Apple WWDC Developer Conference is THE media event of the spring for Apple fanboys and girls everywhere. It is usually the place we get our first look at the next versions of iOS and OS X but, more than that, it is the event that reveals Apple’s overall direction for their products. At times there are also some hardware announcements.
And, while this is more geared to developers, the fact that the Apple Store online is currently down indicates that there will be some new hardware revealed. We have been careful not to speculate and quote rumors but serious news sources are now making it clear that we will be seeing iOS 7, a new streaming music service and more when the Keynote address begins at 10am PST.
The event is taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, but Apple is streaming live to Apple TVs and through their website. We’ll share everything as it comes in. Be sure to check the comments, and add your own thoughts.
Stay tuned.
Ready to go.
Telling everyone to turn off sound on devices…
Began with a bit of video pointing to the fact that more doesn’t mean better or good. But, rather, they want to shoot for focus, simplicity, and enhancement.
Nice jab at the competitors.
WWDC sold out in just over 70 seconds.
Sessions will be posted online so Developers can follow and learn remotely.
He is jumping into the Apple Store update. Over a million people visit Apple Retail a day.
407 stores in 14 countries.
New store in Berlin is in an old theater they restored. The theater is still intact and will be used.
They made a video of the opening and are running it now.
App Store is 5 years old next month.
50 Billion apps now downloaded in less than 5 years.
900,000 apps. 93% of them are downloaded each month.
375,000 designed for iPad.
More accounts with credit cards than any store in the internet.
They have paid developers $10Billion.
That is three times all the other platforms combined.
New company being launched right now.
anki drive…
Cars drive on the track with artificial intelligence.
Oops… needed to do a restart.
iOS devices are not just the controls but the brains of the “intelligence”.
They then told three of the four cars to block the other and they did so… on their own.
Told the car to shoot the others and… it did.
‘A video game in the real world”.
We are bringing video games to life on your living room floor.
Mac:Annual growth rate is 15% vs PC 3%
72 million install base. double what it was 5 years ago.
Mountain Lion announced last year. 28 million copies have shipped.
OS X Update…
“We do not want to be the first company delayed due to a dwindling supply of cats…”
Need new names for the next ten years.
OS X Mavericks.
Finder Tabs: can bring Finder Windows together and let you have different views in a simple place.
Tags: Now you can save a document and add tags to it, and the tags will appear in the Finder list.
Multiple Displays: You can access the dock on all screens, be fullscreen in all displays, you can pan windows on all displays and access the menu bar as well.
AirPlay window will act as a full second display.
OPINE: All of these are nice but they are all refinements that make me think… “About time!!”
Mission Control with Multiple Displays.
Apple TV just got more powerful!
Battery Life:
Compressed Memory
App Nap “sleeps” apps
Timer Coalescing
Reduces CPU utilization up to 72%
Compressed Memory
Safari brings a new design with a sidebar.
Shared Links- All the links shared by people you follow on Twitter and linked in
Under the hood…
Tech comparison…
Real world…
So in OS X Mavericks Safari has some new features and new technology under the hood but will still be familiar to anyone using it.
Demo shows it to be smoother and more responsive than ever.
Secure your information in iCloud and it will be synced across devices.
This is yet another way Apple is locking people into using their platforms and only theirs.
Notifications has also been improved; you can now reply within Notifications on Chat, Email and FaceTime.
iOS push notifications come to your Mac too.
Apps updated in the background.
Facebook Events in your Calendar.
Location, Travel time and weather aware.
Maps
New Maps apps.
You can send directions from your Mac right to your iOS device.
SDK lets developers add Mapping functionality to apps.
iBooks coming to the Mac!
(OPINE: My Tutorial iBook will be more useful to my students now!! Woot!)
Great for research…
And for notes.
Emphasizing the further integration with iOS.
Preview available today.
Shipping this fall.
MacBook air.
“Ultimate everyday notebook.”
New line of MacBook airs.
All day battery life.
As expected they run Haswell processors.
Old battery life.
New battery life.
13″ gets up to 12 hours of battery life.
802.11 AC WiFi.
New AirPort Base Stations.
Include BeamForming.
Less expensive than ever.
“Can’t innovate anymore, my ASS!!!”- thank you Phil.
Double the CPU performance of previous product.
First Mac that comes with Dual workstation GPUs…
Supports multiple 4K displays.
It is tiny compared to the previous Mac Pro.
Coming later this year.
Designed AND Assembled in the USA.
iCloud
“How we are deeply integrating iCloud into the next version of iWork”
New iWork coming later this year but they are also releasing iWork for iCloud. It lets you use iWork in the browser.
Let’s you do your work in the browser anywhere and anytime.
You can even drag and drop images from your desktop to Pages in the cloud.
It will automatically convert Microsoft Word documents.
Impressive that Pages, Numbers and Keynote seem to be full copies of the software in the browser with no lag.
Beta developer version available today.
iOS
Sold over 600 million devices.
iOS devices see far far more use than other device platforms.
Leads in customer satisfaction by a large margin.
“We provide amazing software updates and make them available to as many users as possible.
Over 90% of iOS users are using iOS 6.0 or up.
More than 1/3 of Android users are using an operating system that was released in 2010.
We know a new iOS will affect millions and millions.
“The biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone.”
New colors, transparency, depth and clarity.
New Home Screen.
As you move the device in your hand it tracks your motion and lets you “see behind the app iCons”.
GameCenter… we completely ran out of green felt…
And wood.
So far it is all about appearance.
Gesture from the left side of the display. Lets you navigate one handed.
Multiple pages of folders. (NICE)
The one-handed gesture also works in mail.
Notification Center- Includes a new Today View.
Notification Center is available from the Lock Screen as well.
“Installing iOS 7 is like getting an entirely new phone but it is getting a new phones that is familiar.”
Control Center lets you get to settings from any ware by swiping up.
Will now have multitasking for all apps but will maintain battery life.
It isn’t full-time background multitasking but it intelligently updates for you.
Push notifications trigger background activity.
Safari
Fullscreen but one tap gets you a search field.
Some very nice features.
New Tabs look and no more 8 tab limit.
Control Center lets you have more control more easily than ever. It is controlled with a swipe up from anywhere on the device.
Access multitasking with a double tap.
AirDrop
Lets you share with friends right near you.
“No need to wander around the room bumping your phone…” DIGGGG.
To access different camera functions you now just swipe.
And a new Photo App gives more structure and ease of use. Images are now organized into “Moments”.
AirDrop photo sharing.
Shared PhotoStreams let everyone on the stream add images. (This will be handy for Judie, Mike, Carly and me.)
You can now share video via iCloud photo sharing.
Siri
Siri has a new female voice and you can now choose a male voice.
“Siri’s getting a lot smarter.”
“Turn on Bluetooth.”
“Play my last voicemail.”
Integrated Twitter, Bing web searches and more.
Tapping into the screen on your car nag system.
You can use the screen or you can use Siri to be eyes-free.
Lots of car manufacturers will introduce it in 2014.
The App Store will now update your apps automatically.
You can see all your content with ease in the new Music app.
Built right into the music app.
Includes Featured Stations.
You can also create your own stations.
It keeps track of all the songs you listen to.
So iTunes Radio is all about encouraging you to buy music. It is built in, and it is free. Also on iTunes on Mac and PC and Apple TV. Free with ads. Free with no ads if you use iTunes Match.
FaceTime Audio will be voice only.
iPhone Activation Lock will make it impossible for someone who steals your phone to EVER use it.
iOS 7 is in Beta today for developers.
Final release in the fall.
iPhone 4 and later!!
‘We completely ran out of green felt’ … 🙂
LOL
Control Center….something iOS people have needed for FAR too long.
Airdrop just toasted Samsung’s bump 🙂
Which deserved to be toasted…..
I know … having set it up myself you quickly realize it isn’t so simple as in the commercials 🙂
Never liked the non Samsung Bump crap. I use other things….like just syncing to the cloud with dropbox or something like that. If it’s something that I need to have in multiple places.
Is it me or does iOS 7 look similar to a Windows Phone interface?
Definite elements … I think we can all agree that at this point NO mobile OS is created in a vacuum 🙂
Absolutely. It wasn’t a criticism, just an observation.
Definitely – and a good one!
Hm, it looks a bit Android-ish to me, like some of the Go Launcher Ex themes I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to the improved Safari search tools, though. That could be a real productivity boon.
It looks like Android, iOS, and WebOS had a baby. It looks very slick and much more modern.
I see pieces parts of every OS. WebOS, Android and Windows Phone. It’s very different…but not radically so in my opinion.
OK … auto-updates. I have very mixed feelings about this.
Hmmmm. As long as you can turn it off. Something like this would work GREAT for my wife…oh and Doug. 😉
Yep – Doug’s blood pressure just dropped 20 points! 😀
Well as long as he remembers to keep it charged up and doesn’t turn it off!
iTunes Radio … free with ads, or ad-free with iTunes Match. OMG the rest of the streaming music industry just fainted …
That works out to $2.08/month for ad-free streaming, vs $3.99 a month for Pandora One. Big difference but will it swing subscribers? How big is the itunes match base?
Let’s just say that if you took the user base for Pandora, Slacker, Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, Google Music, MOG, eMusic, and so on … and added them together … you would still need to multiply by ~5 or more to approach the iTunes market.
I am thinking of the people who pay the $25/year for itunes match though.
Has apple ever broken out how many people pay for that? Would be curious.
My coworker does but my wife didn’t.
Hmm…I don’t think so and here’s why: It doesn’t work everywhere. Sure if you are an iOS person it works for you but I don’t think it’s going to take off as fast as iTunes did itself. Even I, Android and Linux guy, bought music back in the day on iTunes.
If anything, it will have them investigate price. For example, $9.99 a month is kind of expensive Google. Their stuff is pretty good but not bighting even at the reduced $7.99 a month.
I DO think that there will be a price war thanks to this.
For folks like my wife, the second I show her iTunes Radio … if it does the basic stuff she uses Slacker for, she will never open Slacker again.
The bottom line of recent research is that the great pull of music discovery is a myth – people are pretty happy playing curated stations of pop music of their particular sub-genre (rock, hip-hop, dance, country). By pushing that angle and having the largest store … they position things amazingly well.
Oh – and definitely point taken about this only applying ‘within the walled garden’.
I agree that people will be happy with anything that provides them with decent streaming radio options.
Will simply being built into itunes be enough to pull people off Pandora, etc? I think most users will try iTunes radio once it is out, and the ease of use and music selections will determine if people jump ship. They have the advantage of a huge userbase who will try something new, but it needs to be fully baked to keep users. I am thinking of users like my mom, who will try iTunes Radio but if it isn’t as good as Pandora for her she will go back to Pandora and her comfort zone.
Yeah Music Discovery is only for those sick people who don’t know what they like or music majors! 😉
The walled garden though…I mean I use Linux, Windows(7 and 8), Android and iOS (okay only when fixing the wife’s computer). Plus I have a Roku. Even if I went iOS (and it’s semi tempting with the new update….depending on hardware), I would want something that works everywhere and I woudn’t even care about iTunes Match.
A friend of mine still uses his iPod in the car loaded up with all sorts of 80’s music (he still buys CD’s). On the iPhone he’s very happy with Pandora(with ads) and has recently tried Jango and likes it too. I am not sure if he pays for iTunes Match though. So I am not sure if he’d like it….he might try it with the ads and wouldn’t care.
I don’t think this is a smash hit home run though. How many iPhone people have Pandora et al loaded? How many have chosen services like Rdio or Spotify? Even if Apple has more music…who cares as long as the service you have has what you want? Even my Dad uses Pandora.
I am sure that there will be some that use it but if you already had something you may not want to switch. Good example of that is my mom and dad are STILL using AT&T for their landline and have been since the days of ONLY AT&T(40-50 years? May be longer?). You’ll only switch services if there’s a reason. Since it is free with ads, I don’t doubt that some will try it but will they care enough to pay for no ads or to not use anything but? Jury’s out on that one.
Yeah – the big thing here is the HUGE base (more than half a billion) users that are part of the iTunes ecosystem. As Apple points out that is WAY MORE than ANY other service (or all of them combined). If only a fraction of these people take advantage of it (either via ad views or by paying for Match) Apple stands to make a whole lot more money, and a lot of people will opt for this as opposed to a Slacker/Pandora/whatever because it’s part of the current ecosystem and because it’s convenient. Yeah this is a big deal.
Also cool – 3rd party game controller support!
It strikes me that iOS in the car is potentially huge and harmful for dedicated GPS. That intrigues me.
Dedicated GPS systems are on their way out anyway. More people I know use ONLY their phone as their GPS. It’s even getting easy to bridge the areas that don’t have good coverage with Android since you can cache the maps. The Dedicated GPS still has a place but only for extreme cases (where you just can’t cache it all) or where you need different info or device dependability (Topo maps and devices that can take a beating that far exceeds the beating a phoen can take).
I have GPS on my car and I don’t use it. It’s a hassle to deal with and you have to have the OnStar app on the phone to send the directions to the car. Would MUCH rather use an app on my phone.
The only case I have really found is where you hit a cell dead zone (they DO still exist). Then you have no GPS at all. Happened to me last summer …
Actually that’s not true – it isn’t really GPS you lose – it’s access to the maps and that is easily taken care of by purchasing a dedicated on-board nav app like Navigon or iGo or TomTom all of which generally are available at a cost less than the cost of a dedicated GPS.
Thanks Chris – yeah, I was thinking about the built-in smartphone maps (Apple/Google/Nokia) that many rely upon.
Or Google Maps. I have all of Columbus cached on my phone now. I could turn all networking off and be fine.
Android does allow you to pre-download mapping data. It’ll be interesting if Apple’s maps offers the same sort of feature.
Of course,I tried to use that feature in Montreal last fall and it wasn’t until I needed it when I was out running (and lost) that I realized that the download hadn’t worked. My fault for not having checked earlier while I was still in the US…
I’m not sure that I like the typeface in iOS7 – the stroke is so thin that it’s almost unreadable. For example, on the lockscreen, when they showed it in the keynote at an angle, with that light blue background, I found the time unreadable. Otherwise, I thought everything looked quite good.
I do wish they would talk about when POI data on their maps is going to improve, though. They remain pretty terrible at the moment.