Apple shows Swift programming language and Metal game development platform

Apple announced the programming language Swift during its own developer conference WWDC on Monday, which should serve as an alternative to Objective-C for Apple software. The company also came up with a new development platform for games: Metal.

Swift uses the same llvm compiler and runtime as Apple’s implementation of Objective-C. This allows both languages ​​to run side by side in the same program. In addition, like Objective-C, Swift can address the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch APIs.

Apple claims that Swift can sort a complex object one and a half times faster than Objective-C. In Xcode’s Playgrounds, Swift can be called and the output of the code is immediately visible. This can be useful, among other things, for game developers who want to see what their script does, as Apple showed during the conference where iOS 8 and Mac OS X ‘Yosemite’ were also announced.

Swift can create programs for both iOS and OS X. Apple says the language is available immediately and developers will be able to submit applications written in Swift starting this fall.

In addition to the new programming language, Apple also announced Metal, a new development platform for games, on Monday. The platform is built specifically for Apple’s new A7 processor, which the manufacturer uses in the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini Retina, and would have full access to the processing power of the GPU. With Metal, Apple wants to replace OpenGL as the standard for graphics in games and apps. In a short demonstration, Apple showed that with Metal it is possible to make dozens of fish in a pond move separately from each other.