There was far more to take in that it might first have appeared this year at WWDC. To me, it feels very much like a "Bug+" year. Lots of fixes to existing features with more additions to the core.
I was hoping this would be the case. I like alternate years to be more about keeping a solid base than iterating big things over the top, causing more problems and developers to scramble ready for the final OS releases in the Fall.
But don't let this year fool you. For example, being able to build SwiftUI based apps on the iPad and ship them to the store is a massive deal for the future and a clear indicator that Apple is taking the idea seriously.
On top of that, we got the first introduction to a new Cloud build system, which is probably the result of Apple's acquisition of Buddy Build.
We also got significant changes to the weather app on iOS, which might sound odd to highlight, but remember this comes from another purchase Apple made. What is strange about this one is that there appears to be no improved APIs for 3rd party developers to improve their weather apps.
Xcode 13 has some nice changes that will aid in the writing of Swift, any improvement year on year for Swift in Xcode is a good thing. Especially given that Apple indicates that they intend new APIs to be Swift-based rather than Objective-C.
The Swift language is always slightly depreciated when it comes to announcements at WWDC since it now has its release cycle due to the open-source project.
It is time to sit back, catch up on videos of interest and see what may affect anything I am or plan to work on between now and the Fall releases.
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