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IOS Apple

WWDC 2015 Roundup 415

Here's an overview of the main announcements and new products unveiled at WWDC today.
  • The latest OS X will be named OS X El Capitan. Features include: Natural language searches and auto-arrange windows. You can make the cursor bigger by shaking the mouse and pin sites in Safari now. 1.4x faster than Yosemite. Available to developers today, public beta in July, out for free in the fall.
  • Metal, the graphics API is coming to Mac. "Metal combines the compute power of OpenCL and the graphics power of OpenGL in a high-performance API that does both." Up to 40% greater rendering efficiency.
  • iOS 9: New Siri UI. There’s an API for search. Siri and Spotlight are getting more integrated. Siri getting better at prediction with a far lower word error rate. You can make checklists, draw and sketch inside of Notes. Maps gets some love. New app called News "We think this offers the best mobile reading experience ever." Like Flipboard it pulls in news articles from your favorite sites. HomeKit now supports window shades, motion sensors, security systems, and remote access via iCloud. Public Beta for iOS 9.
  • Apple Pay: All four major credit card companies and over 1 million locations supporting Apple Pay as of next month. Apple Pay reader developed by Square, for peer-to-peer transactions. Apple Pay coming to the UK next month support in 250,000 locations including the London transportation system. Passbook is being renamed "Wallet."
  • iPad: Shortcuts for app-switching, split-screen multitasking and QuickType. Put two fingers down on the keyboard and it becomes a trackpad. Side by side apps. Picture in picture available on iPad Air and up, Mini 2 and up.
  • CarPlay: Now works wirelessly and supports apps by the automaker.
  • Swift 2,the latest version of Apple’s programing language . Swift will be open source.
  • The App Store: Over 100 billion app downloads, and $30 billion paid to developers.
  • Apple Watch: watchOS 2 with new watch faces. Developers can build their own "complications" (widgets with a terrible name that show updates and gauges on the watch face). A new feature called Time Travel lets you rotate the digital crown to zoom into the future and see what’s coming up. More new features: reply to email, bedside alarm clock, send scribbled messages in multiple colors. You can now play video on the watch. Developer beta of watchOS 2 available today, wide release in the fall for free.
  • Apple Music: “The next chapter in music. It will change the way you experience music forever,” says Cook. Live DJs broadcasting and hosting live radio streams you can listen to in 150 countries. Handpicked suggestions. 24/7 live global radio. Beats Connect lets unsigned artists connect with fans. Beats Music has all of iTunes’ music, to buy or stream. With curated recommendations. Launching June 30th in 100 countries with Android this fall, with Windows and Android versions. First three months free, $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for family plan for up to six.
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WWDC 2015 Roundup

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    "Live DJs broadcasting and hosting live radio streams you can listen to in 150 countries" -- So in other words, Apple re-invented shoutcast?

    • Yeah, but with APPS!

      I have no interest in being connected 24/7, I always own an older model of iPhone (free hand-me-down) which can never run the latest version of iOS, I don't want a smart watch let alone at the price Apple are asking, Metal on OS X is great news but I finally built myself a low-end Windows gaming PC and my music tastes are so far from mainstream that Apple music will probably be 99% useless (I'll check out the three free months to confirm that).

      This is the first time in a decade that I f

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:12PM (#49870293)

        Don't worry, I just wasted time reading your comment, so we're even.

        -- Tim Cook.

    • I really love how we'll be able to turn the dial and see the future. This will be especially powerful when combined with the News app. See what next week's stock market will look like or who will win the next election. Of course, if we know the future it will potentially change the future. This means that the "futures" markets will change depending on the present which depends on the future depending on the present depending on the future which .... Oh, never mind.
      • by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @05:08PM (#49870843)

        I've been beta testing this feature and you are right about it being useful with the News and Stockmarket app. It seems buggy though because I can get it to turn past the 2016 NASA news release about an unseen asteroid suddenly passing by the moon heading for earth. The only apps that continues further into the future is the weather app which reports blackout skies, and 2700K surface temperatures with rains of ash and nitric acid. And The health app shows my pulse rapidly rising then flat lining about that time. Facebook shows I was unfriended by the whole world and all the you tubes are of a fireball in the sky, but nothing past that date.

        The watch actually allows you to travel into the future as well. It's a beta version so the rate of travel is really slow right now, but you can feel youself travel about 1/sec into the future every 1/sec if you watch mickey mouse's hands. If you put it in developer mode there's also a timetravel stop watch. It freezes the whole world except you. I was using it to rob a bank one day and I dropped it. So I traveled back in time to post this on slashdot to warn everyone about this.

      • See what next week's stock market will look like or.

        They actually joked about that in the presentation: "We're having a bit of trouble getting the stock ticker to work..."

    • I thought they made a really compelling argument for Apple Radio. They are pushing on the idea of a distinction between radio and algorithmically-driven playlists. Of the role of a djay in curating music and placing it in a cultural context. On the very notion of pop music not as a pejorative term but as a dimension of our shared experience.

      Ok sure, I'll bite, at least for the trial period. $10/mo sounds expensive, tho.

      • by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:22PM (#49870397) Homepage

        I thought they made a really compelling argument for Apple Radio. They are pushing on the idea of a distinction between radio and algorithmically-driven playlists. Of the role of a djay in curating music and placing it in a cultural context. On the very notion of pop music not as a pejorative term but as a dimension of our shared experience.

        Ok sure, I'll bite, at least for the trial period. $10/mo sounds expensive, tho.

        $10/mo is cheap compared to SiriusXM. SiriusXM is a terrible company, their customer service is awful and their marketing machine makes the people selling fake viagra blush. Advertisements on some channels (Comedy in particular) are some of the sleaziest late-night ads I have ever heard. But I have struggled to find something better. The barrier to entry into online services is a bit high- every online service there is requires some tweaking, customizing, or "learning your tastes" period, whereas I can just turn on Sirius and go to a genre channel and get exactly what the channel says it is.

        • by hondo77 ( 324058 )

          ...whereas I can just turn on Sirius and go to a genre channel and get exactly what the channel says it is.

          Which is its weakness, for me. I don't want to stick to a genre. I'd like things mixed up, genre-wise and era-wise. I suppose I'm in a very small minority that way.

  • Complications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08, 2015 @03:57PM (#49870135)

    If you knew anything about watches, you would know that "complication" is the horological term for an additional feature on a watch.

    • He made a good point. It is still a terrible name. Don't complicate things.
      • The name of the technology makes no difference to how complicated the UIs are.

        "Widgets" is less use as it's not specific to watch face enhancements. "Complications" are.

  • WWDC Means... (Score:5, Informative)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @03:58PM (#49870143) Homepage
    (Apple) Worldwide Developers Conference. I had to look it up for myself, so I thought I would post it.
    • I did not know, and it is interesting how the brain works hard to fill in the blanks - and after reading only the title, there is really no context at all except there is some kind of 2015 event, so the brain does not have much to work with. The first association was "World War something something". The next one was something related to wrestling or martial arts. Then there is World Wildlife something. All options are immediately discarded because this is Slashdot. Then you start skimming the article and re

    • Funny...I thought it was a rock station in Washington, DC. [dc101.com]

  • "Complication" (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08, 2015 @03:58PM (#49870147)

    The phrase "complication" is borrowed from watch horology, meaning some function that's unrelated to the basic three functions of the watch, telling the hour, minute, and second. So things like stopwatches, day/date/month displays, moon phase displays, mainspring reserve power, spelling out the time with a series of chimes, that kind of thing. For a mechanical watch, you're cramming in more and more functions into an increasingly small case, so more is more difficult and considered by some to be more admirable.

    If you want to see the ultimate example of pre-computer watch design, the Graves Supercomplication is worth reading up on, with 22 functions on both the front and back of the watch.

  • Latest OS X: Expected, while interesting features nothing huge.
    Metal: New Graphic engine... Again! means developers will need to rewrite their apps so they look right with the OS.
    iOS 9: Kinda neat. When I get it I will update and play with it.
    Apple Pay: Nothing new to me.
    iPAD: Sounds like stuff android had for a while.
    Car Play: So I have to buy a new car to get this? Sorry I like a car that is good on fuel, dependable, and affordable, if it comes with Car Play great if not no big deal.
    Swift 2: Get me a vers

    • Refinements. Not every version, every year can be stunning. After all a lot of what can be done with current mobile technology has already been done.

      What will revive mobile devices is external enhancements like the watch, glasses... Not to suggest that the watch is revolutionary (although some believe so).

      • by lokedhs ( 672255 )
        I agree, but which was the last version of OSX that was stunning?
        • It's a good point. Maybe the changes are too incremental so nothing appears stunning. LOL!!

          Lets be honest. Other than new H/W support and GUI improvements what really changed in client OS tech in the last 10 years? I'd say very little.

      • by Noah Haders ( 3621429 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @05:45PM (#49871171)

        here's a refinement: they finally fixed the shift key in ios9. by default, all the keyboard letters are lower case. when the shift key is engaged, all the keyboard letters are upper case. makes sense! this was sorely needed.

        My fear is that they keep adding complexity of different offscreen features and gestures. A big point for ios was that it didn't come with a user's manual because it was so simple and intuitive you didn't need one, but I feel like we're a stone's throw away from the dummy's guide for ios.

    • by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:19PM (#49870361)

      Swift 2: Get me a version where I can make apps in Windows or Linux too... Otherwise OK that is fine, but staying to one

      Swift 2 CAN make apps for Linux. Apple's releasing the compiler and the standard libraries for Linux.

      And as its open source, someone can do the same for Windows. Given Microsoft's recent moves I wouldn't be surprised it Microsoft themselves port it.

      This is the big news for Slashdotters from this years WWDC.

      • And if someone can port Swift to Android, we'll finally have peace on Earth and the IPU will win the holy war against the infidels of the FSM.

        • Of course for app portability you'd need to write the equivalent of Cocoa Touch for Android. And the equivalent of all the other frameworks too.

    • by Altus ( 1034 )

      Your comment on metal is total bs. Regular apps benefit because the underlying libraries (cores rapids and core animation) have been re written to use metal for better performance. Want to use it for your graphics or rendering engine? Then you will need to write code but your app will look just as native as always either way.

    • by Karlt1 ( 231423 )

      Metal: Not a new Graphics Engine. It's been on iOS for two years.

      iPad:"Android" hasn't had split screen. "for a while" Samsung has had split screen for a while but with little third party support. The iPad split screen implementation should work for all apps that were updated to support iOS 8's screen size classes.

      CarPlay: You have to buy a new radio if you don't already have a car that supports it. It's been out for a year.

      "Being that this cost more than Netflix or Hulu and you get less data traffic, it

    • by suutar ( 1860506 )

      there's aftermarket carplay head units. Crutchfield has a few, starting with this Pioneer [crutchfield.com] for 500. I've been considering getting one for my old Civic (or whatever replaces it, if it continues to act like it wants to be retired).

  • by HannethCom ( 585323 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:03PM (#49870191)
    Mavericks and Yosemite introduced a number of really bad bugs and annoyances. Has this fixed some of them?
    -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?
    -Does the filesystem update when things like screenshots are taken with out having to force a reload of the filesystem cache?
    -Can you lock the dock to a certain position on one screen?
    -Can we have it so the HDMI Port stops cutting out?
    -Can the screen properly update without black boxes sometimes covering content / UI elements?
    -Can we have an OS that doesn't feel like it is from the early 90s?
    -Can we have more graphical setup options instead of having to do things through the command prompt?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      -Can we have an OS that doesn't feel like it is from the early 90s?

      You can blame the "journalists" for that one.

      Basically the big reason why iOS made the change to flatness and why flatness is the new hotness is because some very big loudmouths started saying they hated the way everything looked the same as it did before.

      I believe the term bandied about was "stale". As in "iOS6 - the same old iOS that looks the same as it did since 2007. Stale, compared to the flashy updates to the UI Android makes, or the

      • by Kenshin ( 43036 )

        Personally, I was thrilled to get rid of the glossy bullshit.

        A "lickable" OS was great to differentiate OS X and show off new technologies, but after a while it just looked tacky.

    • -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?
      -Can the screen properly update without black boxes sometimes covering content / UI elements?

      So it's not just me then. Core 2 Duo with nVidia 320m, 8GB RAM and 5400RPM HDD here, what about you?

      • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

        The file dialog needs some love, or a setting that says "do not poll all disks" - I have an SSD as the boot drive, but I do have connected external and internal storage on spinning drives that is accessed infrequently.

        It's a pain in the ass when you open a file dialog box and the system pauses to wait for all the drives to spin up. I would prefer it to only spin the drive up if I click on a folder or volume that is on that drive.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

      I've experienced literally none of those things on any of the Macs or iOS devices that I come in contact with daily. Are you certain that those aren't particular to your own system?

      Not implying that those are bug-free OSes, I say typing on "ComputerName (23)".

      • I've experienced literally none of those things on any of the Macs or iOS devices that I come in contact with daily. Are you certain that those aren't particular to your own system?

        I've run across most of those issues at one time or another on Mavericks, on both my work macair and my wife's powerbook (the display port drop-outs are particularly annoying). It isn't helpful to simply dismiss issues people raise ... frankly, it makes you sound like a systemd developer. Better for all of us if these issues ar

        • It isn't helpful to simply dismiss issues people raise

          Agreed, and I'd never do that. I asked it OP was sure that they weren't hardware problems on his own computer and not something more widespread. I did that because I haven't seen any of those problems myself and hadn't heard of them before now.

          Better for all of us if these issues are raised and fixed

          Also agreed. I've filed plenty of bugs to Apple's tracker over the years so that they know someone's affected by them.

    • by sribe ( 304414 )

      -Can you access the file dialog with out waiting forever with just the spinning disk showing?

      Sure, that's easy. Never use a network share. Not ever.

  • Nothing happened at WWDC today.

    No, even less than that.

  • Can someone translate "1.4x faster?" Is that 240% the speed of Yosemite, or is that 140% the speed of Yosemite?
    • It translates to "it will look faster than Yosemite, but only after a fresh install. After you installed your beloved programs, it will be slower".
      Fun fact : If you multiply all the supposedly "X times faster" since 1984 and take into account the faster CPUs, you'd probably have startup times of a few nanoseconds.

    • Depends, what's the speed of Yosemite relative to Snow Leopard?

    • Faster boot up? Faster application launches? Faster searching? What, exactly, is faster?
    • Apple sheep here(I own 3 daring fireball shirts, so I think that should establish my sheep cred here).

      It's marketing pablum. It's not slower, and really, that's more than what I can say for other OS upgrades.

  • Looks like paid radio services will have some tough time ahead. Specially for families, the Apple Music will be actually cheaper than Pandora premium. Also, with complete iTune catalog on it, it will be have vastly more content than competitors. And now it works across range of devices, so yet another benefit of using Pandora like services is going away. Not sure what is happening, but this is very very frightening with Apple holding all your eggs.

  • by Cutting_Crew ( 708624 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:19PM (#49870363)
    The apple developer program is now all in one instead of paying a separate license or Mac OSX, iOS and Safari. This is good news and makes sense. It was kinda pointless to have a separate license for all these common features between devices/hardware.
    • by santiago ( 42242 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @05:52PM (#49871253)

      Additionally, you no longer need to be in the developer program to build and run code on an iOS device. The $99 / year membership is now only needed for selling things in the App Store. Anyone with an Apple account can download the Xcode 7 Beta and deploy a compiled app to their own physical iOS device.

  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:20PM (#49870377)

    Far be it from me to throw cold water on an idea, but I do have an observation. One of the byproducts of the mobile/social/web 3.0/content dotcom boom is the sheer number of different content providers that offer a library of movies, music and TV shows. Amazon offers Prime Instant Video plus for-purchase titles, Google has the Play Store, Netflix offers streaming, Hulu offers streaming, Spotify offers streaming, Microsoft is offering content, and now Apple offers a mix of both like Amazon does. (Fun fact, you pay a couple more dollars in Apple tax for the same content if you use iTunes rather than Amazon to buy some movies.)

    The question is -- when will the Great Consolidation happen? Now that everyone is opting to license their content rather than pay for physical media, will there come a day when all the competing App Stores, Music Stores and Movie Streaming Services start merging, and what will happen to the content when that happens? It just seems to me that having Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Apple, and all the TV providers maintaining their own separate content libraries can't be sustainable. Nor will people want to purchase subscriptions from all of them, or the Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Google TV, etc etc etc

    • by Mantrid42 ( 972953 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:52PM (#49870681)
      Yes, maybe we could consolidate them all into some sort of bundle. Perhaps with differently priced tiers; cheaper tiers get access to less content than more expensive tiers. Why, with this model, you could even have some less popular services subsidized by the purchase of more popular services.


      Thank God we've finally cut the cord!
      • by yeshuawatso ( 1774190 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @07:01PM (#49871693) Journal

        This made my day. What's funny is the lack of understanding that these companies and many stores offer more competition to consumers than ever before, and the average price is still ridiculously low. Even if you were to subscribe to every service and buy digital content from each company on a frequent basis, it would still be cheaper than shelling out $150-200/month for the same/similar level of content from cable providers. Hollywood is the only loser in this game as they're watching their home entertainment profits erode from foreign competition, indie stuff, and these companies just growing a pair and coming up with their own stuff.

    • I've wondered the same thing.

      I'm getting tired of content provider A providing X, and Y but not Z; content provider B providing X and Z but not Y.

      The greed of licensing makes it frustrating for consumers.

      Consolidation? Probably never. The pie is too big. i.e. Think Cable, Streaming, Physical order multiplied by Music, Radio, DVD, BluRay.

  • The names comes from horology. Complications are the fancy stuff you get on watches... chronometer, date, moon phase. The more there are the more expensive the watch, but for real watches it actually involves top-notch engineering, not flashing a chip.
  • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Monday June 08, 2015 @04:34PM (#49870525)

    Anybody else think that Apple should ditch Metal in favour of Vulkan? If they want the latest games ported to Mac then they should use an open API that is used on other platforms.

    But I am starting to think that maybe ports is not Apple's game... Maybe they want there to be almost only Apple-specific titles on Mac so that people wouldn't compare performance on Mac to that on PC or consoles. Now that they are known mostly for laptops and their desktop machines are also having laptop-grade internals then they are not going to be able to compete on graphics performance anyway.

    • Anyone who's really serious about gaming that has a Mac is probably going to run Windows. Even though Mac support is probably the best it's ever been, there are a still a lot of games that don't support Mac at all or are sub-standard ports.
    • Is Vulkan ready yet?

      Because Metal has been shipping since iOS 8 and usable now.

      Microsoft has their own API but you're not crying foul about DirectX

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