This week Apple held their annual WorldWide Developers Conference where they often unveil new versions of their software or, sometimes, new versions of their hardware. This year they focused primarily on the software with changes to OS X, iOS, and Apple Watch. Honestly, there wasn’t much that aroused my inner geek, in fact I probably have more to criticize than to condone.
I might as well talk about the one thing that had me a little excited and that was Apple talking about the next iteration of their new programming language, Swift 2. As I mentioned in a previous post, I enjoyed the proverbial “getting started” tutorials from a few months ago. I’m really looking forward not only to what Swift 2 will offer but I’m especially curious about what the open source community will do with it as well.
“El Capitan” is probably the worst name for a product since “Microsoft Edge”! Sure, I get why they chose that name, because its some rock edifice in Yosemite (that’s a better origin story than Microsoft Edge … which I don’t even think has an origin story) but its a terrible name for software. It doesn’t sound like a piece of software, it sounds like a mixed drink or amateur Mexican porn. I was listening to the CNET TV crew while the keynote was going on and someone said “Big Sur” was their choice for the name; I think that would have been a great name. I’m glad I won’t have to pay for the upgrade. (Side-note: The CNET TV crew were a lot of fun to listen to; I may have to start listening to their broadcasts each week).
We were all expecting iOS 9, though I don’t think we were expecting to discover its only 1.3 gig (while iOS 8 was over 3 gig). It will have all the expected updates (no UI redesign this time) and some interesting changes to make Siri more intelligent (obviously to compete with Cortana). Apple is finally giving us the ability to multitask with apps on some devices, which is functionality Samsung and Microsoft were already providing (now who is playing catch-up). It’s also going to work on far more devices than I was expecting and some are saying it will actually improve performance on iPhone 4 devices – that’s a rather bold claim.
There was nothing terribly noteworthy about the Apple Watch. The typical bug fixes and giving the OS a proper name (watchOS … I know, clever, right). I had unrealistic hopes that there would be a price drop as I can definitely see myself using an Apple Watch, but there is no way I can justify the cost of getting one.
The proverbial “One More Thing” moment wasn’t too surprising as its been talked about for maybe a week now and that was Apple Music, their new music streaming service. This is Apple’s product to compete with Pandora and Spotfy; the first three months are free then its “just $9.99 a month” after that. Did Apple really need to blatantly create a competing product. I kind of thought iTunes Radio was good enough. This smells awfully similar to something out of Microsoft’s playbook.
So what didn’t they talk about that I think everyone was hoping for? A new Apple TV unit was probably at the top of the list. All this new technology in mobile devices has to have generated some innovative advances for Apple TV. I know a few folks were probably hoping for iPhone 6s or iPhone 7, perhaps a new iPad version (which is often accompanied by a new version of iOS). I think we are going to have to wait until the fall to hear about these devices, usually that is when Apple likes to unveil new hardware (just in time for the Christmas season).
/cheers