Monday at WWDC: Apple delivers big surprises as most predictions ended up wrong
Apple's 2014 Worldwide Developer Conference started much the same way as previous years' events have, with a long line of attendees wrapped around the block waiting to hear what the company had available to show during its opening Keynote address. There were lots of surprises.
In fact, most of what Apple showed to its developers and the media came as a series of unexpected surprises, while most of the rumored "roundup" of speculation turned out to be wrong, from "Healthbook" screenshots to the rumored "iOS TextEdit and Preview" to the "removal" of Game Center and the addition of a "Control Center for OS X," an iPad "split screen UI" and a secondary iPad display feature.
The rumor mill also offered no inkling of the majority of Apple's big news items, ranging from Apple's entirely new "Swift" programming language to OS X Yosemite's new focus on Spotlight search; a new Widget store for Notification Center; new privacy and performance features in Safari; new Messages features; new Mail markup features; the new iCloud Drive; any hint of the new Handoff, Instant Hotspot, SMS/Phone integration between iOS and OS X that Apple collectively referred to as "Continuity"; the new iCloud Photo Library and revamped Photo apps for iOS and Mac; new Keyboard features and third party flexibility; new Family Sharing; and new enterprise features, including connectivity with third party cloud storage services.
Virtually every significant new iOS and OS X feature that Apple unveiled and subsequently detailed on its website was a real surprise, while nearly every WWDC rumor ended up being wrong or significantly off the mark. Clearly, Apple's "doubling down" on secrecy has paid off.
Apple's secrecy--and the company's productivity over the last year--were warmly received by the throngs of thousands of developers visiting from 69 different countries, who applauded not only throughout the initial Keynote address, but also during the State of the Union, where Apple further unveiled a series of other developments that continue to remain confidential.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to quell developers' WWDC excitement had to be the marginally dismal lunch provided by Moscone Center's caterer. Even so, despite the variety of new food options that have opened in close proximity to the convention venue, attendees filled out the enormous food hall (above), with an apparent majority using the lunch break to also work from their laptops.
After lunch, developers again queued up (above) to attend the State of the Union briefing (below), which continued longer than scheduled. However, nobody seemed to be complaining as Apple's representatives revealed more about the company's Mac and iOS initiatives and technologies.
Instead, there was lots of additional applause in response to a variety of new announcements, including plenty of excited whoops of excitement that came from specific individuals at the revelation of certain features that appeared to address specific issues they had been wrestling with in particular.
After the State of the Union, it appeared that most developers elected to also stay for the Apple Design Awards, where a series of student and professional developers were awarded prizes for exceptional work on creative and technically noteworthy apps and games for both the Mac and iOS platforms.
Today, WWDC will begin the first of the weeks' roughly 100 technical sessions and 120 lab sessions, where the 5,000 attending developers can get face time with the over 1,000 engineers Apple has on hand to help answer questions and solve issues.
In fact, most of what Apple showed to its developers and the media came as a series of unexpected surprises, while most of the rumored "roundup" of speculation turned out to be wrong, from "Healthbook" screenshots to the rumored "iOS TextEdit and Preview" to the "removal" of Game Center and the addition of a "Control Center for OS X," an iPad "split screen UI" and a secondary iPad display feature.
Virtually every significant new iOS and OS X feature that Apple unveiled and subsequently detailed on its website was a real surprise.
The rumor mill also offered no inkling of the majority of Apple's big news items, ranging from Apple's entirely new "Swift" programming language to OS X Yosemite's new focus on Spotlight search; a new Widget store for Notification Center; new privacy and performance features in Safari; new Messages features; new Mail markup features; the new iCloud Drive; any hint of the new Handoff, Instant Hotspot, SMS/Phone integration between iOS and OS X that Apple collectively referred to as "Continuity"; the new iCloud Photo Library and revamped Photo apps for iOS and Mac; new Keyboard features and third party flexibility; new Family Sharing; and new enterprise features, including connectivity with third party cloud storage services.
Virtually every significant new iOS and OS X feature that Apple unveiled and subsequently detailed on its website was a real surprise, while nearly every WWDC rumor ended up being wrong or significantly off the mark. Clearly, Apple's "doubling down" on secrecy has paid off.
Apple's secrecy--and the company's productivity over the last year--were warmly received by the throngs of thousands of developers visiting from 69 different countries, who applauded not only throughout the initial Keynote address, but also during the State of the Union, where Apple further unveiled a series of other developments that continue to remain confidential.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to quell developers' WWDC excitement had to be the marginally dismal lunch provided by Moscone Center's caterer. Even so, despite the variety of new food options that have opened in close proximity to the convention venue, attendees filled out the enormous food hall (above), with an apparent majority using the lunch break to also work from their laptops.
After lunch, developers again queued up (above) to attend the State of the Union briefing (below), which continued longer than scheduled. However, nobody seemed to be complaining as Apple's representatives revealed more about the company's Mac and iOS initiatives and technologies.
Instead, there was lots of additional applause in response to a variety of new announcements, including plenty of excited whoops of excitement that came from specific individuals at the revelation of certain features that appeared to address specific issues they had been wrestling with in particular.
After the State of the Union, it appeared that most developers elected to also stay for the Apple Design Awards, where a series of student and professional developers were awarded prizes for exceptional work on creative and technically noteworthy apps and games for both the Mac and iOS platforms.
Today, WWDC will begin the first of the weeks' roughly 100 technical sessions and 120 lab sessions, where the 5,000 attending developers can get face time with the over 1,000 engineers Apple has on hand to help answer questions and solve issues.
Comments
It was overwhelming!
Best WWDC in 12 years!
Go figure....all the predictions were wrong. Just goes to show most people (analysts) don't now their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to Apple things, what they're doing, and what they should be doing.
It was an amazing keynote! Lots of surprises.
Overall I think this was a great WWDC, awesome setup for the hardware coming this fall! Even more excited about getting an iPhone 6.. much less seeing what other hardware they might have in the pipeline!
Apple gave everyone what they wanted plus some.
We now have quick reply, a file system, better keyboards, safari extensions, and widgets all introduced in one version of iOS.
The continuity stuff in Mac was awesome as well.
As a side note, I can see that Apple has really paved the way for future wearable devices that take advantage of continuity and Apple's other developer features released today.
I predicted Metal 2 days ago: post #68 (almost)
I said they should make low level graphics API to replace OpenGL, but it should cover Mac and iOS - what they delivered only covers iOS.
With Spotlight's web search feature Apple is going to shift hundreds of millions of iOS and Mac customers away from google search.
Genius.
What I'm getting a kick out of though are the butt hurt Apple bloggers annoyed because their leaks/predictions were inaccurate. Mark Gurman actually tweeted that he thinks Apple changes the name and UI for their health app because of the things he leaked. He's just pissed because what he leaked turned out to be wrong. What's sad though is all the attention he's getting as though he's an authority on all things Apple. He was on Twit last night and was decidedly 'meh' on everything Apple announced saying that all it's doing is catching them up to where Android already is. Again he was just butt hurt because he didn't have the inside scoop on a lot of the things Apple did announce yesterday. He had nothing on 3rd party keyboards, inter app communications, opening up Touch ID to 3rd parties, new programming language. He had none of that. And he predicted hardware announcements which we didn't get. And just as I'm typing this I see he's going to be a guest on CNBC this morning. Sigh. :rolleyes:
Another thing I loved about WWDC was the focus on spotlight.
With Spotlight's web search feature Apple is going to shift hundreds of millions of iOS and Mac customers away from google search.
Genius.
That is exactly what I conclude when I saw the demo. Google should be scared, Apple is making it easier for Mac used to avoid going to any thing google, I also suspect when Spotlight goes out and gather that information it presents it is anonymizing it in a way that Google can not gather stats on you. Also I notice spotlight did not show they google results first that were provide direct links to other websites verses google paid search results
I remember when Google announced the completely indulgent Chromebook Pixel laptop. It was a joke. The only reason they released it was to push this meme that they can do cool hardware like Apple. And sure enough the media ran with it. Even some Apple bloggers too started saying it would be easier for Google to get good at what Apple does best than the reverse. What Apple showed yesterday is that they're coming close to feature parity with Android. But at the same time they pushed things that only Apple can provide - like seamless integration and superior app platform. My only concern is how iCloud holds up when iOS 8 and new iPhones are announced. If it all works as announced it will be HUGE. If not, there will be a lot of unhappy customers.
Don't you worry, everything will work well. iCloud congestions from now and then are expected at the beginning, but I'm sure it won't create any major difficulties, as I'm sure about writing my last project on Objective C right now
A huge miss by everyone on the new programming language. A big ha, ha, goes out to every one who said secrecy and surprises are a thing of the past now that Tim Cook is running the ship. No one guessed the details of last years WWDC big surprise, the new Mac Pro.
The editor suggest that it was the media, except Appleinsider, that was wrong with it's predictions. You're just as guilty and it would be good to admit and LEARN from it.
Stop posting rumours. That's not journalism, that just to get readers and advertising money. A good journalist verifies the facts and only publishes when verified and true.
Loved it... seeing many poo poo’ing it on other sites...
Meaningless drivel. The poo-poo-er’s influence no one. We need to begin ignoring them.
iCloud critics should be pretty much silenced now. Sounds like Apple knew all along that they were behind the curve with Dropbox and OneDrive and will be at least on a par with the competition. I know I will most likely move away from Dropbox and OneDrive if iCloud fits the bill.
That's awesome that they were able to keep so many secrets and have an exciting event. I like what I'm seeing in Swift and Family Sharing for sure. Well done, Apple.
The biggest, most welcome news for me was Swift.
I've been an aspiring Mac and iOS developer for too many years, diving into Objective-C, learning a few things, and then hitting a wall of apparently inadequate documentation so that I couldn't go on. Then after a period (sometimes years long), I'd take another stab at it.
XCode has been refined nicely by consolidating various functions, and numerous new tutorials and even Stanford courses have become available, all to encourage me to "give it another try." Every time I've tried again I've learned that much more. But I still keep bumping up against the wall of inadequate presentations of the material. Not that there isn't plenty of documentation, but to me there's a lack of a clearly defined path of learning with a balance of theory and application with a smoothly increasing level of complexity, adding more and more as one gains confidence in applying the fundamentals.
So again this year, after seeing the presentation about Swift, I'm encouraged again to give it yet another try. I downloaded "The Swift Programming Language" which embeds lots of application examples and invites experimentation along the way.
I downloaded the XCode 6 Beta, and it's truly exciting to type code in a "playground" file and see the results immediately on the right. The feel is so much more like a scripting language like Applescript or Javascript.
The book is nice and thick, and I'm resolved more than ever before to stick with this sucker this time and maybe this time I'll come out the other end with at least some rudimentary apps!
I loved it. Honestly, I'd been wanting to start coding, I just hadn't learned Objective C yet. Guess I can skip some lessons.
Overall Apple proved why they're still the top company around. The Droidboys are apoplectic; it's been hilarious to watch. "BUT W3 INVENT3D T3H WIDGETZ! APPLE IS T3H COPIEZ!"