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Here's what we learned at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference today.

Apple hopes the initiative will rejuvenate a slow-moving Mac app store and native software ecosystem. The initiative will do so by making it easier for developers for the iPhone and iPad App Store—one of the most robust software platforms in the world—to release their iOS applications on the Mac with minimal additional development time. Currently, developers have to put valuable resources into developing their successful applications for the Mac, which has a much smaller install base than iOS. It doesn't help that they then must support two completely different codebases for the entire lifespan of both applications.

At the heart of the project is what Apple calls Project Catalyst, a framework that helps iPad developers more easily create macOS apps from their existing iPad apps. This is the project that informed the development of Apple's new Stocks and News apps, which already debuted in Mojave (we found these apps to be functional but not optimal). Apple is making Project Catalyst available today for developers in macOS Catalina so they can get started producing new macOS apps in a more efficient manner.

A lot of Catalyst work is done in Xcode, and Apple claims translating an iPad app into a macOS app is as simple as checking a box. Now, doing so doesn't do all of the work, but it will introduce macOS-specific controls like cursor and window controls into an iPad app's framework. From there, developers can add additional desktop features and fine-tuned details to make their existing iPad app macOS-ready. This means that, for the first time, developers can make one app that can quickly be customized for iPhone, iPad, and macOS.

Carry-overs from iOS

In addition, macOS Catalina will introduce a number of new apps we've previously seen in iOS, and it will improve on other applications still. New additions include Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV, which will be siphoned out of the now-defunct-but-iconic iTunes program.



Also from iOS comes the new Find My app, which combines the features of Find my Phone and Find My Friends. It will help you locate your Mac and other Apple devices even when they are offline. An additional security feature comes with Activation Lock, which will render Macs with the T2 security chip useless to thieves.

iOS' popular Screen Time feature will make its way to macOS 10.15 as well. It will have all of the same features on Macs as it does on iPhones and iPads, allowing users to limit their time on specific apps and categories of apps as well as track how long they spend in certain programs over time.

Apple is also making it easier for Mac users to use iPads alongside their computers. Sidecar lets you use an iPad as a second display, and it allows you to use the iPad with the Apple Pencil to input on your Mac. The latter can be done wired or wirelessly, making it a convenient feature for creatives who need the drawing capabilities of the iPad and Pencil. Voice Control increases accessibility on Mac by allowing users to speak commands to control gestures, apps, and other programs in macOS.

RealityKit, ARKit, and SwiftUI

Apple also made big announcements surrounding its augmented reality efforts and programming language. RealityKit will help developers incorporate 3D and AR capabilities into their apps even if they don't have experience in those fields. Native ARKit integration handles the rendering, environmental and camera effects, animations and audio, and much more.

ARKit itself will gain what's called people occlusion, which means that the framework will be able to obscure objects that a person walks in front of in real time. It will also gain motion-capture, so you can point your camera at a person and capture their movements in real time.

Apple showed off its new framework dubbed SwiftUI. While demonstrating the benefits of using SwiftUI, Apple showed off Xcode’s ability to show developers how their changing code affects the look and functionality of an app in real time. UI elements like scrollable lists can be edited with a few right-clicks, and dragging-and-dropping makes adding and subtracting components more convenient. In just a few clicks, developers can interact with the program they're building directly within Xcode. They can also run their app on an Apple device to try it out, and changes to the app will populate in real-time. The new SwiftUI framework will be be key for cross-platform development in the future, including watchOS.

The developer beta for macOS 10.15 Catalina is available today and, like the rest of Apple's software updates, it will be widely available this fall.