Know everything about Apple’s Keynote announcement at the 2019 WWDC
The opening of its 2019 annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was held by Apple in San Jose, California on Monday. In their two and a half hour keynote, the company showed off everything that they have been working on in the past few months.
Have you missed watching it? Don’t worry. We have everything wrapped up in this blog for you. Here you can know everything that the iPhone makers have announced at the keynote point by point.
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is a conference held by Apple every year in San Jose. Through the event, the iPhone maker company showcases its new software and technologies for the software developers. The people who attend this conference can participate in hands-on labs with Apple engineers. They even get a chance to attend in-depth sessions covering a variety of topics.
The Worldwide Developers Conference first began in Santa Clara in 1987. After 15 long years, the conference was moved to San Jose. Later, the conference moved to San Francisco where the event began Apple’s main media event of the year. The conference returned to San Jose 13 years later. The WWDC is every developer’s pilgrimage who wishes to enhance the skills and know the advancements in technology.
WWDC can be seen in 4 parts- one is the promotional event, one is the trade show, however, the remaining two parts are dedicated to developer training. WWDC is Apple’s favored backdrop and an event where they reveal their plans for their product ecosystems for the coming months.
The focus of the keynote is developers. However, the Worldwide Developers Conference has traditionally offered a mix of hardware and software announcements. Here are the announcements that the iPhone makers made this year:
Console controllers for AppleTV:
There is great news for the people who always wanted to play on the AppleTV screen. The announcement says that the AppleTV will be soon compatible with Xbox One and Playstation Dualshock controllers. So, they can now be used alongside Apple’s upcoming subscription gaming service which is called as Apple Arcade.
Multi-user support for AppleTV:
You might not have a liking for the things that others in your home are watching. However, when you get recommendations based on their choice of watchlist, it frustrating. So, if the same is the situation with you, don’t worry. AppleTV will allow you to have different profiles for each member of your family. And when you switch between those profiles, you will only get the recommendations based on your watchlist!
Apple Watch Updates:
The Apple watches also have a few advanced features coming up to make them smarter. The WatchOS is getting a group of enhancements. These advancements are meant to make the Apple Watch more useful even without having to pull your iPhone.
Independent apps can run directly on the watch without any need for a companion iPhone app
The watch will now have a built-in App Store interfaces for purchasing/installing Watch apps directly through the Watch itself.
There will be a dedicated voice memo, audiobook, and calculator apps. The audio streaming API’s will now allow the streaming of sports and other content.
Introduction of a “Noise” feature which will detect the decibel level of your surrounding area. It will also issue a warning when the nearby noise levels might be high enough to damage your hearing. The noise app will not record or save any audio.
The company introduced a cycle tracking app for helping women to keep track of their menstrual cycle. The app can also be found on Apple’s Health app on iOS.
iOS 13:
iOS, like every year, is getting a big upgrade. The developer beta build went live on Monday itself whereas the public beta build will ship in July. It is said to be made available to everyone in Fall.
Advantages:
The installations of apps are now 50% smaller and the updates will be 60% smaller. The apps will be launched at double speed.
Apple has built a sign-in solution that will let you log into a service using the Apple account with your Face ID rather than passwords and you will not have to share your email with anyone.
Memojis are getting many new customization options including makeup, piercings, different teeth, new hats, and, yes, AirPods. Apple is going to offer Memojis in the chats also.
You can now have a phone app that automatically sends the unknown callers to your voicemail and another app which can detect your location just once. The map database of Apple is being rebuilt looking at the current traffic scenario which will compete with Google’s StreetView.
AirPod/HomePod/CarPlay Updates:
AirPods can now read incoming messages to you and the audio sharing allows you to take the audio from whatever the person is listening to and send it to multiple sets of AirPods. Along with the HomePods, the CarPlay is also getting a new interface and Siri will work with the third-party apps including Pandora and Waze.
iPadOS:
The standalone fork off of iOS which powers the iPad is now known as iPadOS. The new updates will make faster switching between the apps. The files app is getting better browsing modes. Apple Pencil latency has been cut down from 20 ms and 9 ms. A new compact model has been introduced that allows you to drag a tiny keyboard to the side of the screen for easier one-thumb typing. New three finger gestures are also introduced to pull-in and drop-in.
New Mac Pro:
It is expected to support for up to 28-core Intel Xeon processor. It has up to 1.5 terabytes of system memory. The Mac Pro is said to have 8 internal ports consisting of four double-wides, 3 single-wides, one half-length slot for an IO board which has two USB-3 ports and two Thunderbolt 3 ports), and 1.4 kW power supply. This new base model which will be shipped in fall will be an 8-core Xeon with 32GB of memory and a 256GB SSD and will start at $5999.
MacOS Catalina:
As it was being said iTunes is no more alive. Its functionality is being divided into three new apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV. in order to sync your iPhone, you’ll now find the option quietly hanging out in Finder.
The previous “Find My Phone” and “Find My Friends” are being combined into one “Find My” app. The app will now also exist as a macOS app. So, even if a device is offline, it can be searched for using a Bluetooth mesh network made up of all other iOS/Mac devices. The Macs are getting activation lock which allows one to send a signal to effectively brick the device if it is stolen or lost. Project Catalyst allows the app developers more quickly retune their iPad apps for macOS. It can be done using the iOS app’s existing codebase as the foundation.
New stuff just for developers:
Apple has also announced some new stuff for the developers in the audience.
- ARKit 3, a new version of Apple’s augmented reality framework with support for motion capture and people occlusion which allows AR objects to render in front of/behind people in view.
- SwiftUI, a new framework for building interfaces for Swift apps. The interface will automatically support features like screen rotation and the newly introduced dark mode.
We hope that this information will be useful for all iOS developers and will help you to update yourself with the new technologies coming up. We will keep you updated with related information in the coming future.