For the first time since the opening of the App Store, it is possible to build and distribute an app for the iOS ecosystem directly on an iPad, without using the Mac. No, Apple has not (yet) transformed Xcode into an app for tablet, but has integrated some elements within Swift Playgrounds, the application for learning the Swift language with which you can write software for iPhone and iPad.
The component that does the difference is called App Store Connect, and allows developers to publish a project built within the app using Swift Ui in the virtual application store.
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The novelty, that was already announced at the WWDC in June 2021, it is particularly important for learners to program. Swift Playgrounds, which until now could only create projects to export and re-import within the application, becomes a tool capable of shortening the path between the idea of an app and its debut in the App Store. Update after update, the program is becoming what it is for programming in Swift GarageBand, Apple’s simplified home recording software, has been for years for music: a more accessible version of Apple’s professional software complexes. If in the case of music the software is Logic, in the case of programming it is obviously Xcode.
Here, however, the fundamental novelty is the possibility of create iOS applications directly on iPad, leveraging the processing power of increasingly powerful Apple chips. Until now, a programmer who wanted to try his hand at the definitive publication of an app on the Store still had to equip himself with a Mac, install Xcode and proceed to use App Store Connect.
If now even the most seasoned developers can use Swift Playgrounds to realize their ideas more quickly, the fundamental purpose of the app remains learning programming. The new version 4 introduces updates in real time, viewable as you write, i suggestions smart for code autocompletion, a new App Projects format to quickly transfer projects to Xcode and vice versa, the ability to search within multiple files and finally a code chunk library (the so-called snippets) ready with hundreds of Swift Ui modules ready to be inserted into apps.
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Swift Playgrounds 4 you can download it for free from the App Store, but it is only available after updating the tablet to the latest version of iOS, 15.2.
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