Craig Federighi Goes In Depth On Catalyst Ipados And Swift Ui In New Interview

Apple’s SVP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, sat down with MacStories’ Federico Viticci at WWDC to take a deep dive into the new developer tools announced this week including Catalyst (formerly Marzipan), SwiftUI and its purpose, why it was the right time to introduce iPadOS, and much more.

The 45-minute conversation covers a range of in-depth aspects about Catalyst, SwiftUI, iPadOS, updates to the Shortcuts app, and more. When discussing Catalyst – Apple’s tool to bring iPad apps to Mac – Federighi noted that it should create a lot of value and accessibility for developers who haven’t been able to keep employees on staff that are experts in AppKit. This could be a factor for even large companies, with Twitter committing to bringing back a native Mac app with Catalyst.

Viticci asked about the future of AppKit and Federighi confirmed that AppKit isn’t going away, but that Catalyst is just a new way to create Mac apps. Developers will also be able to sell Mac apps made with Catalyst on the Mac App Store in addition to their own websites.

As Federighi touched on during an interview with John Gruber yesterday, the Apple SVP talked about the first round of apps that Apple made with Catalyst last year including News, Home, Stocks, etc., and what the company took away from it.

On the topic of SwiftUI, Federighi elaborated on the goal of the new framework:

Viticci also asked about why now was the right time to split iPad off from iOS and launch its own platform with iPadOS. Federighi noted that features like Split View, Slide Over, Drag and Drop, and Apple Pencil have all been building up to iPad getting its own OS along with this year’s iPad specific updates.

Because we don’t have the developer overexpress themselves when creating the interface in the firstplace, all that’s there are the semantics and we can infer all the details and build the right interface for you. So the experience ends up being so much more fluid.

The full interview is definitely worth a listen and covers more about changes to the Files app in iPadOS, updates to the Shortcuts app, and much more.