Slashdot Mirror
WWDC 2015 Roundup
Here's an overview of the main announcements and new products unveiled at WWDC today.
- The latest OS X will be named OS X El Capitan. Features include: Natural language searches and auto-arrange windows. You can make the cursor bigger by shaking the mouse and pin sites in Safari now. 1.4x faster than Yosemite. Available to developers today, public beta in July, out for free in the fall.
- Metal, the graphics API is coming to Mac. "Metal combines the compute power of OpenCL and the graphics power of OpenGL in a high-performance API that does both." Up to 40% greater rendering efficiency.
- iOS 9: New Siri UI. There’s an API for search. Siri and Spotlight are getting more integrated. Siri getting better at prediction with a far lower word error rate. You can make checklists, draw and sketch inside of Notes. Maps gets some love. New app called News "We think this offers the best mobile reading experience ever." Like Flipboard it pulls in news articles from your favorite sites. HomeKit now supports window shades, motion sensors, security systems, and remote access via iCloud. Public Beta for iOS 9.
- Apple Pay: All four major credit card companies and over 1 million locations supporting Apple Pay as of next month. Apple Pay reader developed by Square, for peer-to-peer transactions. Apple Pay coming to the UK next month support in 250,000 locations including the London transportation system. Passbook is being renamed "Wallet."
- iPad: Shortcuts for app-switching, split-screen multitasking and QuickType. Put two fingers down on the keyboard and it becomes a trackpad. Side by side apps. Picture in picture available on iPad Air and up, Mini 2 and up.
- CarPlay: Now works wirelessly and supports apps by the automaker.
- Swift 2,the latest version of Apple’s programing language . Swift will be open source.
- The App Store: Over 100 billion app downloads, and $30 billion paid to developers.
- Apple Watch: watchOS 2 with new watch faces. Developers can build their own "complications" (widgets with a terrible name that show updates and gauges on the watch face). A new feature called Time Travel lets you rotate the digital crown to zoom into the future and see what’s coming up. More new features: reply to email, bedside alarm clock, send scribbled messages in multiple colors. You can now play video on the watch. Developer beta of watchOS 2 available today, wide release in the fall for free.
- Apple Music: “The next chapter in music. It will change the way you experience music forever,” says Cook. Live DJs broadcasting and hosting live radio streams you can listen to in 150 countries. Handpicked suggestions. 24/7 live global radio. Beats Connect lets unsigned artists connect with fans. Beats Music has all of iTunes’ music, to buy or stream. With curated recommendations. Launching June 30th in 100 countries with Android this fall, with Windows and Android versions. First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six.
Don't worry, I just wasted time reading your comment, so we're even.
-- Tim Cook.
Yes, maybe we could consolidate them all into some sort of bundle. Perhaps with differently priced tiers; cheaper tiers get access to less content than more expensive tiers. Why, with this model, you could even have some less popular services subsidized by the purchase of more popular services.
Thank God we've finally cut the cord!
I've been beta testing this feature and you are right about it being useful with the News and Stockmarket app. It seems buggy though because I can get it to turn past the 2016 NASA news release about an unseen asteroid suddenly passing by the moon heading for earth. The only apps that continues further into the future is the weather app which reports blackout skies, and 2700K surface temperatures with rains of ash and nitric acid. And The health app shows my pulse rapidly rising then flat lining about that time. Facebook shows I was unfriended by the whole world and all the you tubes are of a fireball in the sky, but nothing past that date.
The watch actually allows you to travel into the future as well. It's a beta version so the rate of travel is really slow right now, but you can feel youself travel about 1/sec into the future every 1/sec if you watch mickey mouse's hands. If you put it in developer mode there's also a timetravel stop watch. It freezes the whole world except you. I was using it to rob a bank one day and I dropped it. So I traveled back in time to post this on slashdot to warn everyone about this.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
you're cramming in more and more functions into an increasingly small case, so more is more difficult and considered by some to be more admirable.
I know a number of software developers who think along these same lines... ;)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Will the batteries last longer for somebody who mainly does phone calls and texts?
... Why do you own an iPhone.