Apple is counting on apps built for the iPad and the iPhone being converted to the Mac as a way to infuse new energy -- and a lot of new software -- into the granddaddy of its devices. From a report: The party started last year at WWDC 2018 when Apple announced a "sneak peek" at four of its own apps that it converted from iOS to MacOS. Those four were News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks. But when the apps showed up in MacOS Mojave, they weren't greeted with much enthusiasm from Mac users because all four were rudimentary at best and didn't take advantage of the Mac's extra capabilities. Good news. Apple is fixing them. At WWDC 2019 earlier this month, Apple announced Project Catalyst, which streamlines the process for all software makers to bring their own iOS apps to Mac.

In an interview with CNET at WWDC, Apple software chief Craig Federighi confirmed that the four iOS apps for Mac released last year will get major updates based on the new technology in Project Catalyst. But he also revealed that the apps will get new designs to make them more Mac-like. "They're getting improvements," Federighi said. "The underlying technology has matured...Some of that is super low-level stuff. Some people have dissected those apps and realized that they were sort of two halves: an AppKit half and a UIKit half, literally running in different processes. That's all unified now. This has become much more of a native Mac framework...So automatically, the apps we built last year are upgraded."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The latest Windows preview from the 20H1 branch, build 18917, has some hidden components that signal a future where the Windows Shell UI parts, such as Action Center, will be separate from the rest of Windows and can be updated with shell packages. A developer who uses the Twitter handle Albacore gave a breakdown of a new component in Build 18917 called 'Shell Update Agent,' which he notes is "capable of obtaining and updating the shell on demand."

That capability may mean nothing to most Windows 10 users. However, for Windows watchers it could be an interesting development of Microsoft's unannounced plans for Windows Core OS, in which Windows is modularized and calls on a range of shells that target different form factors, from HoloLens to Surface and dual-screen devices like the recently revealed Centaurus laptop, whose shell is called Santorini. Albacore goes on to explain that the Shell Update Agent references 'Package Family Names,' which suggests that the "shell will indeed be a separate, packaged component." Those shell packages can be acquired from both external and internal sources, which could mean shell components like the Start Menu, Action Center and Taskbar could be selectively built, based on these acquired packages. Finally, one more shell-related change noted relates to a new method for syncing settings. "The new one should support syncing more advanced and previously 'legacy' options such as File Explorer configuration," Albacore notes.

"JetBrains released its State of Developer Ecosystem 2019 report, which found while Java is still the most popular primary language and JavaScript is the most used overall, Python is gaining speed," reports SD Times: The report surveyed about 7,000 developers worldwide, and revealed Python is the most studied programming language, the most loved language, and the third top primary programming language developers are using... The top use cases developers are using Python for include data analysis, web development, machine learning and writing automation scripts, according to the JetBrains report. More developers are also beginning to move over to Python 3, with 9 out of 10 developers using the current version.

The JetBrains report also found while Go is still a young language, it is the most promising programming language. "Go started out with a share of 8% in 2017 and now it has reached 18%. In addition, the biggest number of developers (13%) chose Go as a language they would like to adopt or migrate to," the report stated...

Seventy-three percent of JavaScript developers use TypeScript, which is up from 17 percent last year. Seventy-one percent of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work. Java 8 is still the most popular programming language, but developers are beginning to migrate to Java 10 and 11.
JetBrains (which designed Kotlin in 2011) also said that 60% of their survey's respondents identified themselves as professional web back-end developers (while 46% said they did web front-end, and 23% developed mobile applications). 41% said they hadn't contributed to open source projects "but I would like to," while 21% said they contributed "several times a year."

"16% of developers don't have any tests in their projects. Among fully-employed senior developers though, that statistic is just 8%. Like last year, about 30% of developers still don't have unit tests in their projects." Other interesting statistics:

• 52% say they code in their dreams.

• 57% expect AI to replace developers "partially" in the future.

• "83% prefer the Dark theme for their editor or IDE. This represents a growth of 6 percentage points since last year for each environment.

• 47% take public transit to work.

And 97% of respondents using Rust "said they have been using Rust for less than a year. With only 14% using it for work, it's much more popular as a language for personal/side projects." And more than 90% of the Rust developers who responded worked with codebases with less than 300 files.

"It took 10 months to get it done, but the Granite State is now officially a Geeky State," writes Concord Monitor science reporter David Brooks.

"The latest New Hampshire Historical Highway Marker, celebrating the creation of the BASIC computer language at Dartmouth in 1964, has officially been installed. Everybody who has ever typed a GOTO command can feel proud..." Last August, I wrote in this column that the 255 official historical markers placed alongside state roads told us enough about covered bridges and birthplaces of famous people but not enough about geekiness. Since anybody can submit a suggestion for a new sign, I thought I'd give it a shot.

The creation of BASIC, the first programing language designed to let newbies dip their intellectual toes into the cutting-edge world of software, seemed the obvious candidate. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code has probably has done more to introduce more people to computer programming than anything ever created. That includes me: The only functioning programs I've ever created were in vanilla BASIC, and I still recall the great satisfaction of typing 100 END...

But BASIC wasn't just a toy for classrooms. It proved robust enough to survive for decades, helping launch Microsoft along the way, and there are descendants still in use today. In short, it's way more important than any covered bridge.
The campaign for the marker was supported by Thomas Kurtz, the retired Dartmouth math professor who'd created BASIC along with the late John Kemeny. "Our original idea was to mention both BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, an early system by which far-flung computers could share resources. They were created hand-in-hand as part of Kemeny's idea of putting computing in the hands of the unwashed masses.

"However, the N.H. Division of Historical Resources, which has decades of experience creating these markers, said it would be too hard to cram both concepts into the limited verbiage of a sign."

The highway marker calls BASIC "the first user-friendly computer programming languages... BASIC made computer programming accessible to college students and, with the later popularity of personal computers, to users everywhere. It became the standard way that people all over the world learned to program computers, and variants of BASIC are still in use today."

In the original submission, an anonymous Slashdot reader notes that last month, Manchester New Hampshire also unveiled a statue of Ralph Baer, whose team built the first home video game sold as Magnavox Odyssey, sitting on a park bench. "The Granite State isn't shy about its geek side."

Python reached another new all-time high on the TIOBE index, now representing 8.5% of the results for the search query +"<language> programming" on the top 25 search engines. Python overtook C++ this month for the #3 spot, now placing behind only Java (#1) and C (#2).

That's prompted TIOBE to make a bold prediction: If Python can keep this pace, it will probably replace C and Java in 3 to 4 years time, thus becoming the most popular programming language of the world.

The main reason for this is that software engineering is booming. It attracts lots of newcomers to the field. Java's way of programming is too verbose for beginners. In order to fully understand and run a simple program such as "hello world" in Java you need to have knowledge of classes, static methods and packages. In C this is a bit easier, but then you will be hit in the face with explicit memory management. In Python this is just a one-liner. Enough said.
InfoWorld reports: Also on the rise in the June Tiobe index, Apple's Swift language is ranked 11th, with a rating of 1.419 percent. Swift was ranked 15th at this time last year and 18th last month, while its predecessor Objective-C language ranked 12th this month with a rating of 1.391. Tiobe expects Objective-C to drop out of the top 20 within two years.
InfoWorld also notes that Python is already #1 in the Pypl index, which analyes how often language tutorials are searched for on Google. On that list, Python is followed by Java, JavaScript, C#, PHP, and then C/C++.

Python was also TIOBE's fastest-rising language in 2018 -- though in 2017 that honor went to C, and in 2015 to Java...

dryriver writes: If anybody remembers the good old Commodore 64, one thing stood out about this once popular 8-bit computer -- as soon as you turned it on, you could type in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and run it. You didn't have to install a programming language, an IDE and all that jazz. You could simply start punching code in, and the C64 would execute it. Now that we live in a time where coding is even more important and bankable than it was back in the 1980s, shouldn't operating systems like Windows 10 or Android also come with precisely this kind of feature? An easy-to-learn programming language like the old BASIC that greets you right after you boot up the computer, and gives you unfettered access to all of the computer's hardware and capabilities, just like was possible on the C64 decades ago? Everybody talks about "getting more people to learn coding" these days. Well, why not go the old C64 route and have modern OSs boot you straight into a usable, yet powerful, coding environment? Why shouldn't my Android phone or tablet come out of its box with a CLI BASIC prompt I can type code into right after I buy it from a store?

Catalyst is Apple's framework that enables developers to easily bring existing iOS apps to the Mac, while SwiftUI is a new, Swift-based technology that makes it easy for developers to create one app that runs on all of Apple's platforms. Jason Snell from Macworld highlights the slow, invisible transition of these new technologies. From the report: Catalyst, which arrives this fall, will allow developers who are well-versed in the vagaries of writing iOS apps to use those skills to write Mac apps. This will most commonly take the form of bringing iPad apps to the Mac, with additions to make them feel more like native Mac apps, but it's more than that -- it provides iOS developers with a familiar set of tools and access to an entirely new platform, and it makes the target for professional apps across Apple's platforms broader by including both the iPad and the Mac. iOS apps are currently built to run on devices running Apple-designed ARM processors, and if the rumors are true, that's another transition waiting to happen. But given that all Mac and iOS developers are already using Apple's Xcode tools to develop their apps, I suspect that the pieces have been put in place for a fairly simple transition to a new processor architecture.

And then there's SwiftUI, which may be a harder concept for regular users to grasp, but it's a huge step on Apple's part. This is Apple's ultimate long game -- an entirely new way to design and build apps across all of Apple's platforms, based on the Swift language (introduced five years ago as yet another part of Apple's long game). In the shorter term, iOS app developers will be able to reach to the Mac via Catalyst. But in the longer term, Apple is creating a new, unified development approach to all of Apple's devices, based in Swift and SwiftUI. Viewed from this perspective, Catalyst feels more like a transitional technology than the future of Apple's platforms. But we're talking about the long game here. Transitional technologies are all a part of the long game. Catalyst will bring those apps to the Mac. iOS and Mac developers will pick up Swift and SwiftUI. Mac apps can integrate iOS stuff via Catalyst. iOS apps can integrate Mac stuff for use on the Mac. And all developers can begin experimenting with SwiftUI, building new interfaces and replacing old ones in a gradual process. "And then we'll turn around sometime in the 2020s and realize that all of this talk of UIKit and AppKit and Catalyst is behind us, and that our apps are written in Swift with interfaces created using SwiftUI," Snell writes in closing. "It will have all changed due to Apple's slow and steady pace of iterative, continuous improvement. The long game never stops, and it can be hard to see that you're even in it."

Game Builder is a new video game from Google that allows you to create simple Minecraft-style games for yourself and others to play through. "The game lets you drag and drop characters and scenery into an empty sandbox to construct your world, then use preset commands to string together how things interact," reports The Verge. "It's free to play and available on both Windows and macOS." From the report: The game comes from Area 120, Google's incubator for experimental projects (some of which have quickly disappeared, others of which have made their way into other Google products). Game Builder has actually been available through Steam since November 1st last year (it already has 190 reviews, with a "every positive" score), but Google only publicized it today, which is certain to get a lot more people playing. Game Builder has a co-op mode, so multiple people can build a game together at once. You can also share your creations and browse through the games made by others. The interaction system works with "if this then that" logic, and players can craft their own interactions with JavaScript if they're familiar with it.

Google Maps is rolling out a new feature that will tell you if your taxi driver goes off-route in an attempt to rack up a higher fare. Sure, you could always use Google Maps to pick the shortest route possible, but the newest feature does the work for you. BGR reports: The feature is especially useful in cities you don't know, but also at home, allowing you to get live updates on your route. Google Maps will send an alert to your phone every time you're off-route by 500 meters, xda-developers explains. Moreover, your route will not be rerouted automatically, which is what happens when deviating from your route while using Google Maps for regular navigation. That's because the feature will help you stick to your chosen route rather than continuously adapting it.

Once you start receiving the alerts, you should notify the driver that you're aware of the changes he or she made, and ask to revert to the shortest route possible. It's unlikely they'll try to cheat again once it's clear you're keeping tabs on the journey. And don't believe them when they say that traffic is the reason for the detour unless you can verify it with Google Maps, which should give you an idea of what traffic to expect on your route. It's unclear whether the feature will be available in other markets or when it'll launch. You'll want to be on the lookout for new Maps buttons that says Stay safer and Get off-route alerts in the navigation menu to take advantage of it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confirmed a data breach has exposed the photos of travelers and vehicles traveling in and out of the United States. The photos were stolen from a subcontractor's network through a "malicious cyberattack," a CBP spokesperson told TechCrunch in an email. "CBP learned that a subcontractor, in violation of CBP policies and without CBP's authorization or knowledge, had transferred copies of license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP to the subcontractor's company network," said an agency statement. "Initial information indicates that the subcontractor violated mandatory security and privacy protocols outlined in their contract," the statement read. he agency first learned of the breach on May 31. When asked, a spokesperson for CBP didn't say how many photos were taken in the breach or if U.S. citizens were affected. The agency also didn't name the subcontractor. The database that the agency maintains includes traveler images, as well as passport and visa photos. Congress has been notified and the CBP said it is "closely monitoring" CBP-related work by the subcontractor.

The editor of Dice's "Insights" blog argues that Apple's Swift language "has begun to eclipse Objective-C in a key way." Apple was never shy about prioritizing Swift. As one developer on Twitter pointed out, once Swift dropped, Objective-C documentation and tutorials quickly started vanishing. Since then, the company has iterated on Swift and continued to shy away from Objective-C (except when necessary, such as supporting libraries and frameworks). Swift 5 made an important step forward with ABI stability, which means Swift code worked directly with a binary interface. Before ABI stability, the only safeguard was code was compiled on the same compiler, a fingers-crossed approach Apple really had no option for avoiding...

Swift's performance has also improved. For some time, when compared to Objective-C, Swift compiled slower. Because of ABI stability, performance has improved, and compile-time differences have vanished... Apps written in version 5 are also roughly 10-15 percent smaller than Objective-C apps. Bridging performance also improved.

A lot has gone into Swift 5 to make it more stable, and those improvements have resulted in performance parity with Objective-C... It's time to seriously consider the move to Swift.
In 2017 the creator of Swift (and a self-described "long-time reader/fan of Slashdot") began a five-month stint running Tesla's Autopilot team -- and stopped by to answer questions from Slashdot readers.

An anonymous reader reminded us about the open source reimplementation of Java Web Start, a framework originally developed by Sun Microsystems that allowed users to more easily run Java applications in an applet-like sandbox using a web browser.

From OpenWebStart.com: Java Web Start (JWS) was deprecated in Java 9, and starting with Java 11, Oracle removed JWS from their JDK distributions. This means that clients that have the latest version of Java installed can no longer use JWS-based applications. And since public support of Java 8 has ended in Q2/2019, companies no longer get any updates and security fixes for Java Web Start.

This is why we decided to create OpenWebStart, an open source reimplementation of the Java Web Start technology. Our replacement will provide the most commonly used features of Java Web Start and the JNLP standard, so that your customers can continue using applications based on Java Web Start and JNLP without any change.
Red Hat is apparently involved in its parent project, IcedTea-Web, which it distributes as part of their Windows OpenJDK distribution.

"As a consumer, the idea of Apple sign-in is genuinely an exciting one..." writes developer/tech journalist Owen Williams at Char.gd.

"As a person in digital marketing, as well as a coder and startup founder, the feature terrifies me... I don't have a choice. Apple plans to force developers using third-party signin features to add its signin along any competing ones, rather than allowing them to make the choice. Essentially, Apple will force its success..." [B]y selling the tool as a privacy-focused feature, the company is building a new identity system that it owns entirely. Because it is a powerful privacy feature, it makes it hard to debate this move in any constructive way -- personally, I think we need more tools like this, just not from the very platforms further entrenching their own kingdoms... All of the largest tech companies have switched gears to this model, including Google, and now sell a narrative that nobody can be trusted with your data -- but it's fine to give it all to them, instead. There's bitter irony in Apple denouncing other companies' collection of data with a sign-in service, then launching its own, asking that you give that data to them, instead. I definitely trust Apple to act with my interests at heart today, but what about tomorrow, when the bottom falls out of iPhone sales, and the math changes?

I'm not arguing that any of these advertising practices are right or wrong, but rather that such a hamfisted approach isn't all that it seems. The ad industry gets a bad rap -- and does need to improve -- but allowing a company that has a vested interest in crippling it to dictate the rules by forcing developers to implement their technology is wrong...

This feature, and the way it's being forced on developers, is a fantastic example of why companies like Apple and Google should be broken up: it's clearly using the App Store, and its reach, to force the industry's hand in its favor -- rather than compete on merit.

Microsoft and Oracle announced a new alliance today that will see the two companies directly connect their clouds over a direct network connection so that their users can then move workloads and data seamlessly between the two. This alliance goes a bit beyond just basic direct connectivity and also includes identity interoperability. TechCrunch reports: This kind of alliance is relatively unusual between what are essentially competing clouds, but while Oracle wants to be seen as a major player in this space, it also realizes that it isn't likely to get to the size of an AWS, Azure or Google Cloud anytime soon. For Oracle, this alliance means that its users can run services like the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle JD Edwards on Azure while still using an Oracle database in the Oracle cloud, for example. With that, Microsoft still gets to run the workloads and Oracle gets to do what it does best (though Azure users will also continue be able to run their Oracle databases in the Azure cloud, too).

For now, the direct interconnect between the two clouds is limited to Azure US East and Oracle's Ashburn data center. The two companies plan to expand this alliance to other regions in the future, though they remain mum on the details. It'll support applications like JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail and Hyperion on Azure, in combination with Oracle databases like RAC, Exadata and the Oracle Autonomous Database running in the Oracle Cloud.

Apple will ask developers to position a new "Sign in with Apple" button in iPhone and iPad apps above rival buttons from Alphabet's Google and Facebook, according to design guidelines released this week. From a report: The move to give Apple prime placement is significant because users often select the default or top option on apps. And Apple will require apps to offer its button if they want to offer options to login with Facebook or Google. Apple unveiled its login button on Monday, emphasizing users' privacy and also introducing a feature that randomly generates an email address to avoid revealing the person's true email. Many consumers choose to sign in to independent apps using their accounts from Google or Facebook because it saves the trouble of having to create and remember separate user names and passwords for dozens of different apps. [...] In a press release about updates to its App Store review guidelines, Apple said its login button "will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year."

PC gaming platform BlueStacks has launched BlueStacks Inside that enables mobile game developers to publish their games on Steam with no porting to the PC required. From a report: BlueStacks inside has a one-step software development kit (SDK) that lets developers take existing mobile games to Steam and Discord. The initial launch will include several high-profile developers like KOG, Funplus, Fabled Game Studio, and many others whose games will be available directly on Steam. Mobile developers have started allocating large budgets to game development, and that means mobile games can be competitive on Steam without a ton of modification.

With games like Lineage 2: Revolution and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, graphics and gameplay push the limits of what a mobile device can do. On the other hand, gamers are caught in a struggle to maintain devices that can keep up with demanding games. BlueStacks Inside gives developers an opportunity to reach a much wider and valuable PC-based audience without the need to hire a separate PC development team. Players can use their PCs to do the heavy lifting for games their phones would otherwise not be able to run well.

Starting with macOS Catalina, Macs will now use zsh as the default login shell and interactive shell across the operating system. From a report: All newly created user accounts in macOS Catalina will use zsh by default. Bash will still be available, but Apple is signaling that developers should start moving to zsh on macOS Mojave or earlier in anticipation of bash eventually going away in macOS. Apple hasn't explained exactly why it's making this change, but bash isn't exactly a modern shell as it's implemented in macOS, and a switch to something less aging makes a lot more sense for the company. Apple is stuck using version 3.2 of bash that has been licensed under GPLv2, as newer versions are licensed under GPLv3. Apple has kept clear of using GPLv3 packages in macOS as the license is generally more restrictive to companies like Apple that sign their own code and it includes explicit patent grants, too.

In addition to the "Sign in With Apple" button, Apple announced another privacy-focused measure at its WWDC on Monday: developers are no longer permitted to include third-party ads or analytics tools in apps in the App Store's kid category. Engadget reports: The company laid out the rule in its updated guidelines for app submissions, confirming a report from last week that it would add such additional protections for younger users. Developers are also prohibited from including external links or in-app purchases, unless they're in a section of the app only accessible to parents. Apple also urged developers to be mindful of privacy laws in various jurisdictions regarding the data they collect from kids.

Apple today announced SwiftUI, a framework that complements its open source compiled programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Linux, and other platforms alongside a reimagined development experience in Xcode 11. VentureBeat reports: SwiftUI lets developers specify UI with simple declarations. In practice, it reduces hundreds of lines of code to just a few, and it provides default support for common features like localization for right-to-left languages. That's in addition to built-in support for animated transitions, live previews, and the newly announced dark mode and accessibility tools in iOS.

Apple says it's fully integrated with the aforementioned Xcode development experience and native frameworks for Apple Watch, tvOS, and macOS apps. Within the new Xcode, speaking of, library views live in a left-side drawer from which they can be dragged and dropped onto the app design canvas; as they're added, code populates the editor on the left. Meanwhile, views can be adjusted with custom-tailored inspectors or the code converted into a scalable list, and previews can run directly on connected Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

An anonymous reader shares a report: After long anticipation, Apple finally announced today that it's killing iTunes at its developer conference WWDC held in San Jose. Instead, it will be replaced by three new apps: Music, TV, and the Podcasts app. You can sync your iPhone directly through the finder app.