AiOS Dispatch 5

Welcome to the fifth dispatch of AiOS Dispatch, your go-to resource for the latest in AI, language models, IDE updates, and iOS development.

This one was scheduled for Friday, but the 2.5 announcement of Gemini 2.5, Alex 2.5 and WWDC 25 made me it faster than I can crash SwiftUI previews.

WWDC '25: Apple and Intelligence

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 is locked in for June 9–13 and I am expecting some fireworks from Cupertino, assuming they do not fizzle out like last year’s Apple Intelligence hype.

While John Gruber once said something’s rotten there, I am foolishly hoping for a promised and timely delivered software updates throughout the year of 2025.

The glass effect in the logo is a dead giveaway for the rumored iOS 19, iPadOS 19 and macOS 16 redesign, taking inspiration from the design of visionOS, something I am looking forward to.

Siri is supposed to be powered by the promised features from WWDC 2024. Will it finally be able to tell the current month? Will it finally stop playing random songs when I beg it to play Creep by Radiohead? Only time will tell.

The developer beta drops right after the keynote, so that's another summer of bug-hunting and beta-testing. My advice: back up your device before you vibe code it into a brick.

WWDC '25 should also mention Swift Assist, that elusive AI coding tool that Apple kept teasing us with but never delivered. After Xcode 16.3 shipped without it, I am cautiously optimistic about the quality of the tool, especially with the better state of agentic tools out there.

Also, I am expecting mentions of MLX and MLX Swift during the Platforms State of the Union with a wish-list of easier CoreML adoption for developers with converted models uploaded on Hugging Face!

Flights are booked because I am betting on a redemption arc. Maybe 2025 is the year of AI's actually for the rest of us!

Alex 2.5: The Sidebar with a Massive Update

Alex Sidebar dropped version 2.5 today and while I was not involved in the development of the new features, I had my time testing it behind the scenes. Here are some of my favorite quality of life improvements:

• Screenshot Tool: With a quick keyboard command, you can take a snapshot of the design you are working on which is automatically added to context.
• Multi-file Apply/Undo: This was my most wanted request as a vibe coder. An "apply all" button to create new files and edit across files with just one click. And roll back with checkpoints if you mess up.
• Code Maps: This feature helps to add more relevant context with an understanding of how files interact with each other, resulting in better code generation.
• Quick File Edits: The new file assistant helps to quickly add properties, refactor files, add coding keys, etc
• DeepSeek V3 Integration: Speaking of last dispatch’s whale, Alex now has support for DeepSeek V3 0324, a fast and decent model for iOS development.

Also, I am proud of the new localization of traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese in this release!

Gemini 2.5: Google’s New Context Monster

As mentioned in the last dispatch, I love Google's model for longer context. And here we are with another one, the Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental:

• 1M Token Context (2M Soon) and 65k Output Token:
  • You can probably fit in a medium-sized repository in here and it will keep up.
  • I threw it some parts (830K tokens) of Firefox for iOS app using https://uithub.com at it.
• After 34 seconds of thinking and 74 seconds of writing the answer, I was impressed by the quality of the document that I had asked for, an on-boarding guide for a junior engineer new to the code base.

It is available now in Google AI Studio and the Gemini app for Advanced users. I have been vibing with it in the Studio and Alex Sidebar via OpenRouter.

It is one of the best models out there with the most recent knowledge cut-off date of January 2025. You can ask it for latest iOS 18 APIs and it works well on them. The biggest downside is the 5 message limit per minute so you have to live with it for now.

Moving Forward

Start sketching some iOS 19 ideas now, especially using App Intents. The best part of Gemini 2.5 Pro is that you can feed it a whole WWDC session and then talk to it to learn about the new features faster.

This dub dub will be fun! What are your thoughts about WWDC 2025?