With over 23 million registered members, Apple’s developer program is massive. Today, the company released a new developer app they’ve unceremoniously titled Apple Developer. This new app replaces and expands on the previous WWDC app for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. Now, in addition to information about their yearly conference (confined to a single tab in the new app), Apple’s new app includes other helpful resources for developers such as technical and design information, developer news, and helpful videos. Also added is a way for developers to sign up for or renew their membership to the Apple Developer program ($99/year) and pay for it with Apple Pay. Instead of being strewn throughout Apple’s website, developer portal, email newsletters, and other locations online, the app offers a streamlined mobile experience for the increasingly mobile world. For instance, most people are more inclined to open an app than an email newsletter. Wouldn’t you be? Plus, the company is adding some native mobile-friendly content to the app such as short-form explainer articles.
At launch, the Apple Developer app won’t include everything found online, but the app still sports quite a few features. For example, it includes hundreds of videos and guides, but neglects the Apple Developer Forums, Developer Academies, etc. The layout is simple, with four self-explanatory main tabs: Discover, Videos, WWDC, and Account.
With this new app, Apple is gifting its developers a new experience in hopes to keep them more engaged with the program and easily able to obtain relevant information. Apple is also soon to also address some developers’ concerns about certain APIs they haven’t yet fully documented.
Lately, Apple has been focusing on growing their beloved community of developers internationally by investing local developer academies and releasing new improvements like this one. Thankfully for the company, these efforts have been paying off. Over the past year, the Apple’s developer base has grown considerably in countries such as Indonesia, Brazil, India, Italy, and China.
Apple’s revamped developer app launched worldwide today, and it’s notable that membership management tools are only available in the United States for the time being. Apple will continue working to improve the app by incorporating developers’ feedback into future releases.
