It's shocking how mismanaged the SDK development at Apple is.
edit: and most of the useful additions are tied with iOS14 (lazy lists), so even if we were able to bump our min support to iOS13 it would be _years_ before we could do 14.
Knowing why Apple is doing this is important to understand why this will never happen.
Apparently the feature they are using is function builders (1) and its already working on the current versions of Swift. So at least now, nothing is preventing other people to try to replicate in a open source manner those features.
By the way, there are some projects on Github that already implements the same functionalities.
Don't wait for Apple to open source this kind of stuff, because one way to enforce lock in, is through API. And Apple is far away from being a benevolent big other as some people might naively assume.
1 - https://www.swiftbysundell.com/articles/the-swift-51-feature...
That is, "So at least now, nothing is preventing other people to try to replicate in a open source manner those features." was always the intent
Similar to rust implementing magic features and APIs, and macros, in nightly, before the API is verified and the implementation is ready.
In which case, you'd expect all of SwiftUI to be eventually possible by anyone else.
Function builders are still not a public feature, and therefore subject to breaking revisions without warning.
iOS 14 Adoption Surpasses 25% Across iPhone and iPad Five Days After Release
https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ix3gve/ios_14_adopti...
How long does it usually take on Android?
And the number of people still on 12 is significant.
It matters in the current context. Developers have a much easier time targeting the latest and hottest on iOS, compared to the only other alternative.
> And the number of people still on 12 is significant.
Not for long if 14 is already 25% in less than a week, and most users upgrade to the latest versions soon enough.
Nobody was doing comparisons either. But for this topic shouldn't we be comparing to windows programming tools too? And those generally get to update their language runtimes all on their own, without waiting for the OS at all.
> Not for long if 14 is already 25% in less than a week
I don't understand that logic. I didn't say 13, I said 12. The release of 14 isn't going to suddenly get a significant number of people off 12.
The number of users on 12 is going to drop over time but 12 is locked in as the final version for multiple percent of iphone owners in the US. It could be two more years before most companies are comfortable breaking compatibility with that to get some coding conveniences.
As mentioned above this is not true. On Android developers can ship the latest and greatest to devices 4-5 years old because the first party libraries are distributed in such a way to enable that.
SwiftUI/Combine are bundled with OS versions.