Apple’s keynote presentation at WWDC 2013 wrapped up just about an hour ago, and it was one hell of a full keynote! Here’s is a 10,000 foot view of all that was covered by Tim Cook and company at the presentation that sold out in 71 seconds!
Retail & Digital Stores
As usual, Tim Cook kicked off the keynote with some numbers. Apple’s 407 retaile stores received 1 million daily visitors in 2012, and Apple opened up a very impressive new store in Berlin. On the digital front, next month the App Store turns 5. In 5 years, there have been 50 Billion app downloads, along with 900 Thousand apps available in the app store serving the 575 Million account holders. Cook was also proud to announce that over $10 Billion has been paid out to developers, with $5 Billion of that being paid out last year alone.
anki
There was a pretty neat demonstration by the folks at anki – a group focused on robotics and AI. They showed off a pretty cool “game” in which cars raced around a track on a mat on the floor. The iPhones ran these little things via blutooth, making them aware of their surroundings and able to react to follow the track, avoid other cars, etc. There was a small hiccup during this presentation when they had to reset their software, but overall it was a pretty cool concept using an iOS device to bring physical gaming to the living room.
Mac & OS X Mavericks
Again with some numbers. Apple’s OS touts a 72 million install base, the iMac is the #1 deskt0p in the US, and the Mcabook is the #1 notebook in the US. But of course, one of the bigger announcements was “OS X Mavericks”. Not sure how I feel about the name, but everyone seemed to enjoy what the new OS is bringing to the table, including Finder Tabs, File Tagging, and better multi-display capabilities.
OS X Mavericks looks to be full of “Advanced Technologies” including Compressed Memory – which rapdily compresses inactive memory to increase responsiveness, App Nap – used to direct power only to apps that benefit from it, OpenGL 4 for more responsive graphics and Timer Coalescing, which can reduce CPU activity by up to 72%.
Safari is also getting an overhaul with a clean new homepage with top sites, a side bar with your book marks, reading list, and links shared from those you follow on Twitter. The new Safari is also made with big power saving improvements so you can browse longer without having to plug in, along with less memory usage.
The OS X Mavericks demo was pretty slick. The 60 FPS scrolling looked really smooth, with no jitters from loading the next image you’re scrolling through. The software will also put a stop to apps/software consuming lots of power and memory when you navigate away from them.
Some other features covered as well were the iCloud keychain, which will securely store passwords and credit card info (less the security code) across multiple devices; Actionable notifications; background app updates; an overhauled calendar in which you can integrate locations, directions and travel time to appointments; Improvements to the Maps app, including the ability to send directions right to your iPhone and the ability for developers to add mapping functionality to their apps via the Map SDK; and finally iBooks is coming to the Mac, and your pages will be synced across multiple devices.
The OS X Developer preview is available today, and the general public will be able to upgrade to Mavericks this Fall.
MacBook Air
The New MacBook Air was unveiled today as well, touting all-day battery life with the 11 inch and 13 inch versions supporting 9 hour and 12 hour battery lives respectively. Unveiled at the same time was the new AirPort Extreme.
Mac Pro Sneak Peek
The audience was given a sneak peek at “The future of the pro desktop” with the Mac Pro.
This machine is built around unified thermal core, contains a new Generation Xeon processor with up to 12-core configs, 256 bit-wide floating point, and PCI Express Gen 3, Fastest ECC memory and is externally expandable via thunderbolt 2. This bad boy will also support up to 3 4k displays. The Mac Pro is coming later this year for all you graphic designers, video and photo editors out there chomping at the bit. Designed in California, assembled in the US.
iOS
The moment finally came as everyone in the audience held their breath in anticipation of iOS7, but, of course, first some numbers. 600,000,000 iOS devices have been sold and Apple holds 60% of the mobile web market share along with 82% tablet market share.
Of course, iOS 7 is said to be the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone. I feel like this has been said each time a new version of iOS is unveiled, but this time, it actually holds true. This new iOS looks beautiful with flat icon designs, transluscent layers, and a tilt sensor to interact with those layers (i.e. on your home screen, if you tilt the top of the phone towards you, you can “see” behind the icons). Animated lock screens now appear to be supported, and the weather app has received a complete overhaul with animated graphics and the ability to view all saved locations at once – also doubling as a world clock. The overall look and feel of iOS has been completely changed, and from what I saw, 100% for the better.
Many will be excited about a quick-access control panel accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the device. Here you finally have fast access to bluetooth, wifi, brightness, etc. and even a built in flashlight (sorry, flashlight app developers). Multitasking has been redesigned as well, with a simple double tap of the home button you can scroll across screens of all your open apps. The mobile version of Safari also received some attention with a complete redesign, better looking and more functional tab access, and you are no longer limited to only having 8 tabs open at a single time. And finally, the camera, which can now also be accessed from the quick-access control panel. You can now swipe across to select different shooting modes, and even apply live filters built right in to the app. Your photos are now stored much better using metadata which organizes your photos into places and times.
Oh SIRI, how we love to give you so much shit. Briefly the most exciting new feature, SIRI was quickly found to be lackluster and not very useful by many, but she has also received an overhaul in this new iOS so that may no longer be the case. SIRI features a new interface, the ability to pick a male or female voice in multiple languages, and a less choppy, robotic sound to it. SIRI can now also control much more of your device such as turning bluetooth/wifi on/off, increase the brightness, etc. SIRI is now featuring new integrations as well from Twitter, Wikipedia, and . . . Bing. Yes, seriously, Bing.
Also part of iOS 7 is iOS in the Car which adds to functionality for those of you who drive around in iOS-ready cars. iOS will now be integrated into your car’s screen, and you’ll be able to use SIRI to read messages to you and even dictate a response back, all hands free.
To not much of a surprise to anybody, iTunes Radio was unveiled as well. It is built right into the music app and is ad-free for iTunes Match subscribers. It appeared to be pretty slick, but I think will already have an up hill battle with other similar, more established services like Pandora and Spotify to compete with. Will your average user really want to start from scratch putting together their playlists?
The iOS 7 Beta will be made available later today, and the rest of us will have to wait until this Fall to get our hands on it.
Final Thoughts
For me, this was a hell of a WWDC. It really seems like Apple came out of the gate with all guns blazing. On the mobile side of things, part of me wonders if Tim Cook and company finally see Windows and Android as real competition and are going to rise to the challenge. Competition always makes for better inovation, and the customers benefit from this. As an iPhone user, I am thrilled with what they have done with iOS 7, despite apparently not getting my letter about actionable notifications. The new iOS is hypnotically sleek and brings a lot to the table to keep the iPhone in the game as more devices come to the market. I don’t think there is a smart phone out there that is the “best smart phone”, I’m a big proponent for buy what suits you best; but as an iPhone owner, I am very excited about iOS 7 and really feel like Apple has stepped up their game a bit.
As usual, Apple is making some of the best hardware out there, and the Mac Pro coming later this Fall, and the MacBook Air are once again falling in line with their quality products. I’ve been thinking about picking up a MacBook Air for some time now, and this might be the version I finally buy. The Mac Pro looks to make a big splash with desktop users later this Fall, and I’m betting a lot of power users will be looking to pick one of these up.
What did you think of Apple’s WWDC 2013 Keynote? What was your favorite reveal? Do you think they missed the mark on anything? Sound off in the comments below!