Keynote: June 14th – 3am AEST
Watch it Live
Apple’s video stream requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later, a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or a PC with Windows 10 and requires Microsoft Edge. Streaming via Apple TV requires an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) with software 6.2 or later or an Apple TV (4th generation)
For those who cannot watch it Live or missed it, we will have a Live Blog that goes through what has happened as it happens, then a more detailed post thereafter.
What to Expect
WWDC is known more for the Software Announcements than Hardware. Like WWDC 2015, Apple will likely focus on OSX, iOS, WatchOS, among other things.
For big Hardware Announcements? Well, it would be a shock considering it is a “Developer Conference”, so you will have to wait until later in the year.
WWDC 2016 Keynote Recap
The Keynote started with paying respect to the terrible tragedy in Orlando, Florida.
We would like to say something first:
What happened in Orlando was an act of gutless weakness. We all can live our lives however we choose so it isn’t your business to get negative if someone doesn’t follow your ways. We can believe whatever we want, love whomever we want, as long as you are not trying to make it about you and pushing your opinions on everyone expecting people to agree with you. We can all live together with peace and love without the ignorance that you are taught, but all of us need to come to that realization first, which has never been an easy road to drive on.
To those who want to make life harder, your extreme actions will never and hasn’t changed anybody’s minds and has caused more ignorance/negative affects than good. You hope that your actions will change people, but look at every negative action that has past… Has it made us all fall to our knees and bow down too you? No. Maybe its time to find another way. Remember this, we all cannot have everything we want, and we have many people who already cause more problems than good so you adding to it allows them to win. You are likely not the only one of a few who haven’t got it good, there are MANY who don’t. The ones who you think are better off, many (not all) have worked hard to be where they are, taking on every wall life gives them instead of damaging everything around them to get to a good place.
As the good old saying goes:
When Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade!
Our Hearts go out to the Families of those who passed from this incident.
Let us continue…
The apple watch gets faster and adds new features with the new version watchOS 3.
watchOS 3 loads apps much faster than the previous OS, thanks to background refreshing and keeping apps stored in memory.
The side button can now access a “dock”, which allows users to scroll through their set favourite apps.
The Watch will act a little more like an iPhone with a new Control Center. A swipe up on the Watch allows users to access things like airplane mode or Do Not Disturb, just like the iPhone.
Responses now get a new input called “Scribble” that users can use to respond to a message. Instead of typing or dictating a response, they can draw out each individual letter. It currently supports English and Chinese.
Source: apple.comApple Watches will also get an SOS feature, which activates when the side button is held down and calls the local Emergency Services of the Country you are in, without any settings changed with each country you may visit, as long as you have it connected with your phone or Wi-Fi.
It also sends Location information to the Emergency Services and Emergency Contacts. It’ll also share users Medical ID, which displays their Allergies, Age, and existing Medical Conditions.
Another feature is the ability to control your Home-kit enabled Home via the “Home App”. Adjust the lighting, see who’s at the front door, or check your thermostat etc.
The Apple Watch also got enhancements to Fitness information and added features like meditation called “Breathe”.
Apple announced 1300 TV Channels & 6000 Apps are now on Apple TV and will only get bigger.
iPhone now gets an app that mimic’s the Apple TV Remote. Users have been asking for this for a long time now.
Apple TV now allows Single Sign-on, giving access to all Network Apps that require Passwords, removing the need to log in every time you add it or access it.
Finally, users wanted to have a “Dark Mode” for Background and such to prevent the brightness when using Apple TV in Dark Rooms, Apple answered and now you can.
As you would already have notice by the above Picture, Apple have moved away from calling the Mac’s Operating System “OS X” to match with the “name before the OS”, like it is with the others (iOS, watchOS, tvOS). as the ‘X’ stands for ’10’, it would be better off staying away from Microsoft and ‘Windows 10’.
The new Name of macOS will be called ‘Sierra‘.
One of the big focuses (AKA compete with Microsoft) is continuity across devices. Craig Federighi demonstrated a new feature called “Universal Clipboard“, which allows users to copy and paste across multiple Apple devices.
A new improvement in Sierra is a Storage-Saving measure that moves old files from your computer to the cloud allowing you to free up space but still have access on demand. In the example, a Macbook had only 20GB of storage left. After they used the new feature, they managed to free the Mac up to 150GB.
Sierra will also bring Siri to the desktop. Siri will be accessible in the dock as well as in the top-right corner near Spotlight. You’ll be able to use voice commands to find files, search the web, send messages etc.
Adding Siri is likely in response to Microsoft and Cortana being on Mobile Platforms and PC via Windows 10. Cortana has turned a lot of heads, especially the abilities you get on both Platforms, which keep being updated. The Anniversary Update will bring many good features for Cortana and Windows 10/Mobile 10 in general, so its best to jump on-board now.
Mac’s will be able to be unlocked on the login screen just by wearing your Apple Watch. It detects the Watch in the immediate vicinity unlocking the device.
Again, this is likely to respond to the works of Microsoft and alternate ways to log into your devices.
Currently, Surface has Fingerprint Scanning (Not available in Australia) & Facial Recognition. Windows Lumia 950 & 950XL has Iris scanning. While other 3rd party Manufacturers have their own methods out or coming out. Microsoft have already been working on Phone and Microsoft Band unlocking for your PC.
Apple have also added the ability to use Apple Pay on the Web. You can make your purchases online, and when you are asked for payment, your phone will be sent a confirmation and ID request, which in the example was using TouchID.
Lastly, Apple have enabled Picture in Picture on Mac’s so you can watch a video while still doing other things like surfing the web.
Sierra will be Released in America’s Fall.
iOS has hit version 10, bringing what Tim Cook describes as “the biggest iOS release yet”.
Lockscreen & Notifications
You’ll see that notifications are broken up into bubbles and now you can use 3D Touch to show hidden menu actions – e.g. hard press on a calendar invite notification and you’ll be able to accept or decline it.
3D Touch-enabled notifications help with Messages, allowing you to respond to messages right when you pick up your phone, without ever unlocking the lockscreen.
Clear all
In iOS 10, you now have the ability to clear all of your old notifications with 3D Touch. Swiping them away one by one, dismissing them in groups becomes a thing of the past. The keynote did not really show Clear All with non-3D Touch iPhones.
Control Centre Revamp
The Control Centre menu (when swiping up from the bottom of the screen) has been redesigned to help declutter the mess on iOS 9.
Icons have been shifted around and made better. One example is when Night Shift debuted in iOS 9.3, it made the buttons at the bottom quite small which annoyed many.
Music controls have been moved to a new slide. Sliding right on the Control Centre, reveals a dedicated area for the volume, playback and device output controls, and even music album cover art.
Camera & Daily View
It’s easier than ever to get to the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the lockscreen right (when Control Centre isn’t open) automatically shifts you to the Camera App.
When you swipe to the left on the lockscreen, it reveals a new spot for Apple widgets to display various things for the day.
3D Touch Improvements
Within the home screen, 3D Touch enabled tiles like Activity gives you a view of the content of that App.
An example shown was ESPN. It had better shortcut information within its 3D Touch menu. It showed scores, a drawn out play-by-play interface and even had live video for viewing in-progress games you’re following.
Siri Keyboard
Apple’s on-screen QuickType keyboard has Siri jumping in to assist you with textual & contextual tasks.
Using deep learning, it’s able to understand the wider context of what you’re typing, influencing the words in the suggestion bar above the keyboard.
QuickType is also adding a handy button for your current location whenever someone asks “Where are you?” and for forking over someone’s contact information when a chatter asks for that info.
Siri uses deep learning to analyze a conversation and is able to pick up on you and a friend/family member talking about something like food, a proposed time and resturant address, and then pre-fill in a Calendar event when you go to add it to the Calendar app. This is something that Cortana already has and is improving on hugely.
Photos
Source: apple.comiOS 10 is going to Google Photo’s by bring the same features that Google has now – Intelligent Recognition.
iOS 10 can locally scan your images and videos to create albums based on face, object and scene recognition, placing them in Albums.
Apple plans to take on Microsoft’s ‘Photo Story‘ (previously Nokia/Lumia Storyteller).
iOS 10 will assemble your captured photos and videos of a particular memory with assembled tile views or a special movie that is customizable, with a number of mood choices and three length options for easy sharing.
Messages
Messages is introducing rich links within a conversation rather plain text links. You get a nice visual of the place you are linking too.
iOS 10 Emoji’s are now three times larger. Writing text and Emoji’s has come together with Emoji replacement. When you write up a sentence, you can press on the Emoji icon which highlights words that have an Emoji, then with a press of the highlighted word, it turns into the Emoji. Pretty cool.
There’ll be bubble effects so you can “say it loud” with a bursting bunch of text, or say something “gently” with slow, zooming in text.
You can also express reply with a full screen affect like fireworks or balloons.
You can also use “invisible ink” that requires the message receiver to slide their finger over a text or photo that is blurred out to reveal it. It’s to bring suspense to a message.
Finally,
You can also send a message with your own Handwriting, giving you a different look of messages.
- View the entire Keynote from WWDC 2016 on Apple Events which also has detailed information on what was presented.
- To go in-depth with different aspects of the WWDC, visit the WWDC 2016 Video’s page.
That’s it for now.
We now wait for later in the year to see the announcements of new Hardware coming out of Apple.
