Live Apple WWDC 2016: Another year, and Apple has big plans in store
Catch all the action live from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference today.
Apple is hosting its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this year, beginning with a keynote address from the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. While it's unlikely we'll see any new hardware this time around, we can expect a boatload of software tweaks, ranging from the minor to the game-changing. Leaks ahead of the event have suggested an upgraded Siri will be the main focus of the keynote, including the digital assistant making its way from iOS to OS X. You can catch Apple's live stream on a dedicated channel on Apple TV, or on the Safari browser on OS X (10.8.5 and above) and iOS devices (iOS 6 and above), or a PC with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 here.The main event begins at 10:30pm (IST) tonight, so be sure to join us as we go live with all the updates. And for those of you hankering for more, we'll be diving into all those juicy updates all morning tomorrow.
Latest Updates
And it looks like that's the end of WWDC 2016. To be fairly honest, laying off hardware teases was probably a bad idea. It ended up highlighting that Apple really had barely anything innovative to show. Of course, if you feel differently, tweet us @dna with #dnaTech and let us know what you liked (or hated) about WWDC 2016. And stay tuned tomorrow for all the update teardowns we'll have for you.
This looks very similar to Microsoft's Blockly, that uses Minecraft to teach coding basics. It's even got the same "help the protagonist" puzzle feel.
New iPad app called Swift Playground. It helps users learn to code using Swift.
Developer Preview for iOS 10 out today, public beta in July. You can expect the update later this year.
And now we're hitting on what's been a sore topic lately: privacy. Eddy Cue is stressing that all the AI features are based on your iPhone, not cloud. "When it comes to performing analysis of your data, we're doing it on your devices, keeping your personal data under your control."
Mac and Apple Watch can receive the new messages but can't send in that style.
Yup. Apple is going bot too. You can order food, make purchases, and transfer money to people from within iMessage.And for some reason, there seems to be an entire app store for what looks like mostly stickers. This is most certainly overkill. I know Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are huge competitors but come one guys.
Ooh. Messages are being opened to developers. You can swipe up from the bottom to access an app drawer with compatible apps. This feels like it's moving into payments territory.
Apple Music is also integrated into messages, so you can play a track in-line. Gotta admit, that one's new.
Scribble also works in messages, so you can send a handwritten reply.
There are also "bubble effects" in messages now. Messages can appear in different ways. For instance, make your text smaller to indicate a whisper or apology and large to indicate you're yelling or excited. Yep, that's exactly like Allo's Whisper/Shout mechanic. The only new thing is "surprise" messages, that you have to swipe to view.
"Emojis are now 3 times bigger"....O K...iMessage also highlights "emoji-fiable" words.
Messages have also been upgraded with "Rich Links". Inline images, and YouTube videos.
If you own an Apple TV, it can act as a "Home Base" of sorts. It's never fully off, so when it senses your iPhone in proximity it can automate tasks on a preset list.
On to IoT now, Apple has leveraged HomeKit to bring a new Home app to iOS 10. It lets you control all your connected devices from one app. Home also features in the iOS Control Center. This way you don't need to open various apps to control different devices. Unfortunately it's not controllable by Siri just yet.
Seems Apple News has a new design as well. And it's getting Subscriptions, so you can pull articles from every other news app into Apple News. That way you can read all your favourite publishers in one location, with lock screen notifications.
Now we're moving on to Apple News updates.
This is definitely a fun addition though. There's a new Lyrics pane for your playlist.
Library, For You, Browse, Radio, and Search are the only tabs at the bottom now. Connect is still in there, but not cluttering up the main menu anymore.
And now Apple Music. A slight redesign; not much change in functionality but it does look cleaner now.
Well, at least Apple Maps is coming to developers. Hopefully Apple picks up a few tips to actually compete with Google here.
Eddy Cue just told the crowd they can pan and zoom during navigation and they cheered. I mean, you can call it "Dynamic View" but it's been on Google Maps for so so long!
Slide up from the bottom for suggestions on where you might want to go, as well as supposedly a cleaner UI and better traffic information.
Next feature, it looks like Apple is taking another crack at maps. Apple Maps has a new design.
There's also a new tab at the bottom of Photos called Memories. It curates highlight reels of photos from a location or event
That's facial recognition being processed locally, and creating tabs for different people. The only advantage this has over Google Photos is that privacy is probably better, seeing as the facial recognition is happening on your phone instead of in the cloud.
Aha!. Siri is coming to WhatsApp, WeChat, Uber, Lyft, Pinterest. Runtastic and RunKeeper, and even Skype.
Apple is opening up Siri to app developers. Finally! Took long enough. Having it integrated into other apps means you could conceivably send a WhatsApp using voice commands.
Also something to keep in mind, none of this stuff works with iPhone SE of course. That doesn't have the 3D Touch hardware, a decision we here at dna still question incredulously.
Again, that's really not something even the slightest bit original. Apple really has to up its game to impress me with iOS 10.
You can respond to notifications from the lock screen using 3D Touch.
iOS 10 has a new lock screen and "expanded 3D Touch".
Sierra will see a public beta in July, with the final version out later in the year.
Siri can also search for files on your system and tell jokes apparently. Google's assistant doesn't tell jokes but it did show up in Chrome in 2014. Cortana then made her entrance for Microsoft's Windows 10 last year. Apple is SERIOUSLY slow on the draw here. This isn't innovation, it's struggling to catch up.
And there we go. Siri is coming to the Mac.
There's an icon in the top left of the menu bar and in the dock.
Safari-like tabs are also coming to any other app. That....might actually be too much freedom.
Honestly, it's probably just easier to buy stuff online without Apple Pay than having to use your phone or watch to authenticate a web purchase. That's like circumnavigating the globe to cross the street.