Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference 2021 just wrapped up, and as always, there were a ton of updates and new features introduced across Apple’s platforms and development tools. Here are a few of the key highlights from the event.

Xcode Cloud

Apple finally shared the results of acquiring BuddyBuild with the introduction of Xcode Cloud. No - not Xcode in the browser, but a cloud-hosted continuous integration server fully integrated into Xcode. This full-featured CI solution combined with a streamlined developer workflow is definitely going to improve productivity for teams developing for Apple’s platforms.

Swift 5.5

Swift 5.5 is developed in the open by the Swift community, so there aren’t many surprises here. The biggest update in Swift 5.5 is the addition of async/await and structured concurrency to help developers write safer and more readable asynchronous code. Many existing APIs have already been updated to support this new approach.

SwiftUI

This is the third WWDC for SwiftUI, and it keeps getting better. Many of the missing features in SwiftUI are addressed this year, reducing the need to leverage UIKit or AppKit directly when building apps with SwiftUI. It is clear that SwiftUI is the future for mobile development. There is no better time than now to start embracing SwiftUI.

WWDC always inspires developers to innovate in new ways. We can’t wait to start leveraging all these advancements and more in the apps that we build.