Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off its 2014 edition today in San Francisco. In a two-hour keynote, the company detailed what's coming to its mobile and desktop software in the next 12 months. After last year's overhaul of iOS in the look-and-feel department, Apple announced a new architecture for monitoring your health and another for controlling your home. Some welcome features are coming to iOS in photo handling as well. On the desktop, its OS X is getting its 10th revision, which apparently will be called Yosemite and brings the desktop closer than ever to Apple's mobile devices.
Below is a blog from of the keynote, covering the important announcements. Forbes will bring you all the details throughout the day, along with extensive analysis of the new OSes and how they might change things going forward.
10:00 am: Apple opens with a video in which people are talking about the apps that they love. Daniel Libeskind, the architect who did the original design for the Freedom Tower (since heavily altered), raved about Paper. A baseball coach raved about using his iPad to help his players analyze and improve their swing. Patrick Kane, a student with a robotic prosthetic hand controlled by an app, called himself "a big fan of being different."
The segment is really a salute to developers who make the apps and when it ends, Tim Cook takes the stage to applause.
Cook gives an important teaser that OS X and iOS will work better together.
10:08 am: There are 80 million Macs out there, Cook says. With PCs down 5%, Macs grew 12%. He says 40 million copies of last year's OS X, Mavericks, have already been installed. Cook says no PC operating system has ever crossed the 50% adoption threshold so quickly. Windows 8 is at 14%, despite shipping a year earlier than Mavericks. Of course, there are more than 10 times as many Windows machines out there.
10:12 am: Craig Federighi, who was the on-stage star last year, is on stage to talk up OS X. He's joking about the shift from cat names last year to place names. Suggesting Apple considered calling this year's release OS X Oxnard, Rancho Cucamonga and Weed (all cities in California). Indeed, Apple is calling it OS X Yosemite.
The visuals of OS X are changing from what Apple has called "Aqua" -- and has defined the OS for years -- to something that looks a lot like iOS 7 if it was transported to a computer screen. Lots of transparency/translucency, similar typography, etc.
10:15 am: "Check out that trash can," he says showing off the new dock at the bottom of the screen. The new OS looks a lot like the old OS, yet also like iOS. Unlike the mobile version, though, it appears Apple isn't insisting you guess that words floating on the screen are buttons, but rather continuing to define them with outlines.
10:20 am: Federighi is showing off the new versions of Notifications, Calendar, Messages, etc. None of these are breathtaking, but they certainly fulfill Cook's promise of integrating the mobile and desktop OSes in one key sense: It looks a lot like iOS 7. Moving between a Mac and iPhone isn't typically very challenging for people that do it regularly, but the increasing visual similarity between the two should make it simpler still. And for iPhone/iPad users that aren't on Mac but need a computer, perhaps this small change will make it easier to switch to one.
10:25 am: Uh oh Dropbox! Apple has finally caved in and decided to let people store arbitrary files in iCloud. Instead of requiring apps to directly store documents in the cloud (as Apple's Pages does, for example), iCloud Drive acts like a Dropbox folder, and its accessible on iOS, Windows and any Mac. No pricing yet for additional storage, but don't be surprised if things are changing.
Apple is also letting people send encrypted e-mail attachments that bypass mail servers and go straight to recipients.
10:28 am: Federighi is showing off Safari and talking about how much better it's going to be as suggesting the right sites or bringing you to your favorites. I've tried to convert several times, only to return to Chrome every time because of its near-magical ability to complete URLs instantly. We'll see how this works.
A demo of Safari shows a new way of seeing all your open tabs at once and a simple function that lets you share anything in the browser window. It's also possible to draw on top of a photo you're sharing to annotate it.
10:35 am: AirDrop finally works between iOS and Mac, furthering the seamless theme. There's a new feature Apple is calling Continuity that's straight out of Star Trek. You are composing an e-mail on your iPhone, walk up to your Mac, and you can start typing and editing the same e-mail right there. This works in the opposite direction, too, allowing you to take work as you go.
In addition, your Mac will now automatically detect your iPhone and give it WiFi when it's nearby.
10:38 am: Apple has figured out how to make the Mac double for your iPhone. It will let you answer calls originally targeted at your iPhone right from your computer. You can use your Mac as a speakerphone, including dialing phone numbers direct from a web page.
Federighi demos some of this, including moving a web page directly between iOS and the Mac and then calls up a new Apple employee, Dr. Dre, who came on board with the Beats acquisition. Dre gets huge applause and makes a joke about when he should show up at work. NA
10:44 am: Cook is back touting 800 million+ iOS devices. 100 million iPod Touch, 200 million iPad, 500 million iPhones. He says 130 million new iOS customers in the past year bought their first Apple device. Many were switchers from Android, Cook says. "They bought an Android phone... by mistake," he joked.
97% customer satisfaction with iOS 7 and 89% adoption of it. Cook shows a chart where only 9% of Android users are on latest KitKat. He says more than 1/3 are running an Android version from 4 years ago. Cook says Android "dominates the mobile malware market".
10:48 am: He announces iOS 8, "a giant release". Two stories he says: User features and developer features (the latter may seem arcane, but it's likely going to be important to users... we'll see soon enough).
Federighi is back. He's showing how Notifications can be interactive. Respond to a message, accept a calendar invite, etc. without leaving the app. He moves to demo mode quickly, suggesting the updates will be shown in small batches. Federighi shows that the interactive Notifications are not limited to Apple's apps. He "Likes" something on Facebook from the Notification itself.
10:54 am: Federighi shows off Spotlight on iOS, and it again appears to be a shot at
10:56 am: Apple (at last) is doing something about the keyboard! You'll get predictive suggestions as you type and you can single click on the word. But unlike similar functions on Android, it's not only based on the characters you're typing. If you type "the meeting was..." the suggestions might be "canceled" and "rescheduled" even before you've hit any characters at all.
Like the Mac, the iPad can now double as a phone.
10:59 am: Group messaging has some upgrades, letting you mute a noisy conversation or just remove yourself from it. Similarly, you can give the conversation a name, see all the photos shared during a conversation, etc.
11:02 am: You can now share your location with people on an ongoing basis: for an hour, for the day, indefinitely. How this will work to remind you this is on isn't clear, but it can be powerful when you want to be find, either by colleagues at an event, or friends / family during a day out.
Messaging now allows you to insert an audio clip, along with bits of video. Those audio clips can be played back simply by raising the phone to your ear and can be sent simply by lowering it.
11:05 am: Federighi is back talking iCloud Drive, the Dropbox competitor. He's talking up the seamless syncing of documents, but still no details on cost of storage. He's also touting some enterprise functionality that allows devices to auto-configure for your company's apps, security, etc. one you remove you from the box; basically all the stuff comes from the cloud. He says Box, Microsoft's OneDrive, etc. can be directly integrated into apps if a company doesn't use iCloud Drive.
11:08 am: The discussion moves on to health. The new HealthKit functionality and Health app will coordinate all your healthcare data in one place.
Federighi gives an example of a blood pressure monitoring function in an app from the Mayo Clinic where if you spiked a reading outside the norm, your doctor would know in real time and be able to contact you and let you know if immediate attention was required.
11:12 am: Next up is automatic sharing for families of photos, calendars. He says families will now be allowed to access one another's music, movies, apps across 6 family members, so long as they share the same credit card. There is real-time parental control to stop your kids from spending money on the App Store without authorization.
11:14 am: This is breakneck, but Apple moves on to photos. Apple is (finally!) fixing photos. Instead of the inscrutable Photo Stream that exists, all your photos will be available on all your devices. There's a new photo search that lets you locate images by time, date, etc. This was a disaster in iOS as the small amount of photos that automatically synced and the assumption that people would back everything up to a computer led to confusion all around.
Critics (myself included) have been on Apple to fix this and it appears they have, suggesting the cloud is now going to keep all your photos -- beyond what might even fit on your iPhone. New editing tools should make the quality of those photos better too. Federighi showed off some basic capabilities right on the iPhone and iPad that look easy to use but will require much more scrutiny.
11:18 am: Federighi says the Mac's photo manipulation won't be overhauled until early 2015, but he did provide a brief demo. Apple's iPhoto on the Mac has been long in the tooth for a while now, so this is welcome -- even if it's going to take till next year to get it.
11:20 am: The pricing for iCloud storage at last: 20GB for $0.99 per month, 200GB for $3.99 per month. Calls for free photo storage go unheeded, but the pricing should satisfy a lot of people. Apple appears likely to get a lot of people spending the $48 annually for 200GB. While the company hasn't historically been focused on making money from services, that feels like a billion-dollar opportunity in the making.
11:22 am: Cook is back touting 1.2 million apps, 300 million App Store visitors weekly and 75 billion app downloads. Apple is overhauling the App Store to help users find apps more easily. From "related searches" to "trending" apps and a curated "Editor's Choice", there'll be much more guidance. Users will be able to buy bundles of apps from a single developer with one click.
Apps can now include short video previews. Developers can offer up beta versions of apps through something called TestFlight. That got a lot of cheers.
11:27 am: Federighi back talking up Extensibility. This is critical. Apps can offer functionality to other apps (Android allows this). Apple has been worried about security and has moved slowly here. You can (finally!) share to Pinterest directly from Safari. He also gives an example of Bing translation inside Safari.
Showing it off, Federighi demos third party photo filters inside of Apple's app, complete with a user interface. This is profound for two reasons (1) it extends functionality (2) it makes the app itself disappear inside another. You still have to get the app, but once you have it, you may never need to open it.
It's possible to build widgets that go inside Notification Center. ESPN can create a score module that you can see, for example. eBay can show you the auctions you're bidding on and even let you bid directly from the widget if someone is bidding more. This is Apple catching up in many ways, but without losing the essential simplicity of the iOS design.
11:32 am: Wow. Apple is allowing third-party keyboards. Swype, Swiftkey and other Android favorites will doubtless be available from day one.
11:33 am: 83% of iPhone 5s users use passcodes now, thanks to TouchID. Third parties will get access in iOS. Your fingerprint data stays on your iPhone, but it can unlock a password in apps -- at last!. (This is the "finally" release of all "finally" releases of iOS).
11:35 am: Federighi now announces the rumored home automation platform, which Apple calls HomeKit. This will support lights, thermostats, cameras, etc. The Apple functionality will handle "scene management" so you can say "get ready for bed" and that will lock doors, shut off lights, etc. This will rely on third parties, but has a lot of potential.
11:38 am: Apple is trying to make life easier for developers with CloudKit, which helps them access all the iCloud functionality inside their apps. It's giving away a lot of it, too.
He's touting some tweaks to gaming performance that Federighi claims can improve graphics performance up to tenfold. There's a lot of arcana here, but the demos look impressive. Again, this will rely on third parties to turn into reality but the new functionality, called Metal, is a stake in the ground.
11:43 am: Federighi announces a new programming language called Swift. "It totally rules." It's built to allow simpler development on top of the Objective-C developers are already using to build for iOS. He notes the bewilderment likely of the audience at home, but developers seemed at least somewhat excited.
11:53 am: iOS support extends back to iPhone 4s and iPad 2 (and obviously forward). Cook is back to wrap the discussion with a summary. "Our operating system devices and services all work together in harmony." Talks up a "seamless experience for users that is unparalleled in the industry. This is something only Apple can do."
Cook asks all the Apple employees in the audience who helped make WWDC possible to stand up for acknowledgement from the crowd.
11:56 am: That's a wrap. The miss list: Nothing on AppleTV's rumored App Store. Nothing on mobile payments. Nothing on multitasking on the iPad. Despite the new family sharing, individual iOS devices still have no apparent way of being used by multiple people with different set ups. On the Mac, this is easy; on some Android devices it also is.
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Video: Are Apple's newest features copycat catch-ups?
