Live from Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote!
It feels like we were just here, and in a way we were: Just three months after unveiling the new MacBook, Apple is back at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to kick off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference. That means we’re back at Moscone too, ready to liveblog whatever it is the company has up its sleeve this time. The question, as always, is what. We’re not really due for any new hardware this time of year, save for a possible 12-inch iPad and Apple TV refresh (and even that’s supposedly not happening). We also expect to see TV and music streaming services at some point, though we’re not 100 percent sure Apple will be ready to announce either just yet.
Good morning from sunny San Francisco! I’ll be your liveblogger for the day, along with senior editor Nicole Lee and senior mobile editor Chris Velazco on photos.
I just saw Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, by the way. I asked her what time it was before realizing who she was. How’s everyone else’s morning going?
Lots of celebrity sightings already. We spotted Trent Reznor, SF Mayor Ed Lee and apparently will.i.am is also in the crowd.
As far as I’m concerned, the hardest part of the day is done for us. We got up at the butt-crack of dawn, waited in line for hours and may have strained some muscles sprinting for seats. But now we’re here, and all we have to do is tell y’all what’s going on.
It also looks like Apple execs are already in the crowd mingling with the VIPs. Spotted Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller in the center VIP section, as well as Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann.
And there’s the announcement to silent our phones. We’re about to get started.
Uptown Funk is blasting now. Aw yeah.
And the lights have dimmed. Time to get started.
Oh hey, a video with Bill Hader. Playing director “David LeGray.”
And that’s Charlyne Yi in the video. We also see a stuffed Angry Birds character, a flying drone. And lots of Tim Cook clones.
I still don’t totally know what’s happening, and I don’t think anyone else in the audience does, but we’re all laughing.
It’s basically a “WWDC Rehearsal” skit, with an SNL/comedy bent.
Hey, it’s Abed!
And there’s a rap / hip-hop song with various apps from the App Store dancing.
“We better be getting free Watches out of it.” And scene….
And enter Tim Cook!
Tim just got his first shout of “I love you!” (I think that’s what he said) from a dude in the audience, over in the developer (not-press) section.
Cook says 80 percent of the people here are for the first time. Also, shout-out to 350 scholarship winners. Welcome, folks.
“For the first time, we’re not only livestreaming the keynote. We’re livestreaming 30 sessions of the conference as well.”
Cook mentions Brandon Moss from the Cleveland Indians hitting his 100th career home run.
Apparently his teammates held his ball for ransom, asking for a list of Apple gadgets in return.
Cook has the ball right here in the audience! And he says he’ll pay the ransom.
Alrighty, down to business. OS X is up first, Cook says. With iOS news coming too, natch.
And a new Watch SDK is coming. Native apps are here!
“Everything’s going great,” Cook says.
Software guy Craig Federighi just took the stage to enormous applause (this is a dev conference, after all). But first, a recap of Yosemite before we get into the new OS X stuff.
The adoption rate for Yosemite is incredible, he says. Over 55% of Mac users is running the latest update. Apparently it’s the fastest adoption rate for any PC OS ever.
“The only real question was what to call it,” he says of the new OS.
The team-building offsite was apparently held in a jacuzzi and at Burning Man (jokes, of course).
OS X El Capitan is the name.
Overview time: Expect improvements to Spotlight and built-in apps (as always, with an OS X update).
First thing we’re seeing are gestures. For instance, swiping individual messages in Mail to archive or delete.
He’s showing off Safari now. He’s using it to pin different sites like Twitter, Pinterest and ESPN.
“Where is this audio coming from?” Craig asks about Rick Astley playing from a tab. You can use a gesture to mute that nonsense.
He’s showing off Spotlight Search now. Testing it with “SF Giants” and it actually shows off the weather as well as the upcoming game.
Can also use this kind of search language in other apps, like Mail. Example: “mail I ignored from Phil.” (Har.)
It also works with documents, like “Documents I worked on last June.”
Craig is making a smooth transition from search language to window management.
He then clicks and holds on the green button to drag and drop the window, and it automatically drops it in next to another open window.
More on split view: Craig is clicking on windows, dragging them to the top of the screen, where there’s a panel of thumbnail-sized windows. You can create a split-screen that way by dropping a window on top of another.
He’s recapping through the different features now, claiming that it has easy access to features, plus split view.
And now, performance improvements.
In particular with performance, Craig wants to tell us about Metal, the iOS graphics engine. What you need to know: The same technology is coming to Mac.
What does this mean for you? This is where demoes of apps like Illustrator come in.
Metal is also fantastic for games, supposedly, with 10x the performance. They brought in Epic Games to show some games to demonstrate the Metal engine.
Seeing a demo of the game “Fortnite.” It involves a lot of in-game building and designing — the sort of thing where smoother graphics would indeed come in handy.
He’s now showing a demo of Fortnite, where the character is chopping down cars and trees. Lots of effects now, with lightning and explosions. All happening with great detail.
Plenty of other developers and game companies are also on board. They include The Foundry, Blizzard, 2K Games and more.
El Capitan is available to developers today.
The update reaches real-world users this fall. So more on that in a few months.
Now on to iOS.
83 percent of active iPhone users are running the latest OS.
“This is a feature that remains unique to iOS.”
Let’s start with Siri. “Siri has quietly become incredibly popular.” Over a billion requests per week. 40 percent reduction in error rate to 5 percent, says Craig.
For iOS 9, Siri has a new UI.
“So Siri is a great assistant, but the best assistant is pro-active.”
For instance, Siri will present the audiobook you’ve been listening to when you get in the car.
Oh, and this is interesting: If there’s an unfamiliar number, the incoming call screen might say something like, “Maybe: John Smith,” suggesting who that strange number might belong to.
Now when you swipe right on the home screen, you’ll see “Siri Suggestions” based on upcoming meetings or your communication patterns.
“We now have an API for search.”
Demo time: A day in the life of iOS 9.
So, Siri starts off by offering a meditation, because Siri knows Craig likes to meditate in the morning.
Then he gets a text message from his boss asking him to remember to pick something up. If Craig says, “Remind me about this later today,” she can make a reminder out of that.
Later in the day, when Craig plugs in headphones, the music app comes up.
As for that reminder Craig asked Siri to set, it’s right there in the Calendar app, where you’d expect it to be.
Siri Suggestions includes, among other things, people you might want to contact. Locations nearby (breakfast places nearby in the morning, for example).
He’s looking up recipes now, and he’s able to do measurement conversion on the fly.
Craig is using Siri again to pull up specific photo sets.
But what about privacy, you might be asking? It’s all on-device.
Next, Apple Pay.
And to give us a demo, VP of the Apple Pay business, Jennifer Bailey.
First, an update: Over 2,500 banks support Apple Pay.
Trader Joe’s, Baskin-Robbins and JC Penney will support Apple Pay this year too, joining an increasingly long list of big-chain retailers.
A little tidbit Jennifer just dropped in: This fall, Square will launch a new reader. Pre-orders starting today. They’ll hit Apple Retail this fall.
As for Apple Pay, Apple says that sometime within the next month it expects to surpass 1 million retail locations that accept it.
Some news: Apple Pay is coming to the UK next month.
They’re also working with Pinterest, which is launching Buyable Pins so you can buy stuff directly from your Pinterest board. Buyable Pins is on iOS only for now. This feature is coming later this month.
Londoners will also be able to use Apple Pay on the transit system.
In iOS 9, you can add store credit cards in addition to bank debit and credit cards.
It’ll support loyalty cards too, which is useful for using rewards cards.
Some other news: Passbook is now named Wallet.
Onto the Notes app in iOS.
Notes now has a toolbar with formatting options.
Also, drawing tools. You can also use your finger to sketch inside the Notes app.
We’re seeing how Notes looks across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. It’s all about the continuity.
Next up: Maps.
Public transit in Apple Maps. Finally.
Tap on a station, see the lines that run through it with departure times.
The map includes details like multiple entrances, accounting for some really massive train stations, like Columbus Circle in New York City.
This transit feature will kick off in the US and China.
That’s it for Maps right now.
A new app for iOS: It’s called News. Does it replace Newstand?
It’s all about “custom layout, rich typography,” says Craig. And it’s interactive. It is indeed Flipboard-esque, as reported by Re/code not long before this keynote began.
Demo time. First, News needs to get a sense of what you like to read.
News creates a personalized feed called “For You.”
We’re seeing a demo that includes both newspapers and magazines. Just to give you a sense of the variety of news outlets you might be sourcing.
You can bookmark stuff to read later. Which is a good feature to have in an app like this, if you ask me.
Big cheers at built-in videos. (I mean, it’s neat.)
For something like ESPN, you might also see infographics.
Continuing our tour of the app, there’s an “Explore” feature to help you discover other news sources, maybe other news topics you hadn’t selected before.
By the way, there’s also a “Favorites” area, which makes sense.
You can just tap to zoom in the photos. It’s meant to be highly interactive and a rich way of reading content.
A note on privacy: What you read is not linked to other Apple services. (Privacy seems to be a recurring theme today. It’s come up a few times now.)
“We’ll be rolling out news starting in the United States, UK and Australia,” Craig says. “We think you’re gonna like it.”
Next, iPad.
Remember that with iOS 8 Apple introduced the suggestion bar in the onscreen keyboard. Now, there are shortcuts in that bar. So with a tap you can cut, copy, etc.
Ooh, watch him turn the onscreen keyboard into a trackpad.
If you ever hook up a physical keyboard, there are shortcuts for searching in spotlight, and app-switching.
But onto what you really wanna know about: multitasking. (He says with an icon on the screen that appears to show a split screen.)
Double-tap the home button to see a new task switcher, with full-screen previews of all the apps.
“Slide Over” is a feature that lets you — you guessed it — slide an app over to the side of the screen.
In “Split View” both windows side by side are active.
If you pin one app to the side, you can keep it there while changing the app on the other side.
So: You can make that split view 50/50, but we’ve also seen demos where one app takes up a narrower pane.
He just showed us how he used the trackpad functionality to edit text far faster than before.
We’re seeing another multitasking demo, this one involving video. Introducing: picture-in-picture mode.
Some color commentary: The developers in attendance here LOVE all this multitasking stuff.
As for developers, they’re getting features like “auto layout” that will hopefully make it easier for them to make their apps ready for “Slide Over.”
It looks like Split View is for the iPad Air 2 only. Sorry, folks, if you happen to have an older model.
Now on to battery life.
iOS 9 will now have a low-power mode that’ll be able to extend battery life for an additional 3 hours.
A note on security: two-factor authentication for iCloud. Also, a change to the architecture behind OS updates. Now you need just 1.3GB for the next software update. Not, like, four gigs.
Filed under: Apple
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