WWDC 2014 – The Highlights

(REFRESH PAGE FOR UPDATES)

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2014 kicked off today with the traditional Keynote address from Apple executives.

The Keynote kicked off with a video promoting the apps that developers make for Apple devices. Then Apple CEO Tim Cook walked out onto the stage to a round of applause.

The Keynote Highlights

Two-Thirds of the attendees at the developers conference are there for the first time.

The youngest developer at the conference: 13 years old.

9 million registered developers.

iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 have been designed to operate seamlessly together.

OS X has an installed base of 80 million.

40 million copies of Mavericks installed. For a 51% installed base running Mavericks. Fastest adoption ever of any PC-based OS in history.

OS X 10.10

Craig Federighi took the stage to discuss OS X 10.10 – “Yosemite” – (Sadly, they did not name it “OS X Weed.”)

Yosemite has definitely taken on the flatter iOS 7 look. The Calendar app, Messages, all resemble their iOS 7 counterparts.

The title bars and side-bars, and menus are translucent.

Yosemite also introduces “Dark Mode” for less distractions.

Notification Center now includes a “Today View,” with customizable widgets. (Weather, stocks, clocks, and more.) OS X 10.10 third-party apps can include customizable widgets for use in Notification Center.

Spotlight now pops-up as a large field in the middle of the display, also offer inline preview of files. Accesses Wiki feeds, news, maps, and other online sources. Searching for a contact turns up the contact info, as well as any emails and other related files. Does conversions.

Calendar’s new Day View offers appointments on the left, with details on the right.

iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive will show all your iCloud files in Finder. Files saved or copied here will sync across all your devices.

Mail

Handles large attachments by using a new service called “MailDrop.” Mac users will receive the files, other users will receive a link to the file. Handles files up to 5GB in size.

Safari

New tab view gives birds-eye view of your open tabs.

Private Browsing in new Private window. Other windows remain public.

Includes WebGL for faster graphics, HTML5 video, more…

Safari’s search field shows suggestions in the form of bookmarks as you type.

Safari allows you to share web content and use a new feature “Markup” that allows you to annotate images before sharing. The Magnifying glass feature here is very cool. Ability to add comments, arrows, and smart drawings.

AirDrop

Finally works with AirDrop on iOS! Finally!

Continuity

With “Handoff,” Your iOS device will recognize what you’ve been working on with your Mac, and will be able to open the document and pick right up where you left off on the Mac.

SMS messages will now show up on your Mac. You will be able to accept phone calls on your Mac, and use your Mac as a speaker phone.

Dial a number via your Mac! Even from a link on a webpage. Highlight a phone number, dial it right from OS X Safari.

Instant Hotspot, as your Mac sees your iPhone and uses it automatically as a hotspot.

Craig demonstrated the speakerphone capabilities of the Mac by calling Dr. Dre! Dre wants to know what time hew should start showing up for work.

Yosemite is available to developers now. It will be available for general release in the fall. It will, of course, be free! There will be a public beta this summer.

I WANT IT NOW!

iOS 8

iPod touch 100 million units

200 million for iPad.

500 million units for iPhone.

130 million customers bought their first Apple device in the past year. (Switchers from Android, NATCH!)

89% of iOS devices running iOS 8. Android’s latest release: 9% of devices. Android does, however, dominate the malware market, with 99%. LOL!

iOS 8 End User Features

Built on the previous design of iOS 7.

Interactive notifications. Just pull down a notification, and you can pull down on the notification to reply. Even on the lock screen.

Double-tap of the Home Button gives you access to your most-used contacts.

Safari for iPad has sidebar ala Mac.

Swipe to flag/delete/mark as unread a message in Mail. Swipe a message down to get access to your other mail. Swipe back up to edit message again.

Swipe to decline or accept a meeting from the notification.

Spotlight: Now makes suggestions for apps on App Store, Wikipedia info, restaurants, songs both on your device and on iTunes, and more. Safari also includes Spotlight suggestions.

New keyboard! Predictive, suggests words as you type, keeps track of how you communicate with various contacts, will suggest words based on past communications. Supports numerous languages.

Continuity supports the features mentioned above in the OS X 10.10 section.

Messages

Group messaging enhancements. You can now name threads, and add/remove people from conversations. Also apply Do Not Disturb to a particular thread.

You can share you location with people in a conversation. It can be shared for an hour, the rest of the day, or longer.

Tap to talk, allows you to record an audio clip and send it to everyone in the thread.

Listen to audio messages and reply to them from the lock screen. Just raise your iPhone to your ear.

Selfies can be set to self-destruct.

iCloud

In compatible apps, such as Sketchbook, you can open compatible documents through iCloud Drive. Changes are saved back to the cloud.

Enterprise

Device Enrollment Program will allow you to get a new iPhone/iPad and have it auto-configure for your enterprise.

Download all your enterprise apps. Passcode protection for all data types. New Exchange features.

HealthKit

A single place for health apps to compile a profile.

Third party apps will plug into HealthKit.

Apple is working with the Mayo Clinic.

HealthKit can figure out personalized thresholds for readings, notify doctors automatically, and more.

Family Sharing

Automatically share photos, calendars, reminders, and more. Auto-configure Find My friends, find devices, etc.

Up to six family members can share the same credit card for app and content purchases. You are automatically notified if a family member makes a purchase. It can also ask you for permission to allow the purchase. Nice.

Photos

Allows searching of photos in various ways. Location, time, albums, etc.

Includes smart-editing controls for light, color, auto-straightening and cropping.

Changes show up automatically on other devices.

A new Photos app will be coming on the Mac next year. it looks a lot like Photos on iOS. Gestures are supported. Allows the same type of editing adjustments as the new Photos app on iOS 8.

All photos and videos saved in full resolution.

Apple still wants to charge for iCloud storage space over 5GB, but the pricing is lower.

Siri

“Hey,Siri” feature.

Purchase content from iTunes via Siri.

Shazam song recognition.

Streaming voice recognition.

22 new dictation languages.

App Store

New features. Explore tab. New sub-categories. Top-trending searches. Scrolling lists.

Developers can offer app bundles. Buy multiple apps at a discounted price.

Developers will be able to embed videos in iTunes screenshots.

Beta testing tool: Testflight.

Apple SDK

“Biggest release since the launch of the App Store.”

4,000 new developer APIs.

Extensibility – Apps will be able to offer services to other apps.

Apps are in sandboxes, where they can access own data but not from other apps without your permission.

New sharing options, will allow apps like Pintrest to offer a share sheet to Safari.

Photo filters are supported.

3rd party Today screen widgets in Notification Center.

Can increase eBay bids from widgets in Notification Center.

Extensions: Bing translate does inline translation in Safari. Pinterest extensions too.

THIRD-PARTY KEYBOARDS! (SWYPE! YES!)

Touch ID

Third-party apps will be able to take advantage of Touch ID.

All info securely stored in the A7 processor.

HomeKit

HomeKit will bring standardization across home automation devices. Common network protocol to allow secure pairing of devices and your iPhone.

Control individual devices, group devices into scenes. “Get ready for bed!” via Siri will lock the doors, lower the thermostat, and set the burglar alarm.

CloudKit

Access iCloud authentication, adds client side programming model. 

Free – Within limits. 1TB assets, 10TB database, 5TB/day asset transfer.

Metal

High-performance graphics. Metal dramatically reduces programming overhead. Up to 10X faster draw calls.

Precompiled shaders, efficient multithreading.

Stunning graphics shown handled via Metal.

SpriteKit

Enhanced over last years version.

Light sources, field forces, per-pixel physics.

Xcode

Last version downloaded 14 million times.

Objective-C without the baggage of C.

A new programming language: Swift.

3.9X faster than Python, multiple times faster than Objective-C.

Swift code can run alongside Objective-C and C code in the same application.

Playground: Runs code as you type, displays results in sidebar.

Swift language guide now available via iBooks.

iOS 8 available today to developers in beta.

The release version will be available in the fall.

And that’s it! Come back in awhile, for more comprehensive coverage of todays announcements.