As you have probably heard by now, last week Apple announced iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, new major versions of both its flag-ship operating systems. I had the privilege of being on site in San Francisco and attending WWDC in person, but the keynote with the core announcements is available for public viewing by anyone, and the remaining ~100 sessions of the conference are also available for free to all registered developers (major kudos to Apple for that, and more importantly, for making these videos available so fast, in most cases on the same day as the actual presentations!).

iOS 7 is a major new release and – most observers agree – a game changer. It’s a whole new UI paradigm for the OS, and will be a very exciting release for both users and developers; there are a whole bunch of new technologies that will let you create even better iOS apps, and will make the whole iOS experience even better for the user — in the core OS or with your apps.

Due to the massive UI overhaul, most iOS apps will need a serious rethinking for iOS 7 to stay relevant – which means extra work for developers, but also extra opportunities. From what i can tell (and am allowed to tell), switching an application over to the core iOS 7 “look” will be simple, but really making an app feel at home on iOS7 will require a lot of thought — no way around it.

I have already started moving two of our (internal) apps to iOS 7 while on site in San Francisco, simply because after (foolhardily) upgrading my main phone to the new OS, i could no longer stand looking at the old UI ;). One app is “done” and was relatively straight-forward – mainly a matter of rebuilding with the iOS 7 SDK, and making a few adjustments here and there to better embrace the new style; the other will be more work.

OS X Mavericks (if you don’t like the name, you are not alone. Virtually everybody i talked to or heard talk about it found it “weird”) is a smaller upgrade, by comparison, but also a significant release with a ton of exciting technologies for developers – two that were highlighted in the keynote include the new Maps API and cool new energy-saving APIs and technologies. (And if you’re not excited by being able to make your apps more power-efficient, then you have no business developing Mac apps! ;).)

Of course the big question you’re all asking is how Oxygene for Cocoa is working with the new iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. The good (and slightly unexciting, because expected) news is: it works just fine. We’ve long had an article on the Wiki that discusses the (simple) steps for hooking up Oxygene with new beta SDKs, and Oxygene is working fine with iOS 7 and with Mavericks (although i do recommend grabbing the latest beta drop of Oxygene, as we already made some tweaks and improvements there).

All the new APIs (IIRC Apple mentioned a number of 1500 new APIs being available) will work with Oxygene out of the box – no need to wait for anyone to create any wrappers or headers for you, and re-building your Oxygene apps with the iOS 7 SDK will give you the new iOS 7 look right away (but not save you from re-examining how to really embrace iOS 7 best with your app, of course).

There are also a few new non-API features that we’ll be embracing with Oxygene as well, but unfortunately those are (afaict) all under NDA, so i cannot talk about them yet. But suffice to say over the next few months we will of course be doing a lot of testing with Oxygene and the new APIs and SDKs to keep Oxygene up to date with the SDKs and the Xcode 5 tool chain.

Of course we’ll also be testing Data Abstract and RemObjects SDK for Cocoa with the new SDKs, and (where applicable) expanding them with support for new APIs. In my testing so far, they work great (both the apps i mentioned above are DA-based, and run fine on iOS 7, for example).

Support

Talking about new iOS and OS X SDKs is always a tightrope walk, as there’s a lot of information that’s under NDA (but available to all registered Apple developers – so do make sure you check out the beta builds and all the videos from WWDC). But Oxygene, as well as RO/DA for Cocoa, are already working great with the new operating systems, and we’ll be working hard to expand those parts that do need explicit support and work to fully embrace the new OSs.

If you have any specific questions regarding support for or issues with the new SDKs, there’s two places to get help: for one, we’ll be monitoring and participating in Apple’s beta forums, so you can post questions about Oxygene there (maybe add “(Oxygene)” to the subject so we can find them easier). And you can also always directly email support.

We cannot discuss the iOS 7 or OS X Mavericks Beta SDKs on Connect; you could be violating your NDA by posting details there, and we’d be doing the same by answering. So be careful.

Summary

I’m very excited about both iOS 7 and Mavericks (and i assume i’ll eventually get over the name, too), and so should you. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll build on the new OSs with Oxygene and Data Abstract.