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Apple Plans to Develop a Fully Custom GPU Architecture
Apple will develop its own custom graphics architecture to power the GPUs for its future devices, according to UK-based firm Imagination Technologies, Apple’s current GPU provider. The new GPUs should be ready in 15 months to two years' time and will be the first Apple-made GPUs that will bear no resemblance to Imagination Technologies’.
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Swift 3.1 Improves Language, Package Manager, and Linux Implementation
Staying true to its plan, the recently announced Swift 3.1 is source compatible with Swift 3.0. Still, it includes a number of changes to the language, the standard library, and improved Linux implementation.
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Swift Memory Ownership Manifesto
According to Chris Lattner, Swift creator and Swift team lead before moving to Tesla, defining a Rust/Cyclone-inspired memory ownership model is one of the main goals for Swift development. Now that Swift 4 has entered its phase 2, the Swift team has published a manifesto detailing how Swift memory ownership could work.
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Swift 4 Enters Final Stage, Defers ABI Stability
Apple has detailed the release process for Swift 4, which should become available in the Fall of 2017. The main focus of this release is to provide significant enhancements to the core language and standard library, while delivering source compatibility. ABI compatibility, which was originally in the roadmap, will be deferred, explains Apples' new Swift team lead Ted Kremenek.
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Apple Proposes a New 3D Graphics Standard Called WebGPU
Apple has proposed a new GPU API for the browser, called WebGPU. Google has another solution called NXT in the development.
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MindMeld’s Guide to Building Conversational Apps
MindMeld, a conversational AI company, has published The Conversational AI Playbook, a guide outlining the challenges and the steps to be made to create conversational applications.
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The Road to Swift 4 ABI Stability
Recently published on the swift-evolution mailing list, the Swift ABI Stability Manifesto aims to be a compilation of all concerns that need to be addressed before Swift’s ABI can be declared stable. Yet, it is not entirely clear whether ABI stability will make it into Swift 4.
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Swift 3.1 Enters its Final Development Stage
Apple’s Swift team has made public their release plan for Swift 3.1, expected to be available in the Spring of 2017 and source-compatible with Swift 3.0, writes Apple’s language and runtimes manager Ted Kremenek.
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First Evidence of Apple Aggressively Removing Abandoned Apps from the App Store
In the second month after Apple announced an App Store improvement process aimed to remove non-working or outdated apps, its first effects are starting to show, App Store analytics firm Sensor Tower revealed.
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Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla Urge Site Operators to Replace SHA–1 Certificates
Following their SHA–1 deprecation plans announced last year, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla detailed recently their timelines to remove support for SHA–1 certificates from their flagship browsers. Researchers at security firm Venafi found however, that 35% of analyzed websites are still using SHA–1 certificates.
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Swift 3 is out
Swift 3.0 has been released, writes Apple engineer Ted Kremenek, bringing a wealth of changes to the language and its standard library, additions to the Linux port, and the first official release of the Swift Package Manager.
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Apple’s Chris Lattner Looks Back at Swift 3 and Ahead to Swift 4
While Swift 3 is nearing its late 2016 release, Apple’s Developer Tools Department senior director Chris Lattner provided a retrospective on its development and set expectations for Swift 4 in a long message to the Swift-evolution mailing list.
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Apple Open-Sources its New Compression Algorithm LZFSE
Apple has open-sourced its new lossless compression algorithm, LZFSE, introduced last year with iOS 9 and OS X 10.10. According to Apple, LZFE provides the same compression gain as ZLib level 5 while being 2x–3x faster and with higher energy efficiency.
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A Look at APFS, Apple’s New File System for iOS and macOS
Among the announcements Apple made at WWDC 2016, its new file system, called APFS, raised a lot of developer interest. APFS brings strong encryption, copy-on-write metadata, space sharing, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, and more to macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS.