Last night Apple kicked off WWDC with its usual keynote speech. I thought it was a well polished affair, and everyone including Tim Cook seemed fired up and energised.

So in September when the new iPhone and other Apple hardware lands we will have the following new features –

1) Third Party Keyboards and a new Apple keyboard with word prediction. Plus the keyboard is enhanced for the blind with a braille version.

2) A tighter eco system with iCloud Drive (goodbye Dropbox), iMessage improvements(calls, iMessage and even normal SMS’s can be done on any Apple device from iPad, iPhone or Mac, adios WhatsApp), Phone Calls can be answered on your Mac, iPad or iPhone or made from any device. Apple also introduced features for group messaging from do not disturb, viewing message photos on one page and more.

3) Start typing a message on your iPad or iPhone or Mac and continue it on something else. Apple called this Handoff. You could be doing others things too and continue on a different device. AirDrop will now work between mac and iPad and iPhone.

4) Apple’s Health and Home Automation Frameworks got announced and look very promising.

5) 4,000 new developer API’s. New coding language called Swift. And Metal.

6) WiFi calling is now allowed and FaceTime call waiting

7) Battery usage stats per app – finally

8) New camera APIs and a photo kit allowing developers access to the camera settings like exposure and separate focus, camera timer, pano mode for iPad, instant burst mode for camera and time lapse mode.

9) Shazam with Siri, Purchase iTunes content with Siri

10) Auto night mode for iBooks, Rich text editing in Notes

11) In Case of Emergency card

12) Multi Usage support

13) Widgets in the notification centre

14) OS X Yosemite – redesigned like iOS, better functional mail app, improved spotlight, safari, mail drop, iCloud Drive, iPhoto being updated

15) iOS Photo app – better editing and integration with other photo editing apps without leaving the camera roll.

16) Appstore overhaul – videos, group buy deals of dev apps and so much more. Family share has arrived. Using one card and up to 6 family members, if your child went to buy an in app purchase a message would appear saying have you obtained permission , and at the same time , the adult would get a message asking to authorise purchase. Neat. Plus families were able to create and share photos and calendars.

17) iOS 8 apps can share data with each other – finally

18) Touch ID opens up to developers – this is huge

19) Lower cost cloud storage plans

20) iOS Notification centre offers quick replies and actionable items

21) iOS 8 gets spotlight search

22)

Clearly the next batch of Apple hardware releases are going to be excellent. All of the above will drive better hardware sales as well. Lets hope the battery tech keeps up with all the demands of the modern operating system.

It also looks like Apple have come back fighting from the death of Steve Jobs, in a more energised, aggressive way and opening up the platform to allow better sharing and third party keyboards. The only thing it did not allow was to set default apps for a particular task eg web browser.

Roll on September 2014 and the new iPhone – hang on a second, Foxconn just made an announcement –

“5.5 and 4.7 inch iPhone will be manufactured by Foxconn in 2014

MUMBAI, India – June 2, 2014

Foxconn, world’s leading manufacturer of computer components and systems, is going to manufacture both 5.5-inch and 4.7-inch iPhone in 2014.

According the sources, Foxconn will supply 70% of the 4.7-inch iPhone shipments for 2015. The 4- and 4.7-inch iPhones will be the main sales force of Apple for 2014. Foxconn’s plants in Zhengzhou, China are expected to start supplying the 4.7-inch model in July and start manufacturing the 5.5-inch one in August.”

So true or false ?