Upcoming Webcast

Just 2 weeks left until WWDC. Will it be as disruptive this year as last? Probably no new programming languages although all the buzz suggests Swift will update to version 2.0 and include major new features. I’m guessing that 1.x will persist for App Store submission until around September.

Regardless of what’s announced, I’m going to present a webcast that I’ve tentatively titled “So that happened: Cool stuff about new Swift features” on June 18th at 1PM ET. I’ll link up the Pearson landing page when we get closer to the event for anyone who wants to pre-register.

Speculation

At WWDC, it would be nice to finally see a TV API, although I’m not holding my breath. Rumors point to new streaming media services further expanding Apple’s presence in this contested arena but nothing much about developer-facing APIs.

Otherwise I’m ready for iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 to be a thing. There’s a certain satisfaction in there even being a 10.10. I remember  skepticism when I predicted that after 10.9, Apple would move to 10.10 instead of rounding up to 11.

I expect there will continue to be a big focus on the new watch, Research and Health Kit at WWDC. Swift, iCloud storage, Metal development, internationalization, App Store, and power optimization (battery power that is, not the power of awesome) are likely session focuses in addition to whatever new tech gets introduced. Lesson: Avoid pre-writing posts too far in advance. A preliminary schedule for WWDC has been posted.

Anticipating WWDC creates an atmosphere of both fear and excitement. I really wish Apple would consider moving it to late Winter or early Spring to take some of the pressure off the death-march to Christmas Sales.

DevMate

MacPaw, the people who brought you CleanMyMac, have announced DevMate, which includes support for sale and distribution outside the Mac App Store. It seems to offer a combination of product licensing, Sparkle-like app updates, user feedback support and crash reporting in addition to industry standard analytics.

Normally “maker of CleanMyMac” wouldn’t be a big selling point but the feature set looks surprisingly interesting, especially since in-store sales can be quite limiting.

Pricing starts at a free level, with up to 1000 current users, 500 deliveries, and 50 activations per month. Activations are “the number of activated copies during payment period”, which I assume corresponds to sales. The price then ramps up from $39/month (about 3 sales a day, if I’m doing the math right), with increments to the activation numbers, active users, and updates at each level.

More information at the DevMate website, along with a bunch of testimonials.