CloudKit was yet one of the main announcement by apple at WWDC this year. CloudKit is a new developer framework that will help developers store their app data on iCloud which will help the apps update automatically. This will help developers easily work cloud components into their applications. The introduction of the CloudKit is a positive sign as it shows that apple is taking the concerns of iOS developers seriously and is working towards making the iOS platform easier and more attractive to develop on.
CloudKit is Effectively Free
CloudKit comes with generous amounts of free storage and data transfer which will help it effectively become free for developers. apple offers for free; 1 PB assets, 10 TB database, 5 TB/day asset transfer, 50 GB per day database transfer this basically translates into 5GB of storage resource, thereby allocating 100 MB for every application user up to 1 PB; database up to 50 MB space, allocating 1mb for each application user up to a maximum of 10 TB; 25 MB of daily resource transfer, allocating 0.5 MB for every application user up to 5 TB per day; another 250 KB is allocated to day to day traffic usage, allocating another 5 KB for every application user up to 50 gigabytes a day.
However, apple did not indicate the kind of charges that they will charge to developers who exceed the aforementioned limit. CloudKit will be a relief to developers who were forced to turn to third party solutions such as Google cloud platform, Microsoft azure and Amazon web services. All this adds up to making the CloudKit in essence, free to use for all developers.
Developers’ World?
By using the various features of the CloudKit API, developers can support CloudKit authentication, search and notification. This is a marked improvement as earlier there was building required on top of the third party applications. CloudKit will also eliminate the need to write code on server side. Developers can easily make their apps have iCloud integration and authentication.
What’s The Biggest Pro for Developers?
Well, developers would rejoice at the aspect that they will not have to maintain dedicated servers for their applications. However, regardless of the amount of advantage that developers receive, apple will walk away with the gold as they seem to have managed a far stronger eco-system with the launches and announcement in WWDC.
Interestingly, since iCloud uses the hybrid back-end of Amazon web services & Microsoft azure, indirect beneficiaries of the CloudKit API will also include both Amazon and Microsoft. What do you, as an app entrepreneur think of CloudKit? Will you be using it extensively the next time you develop applications or would you still be going for third party applications?
