Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote is about to begin in San Francisco, California, with iOS 7, an Apple music streaming service nicknamed iRadio, and new Mac computers/software expected to be officially announced. We’ll be providing live updates throughout the course of the event to let you know what’s happening with iOS 7, any new iOS-related accessories, and other products that may be announced. Click on the title of this article for the latest details as they happen.
Note: We’ve moved iOS-related updates to the top of the article so you can see them before the Mac-related news.
Note 2: The event is now over, with all updates below.
iOS: Tim Cook notes that 600m iOS devices sold, up roughly 235m from last year at this time. Apple’s devices lead in usage and web browsing, sometimes by wide margins over Android devices and others. Satisfaction is at 97%, with 73% “very satisfied,” according to surveys, and 93% of iOS users are on the latest release of iOS. Version fragmentation is bad news for developers and users of other platforms. iOS 7 announced with “amazing new features,” “stunning new user interface.” Jonathan Ive in video explains theory of ‘whole thing’ design, simplicity and bringing order to complexity. New Lock Screen, and design looks much as leaked before event, including redesign of icons, translucent panes, glass effects. Tilt the devices and the icons tilt—a little 3-D-ish effect. Changing wallpaper changes the look of the rest of the OS, and overall look has a very British high-contrast, clean font sensibility. Thinner font on Home Screen icons, taking advantage of Retina pixels. Now animation in the backgrounds.
You now swipe upward to unlock the phone. Apps have been cleaned up with white backgrounds and black text (or similar high contrasts) across the board. Stocks, Compass, Calendar, Game Center – a big theme now is clean typography and simplified icons across more colorful/interesting backgrounds. Little added bits of depth in the OS let you have multiple pages of apps in folders (YES); less ornamentation around the edges of the screen lets you have full-screen pictures. Federighi: “Game Center, we just completely ran out of green felt, and wood as well, this has gotta be good for the environment.” Redesigned Weather with effects built in.
Ten Features of iOS 7: Control Center lets you immediately access Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode, Brightness, Bluetooth, Orientation Lock, AirDrop, AirPlay, and media controls, plus a mode to activate the rear flash on your device as a flashlight at night. You swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen to access it, even from within apps. Multitasking is now enabled for all apps, including keeping apps ready to go as needed, in effort to reduce battery drain. Double-click Home Button to see pane of multiple applications. Safari includes iCloud Keychain integration, smart searching, more tabs, and an improved UI with some integrated gestures. AirDrop/Photo Sharing: Tap on a friend’s photo and you share with them. Works on iPad mini, iPad 4th-Gen, iPhone 5, iPod touch 5G only. New Camera: Filters are built in, swipe to switch from photo/cropped camera/pano camera to video modes. Unlike current Photos app, photos will be organized into “Moments,” based on location and time data, with pinch gestures moving in and out of segments of time. Both photos and videos can now be shared over iCloud – iCloud Photo Sharing, with multiple participants contributing.
Siri: New voices for Siri, female or male as you prefer. New look, including a sound wave.
New commands let you turn on Bluetooth, change the screen brightness, and play voicemails. Bing, Twitter, and Wikipedia are integrated into Siri. iOS In the Car: Integrated with Siri. Put iOS on the screen built into a car, says Eddy Cue, assuming the screen will support the connectivity. 16 manufacturers will integrate this into their vehicles for 2014, with Siri voice controls enabling you to access your iOS device’s maps, media, and calling features on the road. App Store: Redesigned to include list of apps popular where you are, and auto-update your apps in the background.
New Music Player: Integrates local and cloud libraries together, just like iTunes 11, complete with swipe-ready landscape grid view of album covers. Videos app does this for Movies and TV shows, as well. iTunes Radio is integrated into the Music app as well—featured stations which play akin to radio stations in Pandora. Make your own stations, skip songs, buy songs you’ve heard if you want. Works in iOS, iTunes on Mac, and Apple TV. Ad-free if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber, free with ads otherwise. Will start in the USA, then go international.
Many other features: FaceTime Audio – VoIP from Apple. Notification sync across devices. Block people in Messages. Activation Lock – if a thief tries to turn off Find my iPhone or wipe the device, it can’t be reactivated. You’ll have to sign in again to reactivate it. 1,500 new APIs, including MFI game controllers (!). iOS 7 will release in beta form on the iPhone today for developers, iPad bets in the coming weeks, then final release this fall. Supports iPhone 4 and on, iPad 2 and on, iPad mini, iPod touch 5G—that’s it.
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Pre-iOS Discussion/Numbers: Apple begins by showing a video on the importance of focus in design. Black and white, elegant use of dots to represent the thousand no’s Apple says before a yes. Applause for Tim Cook, who is out to speak, promising developers an “incredible week” for the 24th WWDC. Two-thirds of the audience are here for the first time, he notes. WWDC sold out in 71 seconds, with 1.5m new developers since last year—6m developers now. Notes on Apple retail stores as important parts of their communities, including new store in Berlin, which it shows on a video.
Third-party apps update: Apple’s up to 50 billion app downloads, with 900k apps in the store, 375k for iPads. Brand new developer Anki comes out to unveil Anki Drive, an autonomous robot toy car game using iOS devices. The demonstration of several toy vehicles speeding around a physical rolled-out track stumbles almost as soon as it begins, but then picks up again. Anki’s cars can sense each other and interact as they race around the track, letting the developer control one car as the other cars attempt to block it, all coordinated with iOS—the iOS device is the brain behind it.
It takes a video game concept and brings it to physical moving toys.
OS X Mavericks – Mac update: iMac is now the #1 desktop in US, and MacBook is #1 notebook in US, with considerable growth beyond the PC market. Mountain Lion was Apple’s best-selling Mac release ever, 35% of users updated to it. As Apple turns to the 10th release of iOS, they’ve hit a wall: a dwindling supply of cats for the code name. So they’ve decided to go with names that really inspire Apple within California. Joke: Sea Lion. Real name: OS X Mavericks. A place with some of the biggest waves and extreme surfing in California. Three features to demo, starting with Finder Tabs – mix Finder windows together within a single window that contains multiple views, multiple folders, etc – just like Safari, but with Finder content. Also, Finder Tags – locate things all across OS X, directly from the sidebar; a given document can have multiple tags so you can find it through a variety of different ways. And improved support for multiple displays, now including both traditional monitors and AirPlay-enabled HDTVs (via Apple TV), such that you can move content easily between the displays, bring up the dock on a second display, change Spaces, etc. It’s as if you have multiple computers, linked together, but with separate work/display spaces.
Note: iBooks and Maps are both shown in the OS X Dock. Looks like both are coming to the Mac. Other technologies being added in OS X Mavericks: OpenGL 4. A host of new technologies to make memory and battery life better, improvements to GPU and CPU management. Whole goal appears to be to make current machines run even better, via compressed memory and other tricks. Apple claims 1.4x performance improvement over Mountain Lion.
Safari is getting a variety of updates, including a cleaned up homepage with a sidebar that looks very iOS-influenced. 1.44x faster than Chrome, power savings, lower memory usage. Optimized for Retina displays, so now it’s smooth when scrolling; when the Safari window is obscured, CPU usage now drops considerably thanks to a feature called App Nap—it removes the need for the app to keep running and killing battery life. iCloud Keychain is being added to help bring passwords/keychain info from one machine to another, synced across multiple devices with 256-bit encryption; it can remember credit cards as well, minus the security codes. This is basically part of 1Password.
Push Notifications can come over from iOS to the Mac, so you’ll be able to see your iOS notifications on the computer. You can also respond to things directly from the dialog in the Notification Center. New Calendar app is shown, and has taken on the expected flatter look, with pastels. And an updated version of Maps, now coming to the Mac. It includes improved data, street maps, and the same general look and feel we’ve come to know on the iOS version. You can get routes from the Mac sent to the iPhone, appearing right on the Lock Screen. And iBooks is confirmed for Mac, including the full iBookstore of content—such as interactive textbooks—and a note-taking interface. It obviously draws a lot from the iPad iOS interface.
