This AI Ecosystem Report, featuring CIO and Acceleration Economy analyst Kenny Mullican, examines the complexities of developing apps for Apple’s platforms and the advantages of AI tools like Swift Assist for developers.
Highlights
00:25 —There are many different Apple products on the market that apps can live in. This includes iOS, macOS, watchOS, and all different types of devices. But when you’re a developer, and you’re having to support these different platforms, it can be complex.
01:19 — One thing that has already begun to help is AI, particularly generative AI in development. The first I saw was a product called GitHub Copilot. That leads us to Apple’s new contribution. It has a new product called Swift Assist, an AI code generator, that’s similar to GitHub Copilot, allowing users to write code using natural language.
02:50 — Users say what they want to do in their natural language. For me, that’s English. Then I’m going to get the code automatically generated. It’s cloud-based, which is a great benefit as well.
03:26 — It focuses on privacy. This is going to save time and reduce complexity. Imagine that you start sitting down to write this application, and you ask Swift Assist to create a list of classic Macs with names and descriptions. Then you might want to add more UI (user interface) elements to it. So you request Swift Assist to add images next to each Mac in the list.
04:30 — The outcome is Swift Assist updates the structure to display images alongside the text, helping developers quickly prototype more detailed UIs. There are so many things that you can do by speaking to it or typing it with natural language.
