, developers! With the latest release of Xcode, developers will find it much easier to build apps that work on both macOS and iPodOS via Project Catalyst. This will allow one development team to work on both mobile and desktop versions of a program. Apple’s five-year-old Swift programming language sports several enhancements that will reduce the amount of code needed for many functions and the increased functionality of drag-and-drop “playgrounds” for developers. There’s now a Swift-native development framework for the Apple Watch. The jaw-dropper of this segment are Apple’s new AR tools, Reality Composer and Reality Kit, along with ARKit 3. The jaw-dropping came with the later and it’s “people occlusion” abilities. In essence, it’s smart enough to recognize a human in the scene, sense their distance relative to other objects and place them in front of or behind objects appropriately. This was demonstrated onstage by Lydia Winters and Saxs Persson of Mojang, showing off Minecraft Earth to great effect. When one thinks of the impact that the relatively less-sophisticated Pokémon GO had, the mind boggles as we think of millions of gamers living out their Minecraft adventures via augmented reality.