Swift Playgrounds

8 new outstanding features in iPadOS 15

iPadOS 15 is on the way. Apple showcased the new software at this year's WWDC. This year was all about cross-platform feature parity, but that's usually the case with iPadOS and iOS anyway. That's certainly the case this year.

Delta Lite NES emulator: How to try it out

Riley Testut, developer of popular console emulator Delta for iOS (formerly GBA4iOS), has cooked up a little side project which will keep his fans occupied while we wait for Delta's full release.

Dubbed Delta Lite, the project is a working Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator which runs inside Swift Playgrounds, Apple's own Swift development app for iOS.

Apple updating Swift Playgrounds with support for robots, drones, and instruments

Apple today announced a significant update for its iPad app Swift Playgrounds. The app, which is geared towards teaching beginners to code in a fun and interactive environment, will soon work with robots, drones and musical instruments.

Scheduled to be released next week, Swift Playgrounds version 1.5 will support programming a slew of new devices including the Sphero SPRK+ ball, UBTECH Jumu Robot MeeBot Kit, Wonder Workshop's Dash, Parrot drones and LEGO Mindstorms.

“More than 1 million kids and adults from around the world are already using Swift Playgrounds to learn the fundamentals of coding with Swift in a fun and interactive way,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Now they can instantly see the code they create and directly control their favorite robots, drones and instruments through Swift Playgrounds. It’s an incredibly exciting and powerful way to learn.”

“Today we’re combining efforts with Apple to provide even more students around the world with the opportunity to learn how to code,” said Esben Stærk Jørgensen, president, LEGO Education. “We’re pairing the familiar LEGO bricks and our hands-on approach to playful learning found in LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 with Swift Playgrounds' powerful learning platform so now anyone can program their LEGO MINDSTORMS creation with real Swift code.”

Swift Playgrounds 1.5 will be a free update for the app and will be released June 5.

Source: Apple

Swift Playgrounds gains editing tweaks, 5 new languages, MapKit support & more

Apple announced today that Swift Playgrounds, its free iPad app aimed at teaching kids and students the basics of coding in Swift, has gained some new features. Aside from being available in five additional languages—Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Latin American Spanish—the new version sports editing improvements and supports the MapKit and Swift 3.1 code in your playgrounds.

Try out iPad’s hidden floating keyboard in Swift Playgrounds

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith recently discovered a one-handed floating iPad keyboard in a beta of iOS 10.3. While it's unclear whether or not Apple will debut this handy unpublished keyboard officially when the software update releases for public consumption, Troughton-Smith has kindly provided a way for iPad owners to try it out early using Apple's free Swift Playgrounds app, here's how.

Swift Playgrounds: Apple’s new iPad app to teach you how to code

In wrapping up Apple's WWDC keynote this morning, Tim Cook announced a new iPad app called Swift Playgrounds for teaching people how to code. Cook specifically says "the best way to teach everyone to code," but it definitely looks like it was built with kids in mind.

The app looks a lot like other learn-to-code apps (Hopscotch!), but it's cool that Apple is using its scale to get such a tool into the hands of more people. The company says the app "combines the powerful Swift programming language and the powerful capabilities of iPad."