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.

Comments

WWDC Means...

[eepok]

(Apple) Worldwide Developers Conference. I had to look it up for myself, so I thought I would post it.

"Complication"

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase "complication" is borrowed from watch horology, meaning some function that's unrelated to the basic three functions of the watch, telling the hour, minute, and second. So things like stopwatches, day/date/month displays, moon phase displays, mainspring reserve power, spelling out the time with a series of chimes, that kind of thing. For a mechanical watch, 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.

If you want to see the ultimate example of pre-computer watch design, the Graves Supercomplication is worth reading up on, with 22 functions on both the front and back of the watch.

Re:Must be getting old.

[BasilBrush]

Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too... Otherwise OK that is fine, but staying to one

Swift 2 CAN make apps for Linux. Apple's releasing the compiler and the standard libraries for Linux.

And as its open source, someone can do the same for Windows. Given Microsoft's recent moves I wouldn't be surprised it Microsoft themselves port it.

This is the big news for Slashdotters from this years WWDC.

Apple Developer Program now all inclusive

[Cutting_Crew]

The apple developer program is now all in one instead of paying a separate license or Mac OSX, iOS and Safari. This is good news and makes sense. It was kinda pointless to have a separate license for all these common features between devices/hardware.

Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive

[_xeno_]

Wait, you guys (Apple developers) have to pay *licenses* to Apple to write programs and apps on their platforms?

No, of course not, Xcode is a free download and you can write programs and apps for any iDevice for free. (Ignoring the cost of the Mac you need to buy in the first place, of course.)

You just can't let other people use them without forking over $100/year. (At all for iOS or without making users disable scary security dialogs for OS X.)

Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive

[Cutting_Crew]

uhh. the license provides you with pre-releases of the updates (like as of now) for mac osx and ios before the public release so your apps will work with any updates changes to any of the devices mentioned in the keynote. it also allows you to have access to all of the sessions if you werent able to make it to WWDC. If you are able to make it (you cant go unless you arent a developer, unless you get a special invite) you get one on one time with developers in the session labs to look over your code, help with bugs and in other technical help you might have. You also get the developer videos as well as access to the apple developer forums.

You also get two technical support incidents with actual apple engineers that will go through your code, look at bugs with you, offer suggestions/help.feedback/ and help you fix your problem. Obviously this would be something worthwhile in case you've exhausted all avenues of technical support from the web or from other colleagues.

It also includes the ability to sell your apps on the apple store. Sure, you could do it but how are you going to get the visibility you need to get your app noticed if it is not in the app store? How are you going to set up the payment system/networking/server maintenance/etc/etc so that you accept all major credit cards and get all that secure for people to buy your app? (assuming you have enough traffic to even warrant such as set up)

Re:Apple Developer Program now all inclusive

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Back in 2008...

Symbian code signing was like 200 bucks every six months(So 400 a year!) back in the Symbian days and you got little to no support.

BlackBerry signing was a little complicated and had three tiers of API usage, each tier costing $100.

Qualcomm had their own requirements that was something like 100 apps for 400 bucks for use on the Verizon game store.

So in 2008 when Apple announced that it was going to only cost $100 bucks for unlimited apps and all public APIs with a storefront that you could make money on, it was a godsend.

Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap?

[Altus]

They specifically said that iOS 9 will support all the same hardware as 8

Re:Yes, but what will you need to run that crap?

[BasilBrush]

The OS X v10.11 Developer Beta supports the following Macs:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)

MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)

MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)

Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)

MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

Xserve (Early 2009)

Re:Must be getting old.

[Noah Haders]

here's a refinement: they finally fixed the shift key in ios9. by default, all the keyboard letters are lower case. when the shift key is engaged, all the keyboard letters are upper case. makes sense! this was sorely needed.

My fear is that they keep adding complexity of different offscreen features and gestures. A big point for ios was that it didn't come with a user's manual because it was so simple and intuitive you didn't need one, but I feel like we're a stone's throw away from the dummy's guide for ios.

Re:What about all the competing content sources?

[yeshuawatso]

This made my day. What's funny is the lack of understanding that these companies and many stores offer more competition to consumers than ever before, and the average price is still ridiculously low. Even if you were to subscribe to every service and buy digital content from each company on a frequent basis, it would still be cheaper than shelling out $150-200/month for the same/similar level of content from cable providers. Hollywood is the only loser in this game as they're watching their home entertainment profits erode from foreign competition, indie stuff, and these companies just growing a pair and coming up with their own stuff.

Re:Must be getting old.

[Yaztromo]

I'd really like Apple to put Swift and Metal out there as open source - it will only increase the adoption rate. But past performance leads me to doubt...

What, do you mean like with WebKit or CUPS?

Sorry, but past performance shows you are wrong. FWIW, Apple never promised to make FaceTime Open Source; what they said was that they were going to openly publish the protocol. I'm rather cheesed that never happened as well, but they never promised to open their source code to FaceTime.

On the other hand, Webkit is a huge OSS project, which is used by a variety of products and companies, and which has a lot of non-Apple/non-Webkit contributors. Indeed, if not for WebKit, there wouldn't be Google Chrome. CUPS is, of course, the print subsystem used by virtually every Linux distro.

Those are the projects you need to judge Apple's OSS track record on.

Yaz