Apple expects App Clips' interest to grow after the pandemic - 9to5Mac

A couple of years ago, Apple introduced App Clips, a neat way to let users take advantage of a specific app without having to download and store it on their iPhones. With WWDC 2022 and iOS 16, Apple is now increasing the maximum size of these “non-apps” from 10MB to 15MB. Will that be enough for developers to create versions of their apps as App Clips or for users to take advantage of? Apple believes so.

In an interview with Apfelfun Podcast, Apple executives Andreas Wendker, VP of Tools and Frameworks Engineering, and Wiley Hodges, director of  Product Management and Marketing, talk about a ton of features introduced during WWDC 2022 that will be useful for developers.

At one moment, Wiley Hodges is asked about App Clips’ increased size, to which he replies:

“We introduced App Clips a couple of years ago and one of the things that we’ve been doing is looking really close at the use of 5G in a lot of global markets, how networks performance has been improving. With App Clips, we wanted something you could download really quickly at the moment to get a very focused piece of functionality when and where you needed it. This is what drove the size limit to begin with it. It turns out that if you can now very quickly download 15MB we know that’s going to open a lot of new possibilities to developers, maybe frameworks that they want to include that they couldn’t include before. (…) Clearly, it expands what can be done with App Clips.”

While the future looks promising, it’s important to notice that only a few developers bet on this feature, and while it’s already hard to find it in the US, for example in a coffee shop, overseas it’s pretty much inexistent. Hodges acknowledges that from a very Apple perspective.

“When you talk about the future of App Clips, I think we had the great misfortune to launch App Clips in the middle of a global pandemic that drove most people indoors and these kinds of experiences were not at the top of the mind of people. We had a huge amount of interest in App Clips early on and a lot of those developers came back and said ‘you know, we’re waiting a little while because it turns out everybody is inside now’. What we’re seeing now is renewed interest and energy around them and we’re really excited to see some of the things that are on the road ahead for App Clips.”

Both executives also discuss how Apple is still committed to Objective-C. although new APIs can be Swift-only in the future.

The full interview is totally worth watching. You can find it below!

Related:

• Craig Federighi calls iOS 16 Lock Screen redesign ‘an act of love’ in interview

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