What Did Apple Announce At WWDC 2016?

Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, kicked off yesterday with a keynote. Apple heads got up on stage at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Here’s what Apple announced:

iOS 10

Apple’s mobile OS is hitting a milestone this year with its ’10’ release, with the company calling it its “biggest iOS release ever,” although that seems to be something the company says almost every year.

Huge updates to Messages, Photos, Music, News, Maps, and Phone are all included in the iOS 10 update. We’ll pick out the best parts below:

• The Messages app will receive fullscreen animations, the ability to change text size, automatic emoji suggestions, Tapback, and rich link support. The app now also offers third-party app integration.
• Maps has been redesigned; has third-party extension support for apps like OpenTable, Uber, and Lyft; and is better at proactively searching along routes for points of interest, like gas stations, restaurants, coffee shops…
• Photos now is very similar to Google Photos, in that it can sort photos by person, location, and more; alongside the ability to create “Memories,” which give users a way to stitch photos together to create a Memory Movie.
• Siri is now open to developers, giving the voice assistant the ability to use non-Apple apps. For example, users can use Siri to send a message though WhatsApp.
• HomeKit is now an app. The app allows users to control HomeKit-enabled accessories through one location.
• Apple Music gets a redesign, with simpler and clearer navigation.
• Notifications, the lock screen, control center, and the home screen have all been redesign to be more ‘3D-Touch’-friendly.

iOS 10 will be available for developers starting today, public beta users in July, with a final release coming in the fall.

 

macOS Sierra

Apple has finally gotten rid of the ‘OS X’ moniker in favor of macOS, a name more fitting with the rest of Apple’s OSs. This year’s version name will be Sierra, continuing Apple’s landmark naming scheme.

The newest update will add several features that make macOS work better with other Apple devices. Some of the more important features are listed below:

• Universal Clipboard
• Identical Desktop and Document folders on all devices.
• Apple Pay for web
• Tabs in almost every app
• Picture-in-picture for video
• Auto Unlock, which uses the Apple Watch to verify your identity and unlock your Mac without a password.
• Optimized iCloud Storage, which stores old and redundant files in iCloud to free up hard drive space..
• Siri on the Mac, the voice assistant runs nearly the same as it does on other devices; integrating into all Apple apps.

macOS Sierra will be available to developers starting today, public beta users starting in July, and a final release is expected this fall.

 

watchOS 3

Apple’s watchOS 3 features “significantly improved performance” and seems to add welcome additions to the company’s smartwatch offering.

A few of the features are below:

• A new “dock” feature allows quicker navigation between apps,
• Better controls for moving around and interacting with the Watch.
• Apps will see a huge performance upgrade since they now run from memory and have the ability to update in the background.
• Control center, a smaller version of what you already see on iOS.
• A new health app called Breathe, which focuses on meditation and breathing, and the app encourages users to “take moments in their day to do short deep breathing sessions.”

Overall, Apple has improved the way users can move around the OS and has simplified almost everything. watchOS 3 will be available this fall as a free update to Apple Watch.

 

tvOS

The Apple TV saw the least amount of new features this time around, but those features that were added are paving the way for something much bigger:

• Siri has been updated to search for movies by topic or theme.
• Siri can also search through YouTube
• Line Tune-In, ask Siri to go directly to live channels inside supported apps
• HomeKit accessories can now be managed inside Apple TV
• Single Sign-On, Apple is allowing users to have a single login for Pay-TV apps and services, which will reduce the headache involved in setting up the Apple TV for the first time.
• ReplayKit to enable developers to record and live broadcast from their apps
• iOS users can download the new Apple TV Remote app with touch navigation, Siri and game play support
• Dark Mode

The new tvOS will be available to developers today, with a final versions shipping as a free update in the fall.

Apple certainly announced quite a few of updates to their OS offerings today, although for most of us, we won’t see these changes until the fall. Until then, we’ll likely have to live off of updates from developers and public betas users until later this year.