Indian developers set to incorporate Apple's latest tools in their app offerings

Indian app developers plan to incorporate the latest innovations from Apple Inc in their offerings that they expect will increase productivity and enhance user experience.

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, US, last week, chief executive Tim Cook unveiled next-generation Apple Intelligence, an AI-powered version of Siri, the Liquid Glass interface with additional features, Xcode upgrades, and enhanced trust and safety measures.

Gayatri Goundadkar, founder of Steady Hands, a mobile app to measure and analyse hand tremors, said she is excited about the new Xcode feature and how AI is going to be integrated into it. The new Xcode allows app developers to automate code writing and editing. “That's going to change a lot of lives, and it's going to help a lot of developers create something they always imagined,” she said.


For Bijoy Thangaraj, chief at JSplash Studios that creates music-related apps like Guitar Wiz, Siri AI was among the most promising announcements.

"The app (Guitar Wiz) has a huge knowledge base of music theory and it's a treasure of music theory, intervals and chord library and all,” he said. So, if someone is using Siri and asking a question like, 'What are the intervals of the C major chord?', if I could surface relevant information through Siri that would be great."

Santhosh J, head of mobile at e-signature and contract management platform Signeasy, was also enthused over the possibilities that Siri AI presented. "Just imagine you are receiving an offer letter in your mail app, and you just need to send it out for signature or you need to sign it. You can ask Siri to open that document in the SignEasy app with one prompt. That's what we are looking forward to implementing."

He too believed that Xcode developer tools will greatly benefit developers and usher in a lot more productivity by reducing hours worth of work. For his colleague, Naveen TP, mobile lead at Signeasy, Apple's private compute was what he was most keen on.

"Last year, there were the foundation model and Liquid Glass announcements that we immediately adopted for Signeasy," he said. "This year with the announcement of improvements around foundation models with the private compute, it is going to be super helpful for the customers. We are looking forward to it."

For some, being able to play around with Apple’s Liquid Glass on their apps was among the best parts.

"The Liquid Glass design was something widely appreciated and criticised by many people (last year)," said Ranjith Ramanan, cofounder and designer at motorsports and wellness apps Box Box Club and GO Club. "This year, I loved to see how they fixed that entirely…(it) gives the user the option to choose whether the glass should be frosted."

Aman Jain, cofounder of the Lil Artist educational app and LetterFlow word-puzzle game, was also looking forward to Liquid Glass updates.

"Apple announced that you can control the Liquid Glass transparency. We were getting feedback from users of LetterFlow that the letters were not visible in some backgrounds. Now we can give the user an option where they can slide and they can manage the transparency of the glass," he said.

His cofounder Arima Jain said Apple's new updates open up a number of avenues for personalisation on Lil Artist.

"We have a custom story where parents can select a character, a theme, and a moral, and the foundation model generates the story, and then the Image Playground creates the images," she explained. "Now we can take the images of a child or their parents or their grandparents or anyone else and we can personalise the stories even more so the kids feel connected and are more engaged."

She believes that additional parental controls and child safety features would also be the focus of Lil Artist.

(The reporter was in Cupertino at the invitation of Apple.)