Apple updates coding terminology removing non-inclusive language

Apple on Thursday released a note on its developer website that the company is updating its coding terminology. The changes will be across the company’s ecosystem.

“At Apple, we’re working to remove and replace non-inclusive language across our developer ecosystem, including within Xcode, platform APIs, documentation, and open source projects,” according to the note.

It’s clear that Apple has been working on these changes for months because they started appearing in documentation and betas during its annual Worldwide Developer Conference in June. You can’t make that kind of a switch on the fly with a couple of days’ notice. For example, Apple is now using terms such as “allow list” and “deny list” in its documentation.

Of particular note to developers is Apple’s APIs—you’ll want to keep an eye on this.

“Developer APIs with exclusionary terms will be deprecated as we introduce replacements across internal codebases, public APIs, and open source projects, such as WebKit and Swift,” Apple said on its website. “We encourage you to closely monitor deprecation warnings across your codebases and to proactively move to the latest APIs available in the platform SDKs.”

It’s good to see Apple being proactive about making these changes.