Apple's WWDC this year is a bit special, as we all know, in the past, Apple has released some hardware products to get the market attention, and on this year's WWDC, Apple not only did not publish the expected wearable devices, also did not release the beats labeled headphones, but Apple has released HomeKit and Swift, both of which allow us to see Apple's sincerity and Apple's future development strategy and direction.
can homekit make Apple a standard-setting for smart home?
What is HomeKit? It is an open API that can be paired with the mainstream smart home products on the market, including the universal protocol for Smart home and secure pairing. According to Apple's plan, with HomeKit, users can control the market's mainstream smart home products via the iphone.
How is HomeKit specifically implemented? It is reported that Apple will provide consumers with an iOS device, and through an application, or through its partner application of a common UI interface, to control the user's home products. Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, says users can even focus on different applications and then control them with a single command. For example, if you want to leave home and just tell Siri that you're gone, this command can perform multiple operations, including turning off room lights and locking doors. In fact, in the HomeKit framework, developers can define some initial devices, such as door locks, garage doors, and light switches. HomeKit support developers can customize an unlimited number of new devices, it can be said that HomeKit is a very open system.
Thus, HomeKit provides an important direction for the future development of smart home, but Apple has its own wishful thinking------if the device wants to be controlled by iOS, it must first be added to the Made for IPhone (MFI) project, That is, the special wireless chips and software packages are integrated into the hardware device according to Apple's requirements.
As you can see, HomeKit has a strong openness and, based on security considerations, all hardware that supports HomeKit uses end-to-end encryption. However, all this has a major premise, is to join the MFI project.
Swift------Developer's Gospel
In addition to HomeKit, Swift is also a major aspect of this WWDC, which is a major boon for developers. According to the introduction, Swift is excellent in speed and has high compatibility, its code can coexist with C language and objective-c, this characteristic means Swift does not have any negative influence to the existing programming system, but its advantage can be maximized.
For Swift's efficiency, the official gives a set of contrasting data for various languages, to develop the language Python as the analogy object, the objective-c efficiency is 2.8 times times the python, and Swift is 3.9 times times the python. Furthermore, Swift solves the problem of "garbage collection". Objective-c's longstanding criticism is that it does not support "garbage collection," and Swift solves the problem, and its garbage collection mechanism frees programmers from the need to manually release excess memory, which can relieve a lot of the burden.
On this WWDC, developers have developed a game on the spot with Swift, showing the WWDC powerful features in the most intuitive way, and the language's ability to build and run code in real time has left developers quite impressed. Coupled with Swift's strong compatibility, will certainly attract a lot of developers into the Apple development camp, in Swift more and more pro-people, more and more popular, as well as the development of the swift-based products will be more diversified and richer.
In general, Apple has not released any disruptive hardware products on this WWDC, but the advent of HomeKit and Swift is still significant, at least, as Apple becomes more open. Of course, in addition to HomeKit and Swift, Apple has released a new operating system, an open new SDK, and a new version of the API, which is a potent needle in Apple's eco-chain. (Wen/Wangyi See QQ543415188 This article is originally contained in "Computer Application Digest")
Can openness make apple a standard-setting for smart homes?
