Sarah Perez:
This week, Apple announced a series of discovery features that will personalize app recommendations based on users’ interests and behavior, providing a new way for developers to have their app discovered.
At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the iPhone maker introduced Personalized Collections in the App Store, which will showcase recommendations tailored to the individual. These will also include new “App Notes” that explain why the specific apps were recommended to you. Starting this week, you’ll find these new personalized suggestions in various places in the App Store, including the Apps or Games tab or on the Search tab.
Mysk:
Now Apple is putting the extensive identifiable analytics they collect in the App Store in action. They record every tap and there’s no way to turn it off.
They can even calculate your typing speed.
[…]
If you don’t like Apple Music privacy options, you can stream music from Spotify. But where else can you download apps on the iPhone?
The data is associated with your account and unencrypted.
Previously:
App Store iOS iOS 26 Mac Mac App Store macOS Tahoe 26 Privacy
Scott Perry:
My team rewrote Apple's TrueType hinting interpreter in Swift, ask me anything.
[…]
I feel like naming just one would be a disservices to all of the features that made this effort possible (C interop, generics, noncopyable/nonescapable types) but at the end of the day I think the star of the show was the optimizer; despite being faster than the code it replaced, the new code is super readable and that was only possible because the optimizer was able to completely eliminate all of our abstractions.
The new version is faster, but the main motivation was security concerns.
Dmitrii Kalianov:
Is hinting useful/being used in the days of hi-dpi displays? I was under impression that Apple switched to grayscale anti-aliasing and ditched hinting.
Scott Perry:
For the most part hinting isn’t really necessary anymore, but thanks to being Turing-complete it has been Hyrum’s law-ed by at least one CJK font that uses hinting to lay out strokes in its characters.
Alex Rosenberg:
There were three major TrueType implementations at Apple IIRC:
- The original 68K one
- A rewrite for Copland that lived with ATS/ATSUI after Copland was cancelled
- iPhone shipped one derived from heavily-modified FreeType that was current until today
Scott Perry:
One of the axioms for this project was that I wanted my team to write the most boring code possible—nearly identical structurally to the code it was replacing, because to do otherwise would introduce binary compatibility risk. The other axiom was 100% test coverage for all new code as it landed, with the same units testing both interpreters.
Rosyna Keller:
Is the font parsing code itself still C++?
Scott Perry:
There is also a “Safe Font Parser” for WebKit in Lockdown Mode, but it supports a subset of all the myriad features provided by font formats.
Previously:
Font Smoothing Interpreter iOS iOS 27 Mac macOS 27 Golden Gate Optimization Parser Programming Security Software Rewrite Swift Programming Language Typography
Hartley Charlton:
Apple this week confirmed that Notion is migrating its user interface to SwiftUI, citing the app’s desire for greater performance and UI consistency than its existing web-based stack can deliver.
[…]
The callout was clearly deliberate; Notion is one of the most widely used productivity apps on the Mac, and has long been criticized for the sluggishness that comes with its Electron-based architecture.
Previously:
Electron Mac Mac App macOS 27 Golden Gate Notion Software Rewrite Swift Programming Language SwiftUI
Tim Hardwick:
Apple’s new version of Safari browser in macOS 27 and iOS 27 can be tasked to monitor a webpage and notify you of any changes, thanks to a new built-in feature.
[…]
In other upcoming feature additions, using the power of AI, Safari tabs that you have open can automatically be organized into topics.
Saron Yitbarek et al.:
Don’t miss our WWDC26 sessions on web technology, including What’s new in WebKit for Safari 27, to go deeper on our work in this release. Now, let’s dig into this beta, packed with 58 new features, 525 fixes and 4 deprecations that will hopefully make your work as a web developer a little easier.
Saron Yitbarek:
This year, the WebKit team is here with six sessions covering new CSS layouts, customizable form controls, 3D models, immersive spatial experiences, and browser extensions.
See also: Safari 27 Beta Release Notes.
Previously:
Apple Intelligence Apple Software Announcement Artificial Intelligence CSS iOS iOS 27 Mac macOS 27 Golden Gate Safari WebKit WWDC
