Apple held their WWDC 2016 Keynote Speech yesterday. It was great to see a mix of employees present on stage. It was also apparent that Apple had tons of stuff to try and get through.
Highlights included a whistle stop tour of iOS 10, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
watchOS 3 seemed to address many of the complaints of the current firmware with considerably faster running apps, new watch faces, improved ways to respond and a tweaked user interface. The activity app became more social too. All in all, the Apple Watch just became far more polished and potentially easier to use.
iOS 10 – so much to cover, new features across the board from Photos (RAW photo editing is also possible now), Maps, iMessages and more. Siri suddenly became more useful and functional. The lock screen got spruced up. API’s galore for developers including access to Siri and iMessage. Lots of new gloss too. BUT some of the more interesting changes were those not discussed. A high level take is Apple opening up the platform more than it ever has done.
Apple apps can be uninstalled. These include – Calculator, Calendar, Compass, Contacts,FaceTime,iTunes Store,Mail, Maps, Music,Notes, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks,Tips,Videos,Voice Memos, Watch, Weather, Game Center – That’s a big list. Of course, as these Apple apps now appear in the App Store, it means Apple can provide quick updates to the core apps without a new firmware.
macOS – this also had lots of new features, the biggest with Siri integration, Apple Pay on the web which also features in iOS 10, universal clipboard and many more.
tvOS – lots of changes here from support for 4 game controllers, a dark theme, single sign on for all the different web services and lots more.
In fact, the list of changes is huge. My concern is how is everybody going to learn how to use all these new features and will it make Apple products harder to understand. Apart from that, the Apple software for the future looks exciting and provides a glimpse of what new hardware could be released to accommodate all these changes.
So what are your thoughts?
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watchOS: looks good, bringing it closer to what it should have been at launch, in my opinion. I’ll be looking forward to installing this.
iOS: there are some good aspects, but I am left concerned that there is going to be a lot of fluff which I really don’t want: stickers, flashing messages, backgrounds to messages and so on. I hope there is a function to disable these from being shown if a message is received with them on. I love the possibility of a VoIP app working more like the phone app, and I would especially like it if this meant that they have equal priority (i.e. that an incoming phone call does not supersede a VoIP voice session).
macOS: I’ll wait to see what the new file system is supposed to be like, but otherwise I thought the changes look okay but nothing stellar for the way I use my Macs.
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tvOs: not a function of the OS as such, but the elephant in the room for me, and what is stopping me from buying a TV 4, is the lack of an Amazon Prime app.
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