As a MacBook Pro and iPhone 5 owner, I’m always interested in what’s up next from Apple.
Today’s keynote from Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), June 10-14 in San Francisco, announced the latest in iOS and OS X design and development. As expected, Apple introduced iOS7. Watch the iOS7 video.
Want to compare developer announcements? Read the May 16 recap of the Google I/O Developer’s Conference.
Here’s a look at highlights from the WWDC opening keynote conference.
Apple WWDC Keynote Highlights
Many outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, live blogged WWDC coverage. Here are a few highlights from Jessica E. Lessin, WSJ’s Apple reporter.
Apple stores have 1 million visitors per day
App Store stats: 50 billion apps downloaded. 900,000 apps in the store; 375,000 iPad apps. (Android says it has 975,000).
Mavericks Mac Software
New Mavericks Mac software has better battery life. Faster to shake from standby. Mavericks is 1.5x faster waking up from standby from the previous release, for example.
A neat calendar and maps integration — you can look up travel times between two locations on your calendar — and adds travel time to your calendar so you don’t schedule anything. (Nice competition to Google Now, which tells you when you should leave for an appointment)
To sum up on Mavericks: It is about integration across devices. Notifications, books, maps available across devices. Preview available today. General public can get it “this fall.”
Read the OS X Mavericks with more than 200 new features press release.
Major New iOS7 Features
Venture Beat covered Apple’s mobile operating system of the future’s key features. Here are a few.
• Control Center
Quick access to major controls like volume, Bluetooth, etc.
• Multitasking
Now for all apps, with intelligent background updating when needed
• Safari
A new full-screen look, smart search that unifies Google search and your history search.
• Control Center
• AirDrop: the ”easiest way to share with the people who are right around you.”
• Photos
A new photo app with new filters. Also, new auto-organized photos by date, place, and people, and new shared photo streams.
• Siri
New look, new voice (a male voice), and much more intelligence to control your device. Integration of Twitter, Wikipedia, and web search results from Bing (not Google!).
• iOS in the car
Your iOS interface on your car’s navigation screen with partnership with over ten manufacturers.
iTunes Radio Launches
According to CNET, iTunes Radio, Apple’s long awaited music streaming service takes on everyone from Pandora to Google.
After more than a year of negotiations with the music labels and publishers, Apple Monday unveiled its much-talked about free, streaming radio service — called iTunes Radio — at WWDC in San Francisco. The service is ad-supported, although it will be ad-free to people who use iTunes Match. It will come built into iOS 7, the iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV and iTunes on Macs and PCs. It comes with 100 stations built by the music team at Apple, and users can follow music that’s trending on Twitter.
What announcement stands out most for you?
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