Apps shine at Apple's WWDC
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E-mail China Daily, June 3, 2014
Apple Inc's Worldwide Developers Conference held in San Francsico's Moscone Center could be pretty much summed up as "The app that I can't live without."
Kicking off their 25th annual WWDC on Monday, Apple chose to forgo the revelations of new hardware in favor of updates to software and the introduction of new developer-focused features, including a new coding language.
The conference, which lasts a week, features 100 different sessions and 120 labs where developers can interact and learn to create applications for Apple products with the help of more than 1,000 engineers working for the company.
Originally started in 1989 with about 1,300 attendees, Apple's WWDC has become one of the world's major technology events.
As is tradition at the WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to roll out statistics in the Apple world, highlighted the rise in the number of developers the tech giant has hired, the gains the company has made in increasing the user base of its operating system, and then took a typical jab at competitors.
The kick off "reveal" of the day was the announcement of Apple's desktop operating system, OS X Yosemite. The current OS X, Mavericks, released last year was seen as a major overhaul of the 13-year-old operating system. This update is essentially a facelift for OS X. New features on Yosemite include better search integration, notifications with widgets, and windows with transparency.
The kick off event of the day was the announcement of Apple's desktop operating system, OS X Yosemite. The current operating system, Mavericks, which was released last year, was seen as a major overhaul of the 13-year-old operating system. This update is essentially a facelift for OS X. New features on Yosemite include better search integration, notifications with widgets, and windows with transparency.
Perhaps the biggest addition to OSX is a new feature called Continuity. It allows Apple users to have better integration between their desktop and mobile computing. Users can move content and work seamlessly between the MacBook and the iPhone. The MacBook can connect with the iPhone and make phone calls. Federighi demonstrated the phone call ability with a quick call to Apple's newest "employee" the famous hip-hop musician and mogul Dr. Dre.
Moving on from desktop, Apple also introduced new updates to its mobile operating system iOS with the announcement of iOS 8.
Cook claimed that iOS 7 has an overall satisfaction rating of 97 percent and that "nearly half of our customers in China have switched from Android to iPhone".
According to Apple, iOS 8 builds on the clean and slick design of iOS 7. The biggest new features include new interactive notifications, health tracking, as well as many Continuity features found on the Mac.
Apple also upgraded its messages application to include features that are found on popular apps such as Tencent's WeChat and Line Corp's Line.
Apple's long rumored foray into health and fitness came in the form of HealthKit in iOS 8. This app can keep track of various health and fitness statistics as well as seamlessly integrate third-party hardware that tracks fitness.
Another major feature of iOS 8 is Family Sharing, which allows movement of content between devices and keeps tracks of accounts. The app also has a feature that alerts parents when their children try to buy an app and allows them to complete or cancel the purchase.
The latter half of the WWDC keynote was focused purely on developers and technologies that enable tech companies.
Apple is also planning to release a big update to its software development kit (SDK). This new SDK will include application programing interface tools that help developers create applications that use Apple's hardware to the fullest extent.
On top of opening up Apple hardware to developers, the company has now put forward a software coding language called Swift. It is said to make content creation much easier, especially due to the addition of real-time monitoring.
OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 will be free when released to the general public this fall. So far there is no word on any new Apple hardware.
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