Developer Programs and APIs in the News – Volume 2, Number 6

In today’s interconnected world, companies in all industries need to publish APIs and cultivate a developer community to access and use them. To be competitive today, attracting and supporting developers is essential. The key to cultivating a vibrant developer community that uses your APIs and supports your platform is a good developer relations program. “Developer Programs and APIs in the News” is a series of news items from developer programs around the world.

Developer Programs and APIs in the News

Apple – June 6, 2017 – Updated App Store Review Guidelines Now Available – “The App Store Review Guidelines have been updated. We review all apps submitted to the App Store in an effort to determine whether they are reliable, perform as expected, and are free of offensive material. As you plan and develop your app, make sure to use these updated guidelines.”
Apple – June 5, 2017 – See What’s Next for Xcode, macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS – “The new beta of Xcode 9 is now available, and includes Swift 4 and SDKs used to build apps with the latest innovations and powerful capabilities in macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.”
Apple – June 5, 2017 – Introducing ARKit – “iOS 11 introduces ARKit, a new framework that allows you to easily create unparalleled augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad. By blending digital objects and information with the environment around you, ARKit takes apps beyond the screen, freeing them to interact with the real world in entirely new ways.”
Apple – June 5, 2017 – Introducing Core ML framework – “Integrate machine learning models into your app. Core ML is the foundation for domain-specific frameworks and functionality. Core ML supports Vision for image analysis, Foundation for natural language processing, and GameplayKit for evaluating learned decision trees. Core ML itself builds on top of low-level primitives like Accelerate and BNNS, as well as Metal Performance Shaders.”
Rice University – June 1, 2017 – Rice U. scientists slash computations for deep learning – “Rice University computer scientists have adapted a widely used technique for rapid data lookup (Hashing) to slash the amount of computation — and thus energy and time — required for deep learning, a computationally intense form of machine learning. Hashing can eliminate more than 95 percent of computations.”
Google – June 1, 2017 – 2017 Android Security Rewards – “We’re constantly working to improve the Android Security Rewards program and today we’re making a few changes to all vulnerability reports filed after June 1, 2017. Because every Android release includes more security protections and no researcher has claimed the top reward for an exploit chains in 2 years, we’re excited to increase our top-line payouts for these exploits.”
Microsoft – June 1, 2017 – Microsoft’s high-performance, open source, deep learning toolkit VErsion 2.0 is now generally available – “Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 is now in full release with general availability. Cognitive Toolkit enables enterprise-ready, production-grade AI by allowing users to create, train, and evaluate their own neural networks that can then scale efficiently across multiple GPUs and multiple machines on massive data sets.”
Apple – June 1, 2017 – Developer Earnings from the App Store Top $70 Billion – “Apple today announced that its global developer community has earned over $70 billion since the App Store launched in 2008. The App Store is home to the most innovative apps in the world and in the past 12 months alone, downloads have grown over 70 percent.”
Kleiner Perkins – May 31, 2017 – Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2017 Report – “Global Internet Trends = Solid User Growth… Slowing SmartPhone Growth. Online Advertising (+ Commerce) = Increasingly Measurable + Actionable. Interactive Games = Motherlode of Tech Product Innovation + Modern Learning. Media = Distribution Disruption @ Torrid Pace. The Cloud = Accelerating Change Across Enterprises.”
Cisco, IBM – May 31, 2017 – Cisco and IBM Join Forces to Tackle Cybercrime – “Cisco and IBM Security today announced they are working together to address the growing global threat of cybercrime. In a new collaboration, Cisco and IBM Security will work closely together across products, services and threat intelligence for the benefit of customers. Cisco® security solutions will integrate with IBM’s QRadar to protect organizations across networks, endpoints and cloud.”
nodejs.org – May 30, 2017 – Node v8.0.0 – “The next major release of Node.js brings a range of significant changes and additions.” Includes: npm v5.0.0, JavaScript runtime V8 5.8, asynch hooks, WHATWG URL parser, Buffer changes, Improved support for Promises and more.
Oracle – May 30, 2017 – Proposed schedule change for JDK 9 – “As you probably know by now, the JCP Executive Committee (EC) recently voted not to approve JSR 376, the Java Platform Module System, for the next stage of the process. This vote does not mean that JSR 376 is dead, nor that Jigsaw has been rejected. It only means that the EC raised a number of concerns that it wanted the JSR 376 Expert Group (EG) to address…To be specific, I propose that we move the GA date out by eight weeks, from 27 July to 21 September.”
Red Hat, Codenvy – May 25, 2017 – Red Hat to Acquire Codenvy, Provider of Agile and Cloud-Native Development Tools – “Red Hat, Inc. announces that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Codenvy, provider of cloud-native development tools that enable developers to more easily create modern container-based and cloud-native applications. By adding Codenvy to its existing portfolio of developer tools and application platforms, including Red Hat JBoss Middleware and Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat continues its efforts to provide solutions that enable developers to create applications for hybrid cloud environments.”

Send me your Developer Programs News!

If you have news about your Developer Relations Program, send me an email about the news.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/