It feels like forever since we’ve done one of these, doesn’t it? It’s actually only been seven months. But still! That’s a really long gap between Apple events. Our live blogging coverage of the opening keynote for WWDC 2013 started at 10am and continues below.
You’ll also be able to follow along with a live stream on Apple’s home page, assuming you’ve got an iDevice handy: “Viewing requires Safari on iOS 4.2 or later on any iPhone, iPad, iPad mini or iPod touch; Safari 4 or later on Mac OS X v10.6 or later. Streaming via Apple TV requires second or third generation Apple TV with software 5.0.2 or later,” Apple said.
Here’s what Apple has announced so far:
- With next-gen Intel chip, new Apple MacBook Air provides all day battery life
- Soon you’ll be able to read iBooks on your Mac
- Apple shows off major design overhaul for iOS 7
- Apple launches iTunes Radio streaming music service to compete with Pandora
And that’ll be it for us too. Thanks so much for following along with us! There’s a lot of new stuff to chew on, so we’ll be bringing you further analysis throughout the day on GigaOM. Be sure to check back!
Cook is back to sign off. And that’s it for WWDC keynote 2013.
He’s closing with Apple’s vision: “make amazing products customers love that enrich people’s lives” and yet another video…a new ad.
Cook is back. Looks like we’re wrapping up. He’s going back over what we’ve seen here today.
The devs here will get to play with the iOS 7 beta (for iPhone only for now) today. The rest of us will get the final version this fall, likely when they’re ready to announce new devices too.
New feature alert: Activation lock. If your phone is stolen, with activation lock if a thief tries to turn off Find My iPhone or wipe the device they won’t be able to reactivate it. (So the DA of SF and AG of NY are kind of getting what they’ve been asking for.)
And that’s it for iTunes Radio. Eddy’s gone and Craig Federighi is back. FaceTime calls will now have high quality audio. Notifications will sync across devices. Weibo is integrated into iOS for Chinese users.
iTunes Radio is built into iOS 7, will work on all iOS devices. It’s also built into iTunes on Mac, PC and it’s also built into Apple TV. It’s free, with ads, but if you have iTunes Match, you get to skip the ads. It’s US only for now, no details on other countries yet.
There are hundreds of preprogrammed stations. But you can search for artists, and create a station around that one. He hasn’t gotten to it yet but there’a a purchase button in the upper right hand corner, which very likely takes you right to iTunes to buy it. We’ll see.
There are featured stations based on songs trending on Twitter. You click on a station and the music starts playing right away. If you like that station, you can save it, share with a friend or create a new station based on that artist or song. You can also skip ahead on that station.
Now we’re talking Music. The new music discovery service is going to be called iTunes Radio.
And Sen. John McCain is getting what he wanted: automatic app updates!
You can search for most popular apps in App Store based on your location; the idea being that other people are using lcoation specific stuf you might want to use too.
Now we’re talking Cars: you can get iOS interface on your car’s dashboard. You can use voice control to play music, get directions, get your iMessages read to you and you can dictate. Again, this is all through your car. Nearly a dozen car makers rae on board, but it went by too fast to see which.
Wikipedia and Bing web search results now included in Siri. Note: no Google.
Eddy Cue now takes the stage to talk Internet Services. First up: Siri. There’s a new interface. When you talk there’s a soundwave, cleaner results. Siri is also no longer just a lady: there are male and female voices you can pick. French and German voices are included too. You can also ask Siri to turn up your brightness (finally) and turn on Bluetooth.
Video can also be shared via iCloud PhotoStream too.
You can invite people to share into your own Photostreams now. A tad more social than how Shared PhotoStreams used to be.
You can pinch out to see photos organized by month or by year. It’ll also surface the most “interesting places” you tagged photos during the year. You can also tap and scrub to find the photo you’re looking for even through the year view. To share them, you can use AirDrop, twitter, Facebook, Mail, iCloud.
iOS photos now are auto-organized into “Moments” — basically photo sets taken in groups. iOS will know to group them based on place and time they are taken.
Big surprise: Apple gets in on the filters game along with everyone else. The ioS camera app now has filters too.
It’s done over peer to peer WiFi and everything is encrypted.
AirDrop is coming to iOS 7 as well. It’s already on the mac. But now you can select friends nearby to share something. No need to bump your phones, Federighi says.
You can see shared links from people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn in your bookmarks in Safari, just like we saw on desktop Safari. Oh and OMG you’re no longer limited to 8 tabs. Yay. You can have as many as you want.
Safari Mobile gets a new full-screen look. Pulling down gives you a search field, if you tap it’ll show you your favorite sites. There are also see all your tabs up there too.
Multitasking for all apps is coming as well. He says battery life will still be good. If your’e opening Facebook all day, iOS 7 will notice and will keep the app up to date. It also does “opportunistic updates.” If you have your phone on, it’ll update an app.
Now we’re getting to 10 new features coming to iOS. First up: Control Center. You can swipe upand you get to the settings, like airplane mode, brightness, airdrop (which is new) and Airplay mode. Also has a flashlight mode in there.
Notifications is still a swipe down motion, but it’s much roomier, the individual notifications aren’t squished together. You can also now access it from the lock screen; you don’t have to sign in anymore.
The phone buttons are round and transparent. Weather app has far more info now, with cooler animations. Messages app is much flatter now, no more shadowing on each message bubble. New swiping motions in the Messages app let you go backward, instead of hunting around for the back button. Folders of apps can now have multiple pages too.
So this is cool: the iPhone tracks your motion so when you turn your iPhone, your background moves with it. Messages, Calendar, Calendar, Phone buttons — everything is pure white with skinny black text. Even GameCenter is no longer terrible: ” we just completely ran out of green felt,” Federighi jokes.
They’re really sensitive to this “they stopped innovating” meme. For the fifth time, Cook says iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone. Now Federighi is bac to demo how iOS 7 works.
iOS 7 is defining “an important new direction” Ive says. And with that, the video concludes. The developers in the house love this…”we love you,” someone calls from the crowd.
Translucency is a big part of the new look, your keyboard is translucent, for example. Oh and the weather app is no longer super embarrassingly old. Control buttons also recede while your’e browsing Safari, for example. There’s also previews for apps running in the background, that you can tab through like we’ve had on OS X for a while.
He’s the guy that redesigned iOS 7. It’s much flatter, has a whole new very simple look. The slide to unlock button is now vertical, the menu drawer is way larger with far more options in there. The app icons have a new color palette.
Design is more than the way something looks, Jony Ive’s voice intones gravely over the video.
The biggest change to iOS since the iPhone arrived, he claims. New user interface and new features included. Video coming on now.
Here it comes: iOS 7
“This is terrible for developers,” he tells them. (i.e. please don’t leave us!)
90 percent of iOS users have upgraded to iOS 6. He loves pointing this out: 37 percent of Android users are using Gingerbread. “A bleak story,” Cook says, with mock concern.
He’s still talking about iOS customer satisfaction. …
600 million iOS devices are floating out there in the world, Cook says. That’s great and all, he says, but he wants to make products that people actually use and love (this is a standard Cook talking point). iOS webshare is 2x higher than Android, etc.
And Cook is back again, we’re finally getting to iOS. The crowd likes this.
And that was enough of Windows. We’re right back to OS X Mavericks. The iWork for iCloud apps beta is open now.
Something you wouldn’t expect here: on stage is Windows 8. But it’s just to show how to edit Keynote docs on Windows 8, in the browser.
Same goes for Numbers and Keynote…can build presentations and spreadsheets right in your browser.
Once you’ve made a document, you can drag to your desktop when you’re done. If you’re working on a Word doc, you can drag into the Pages for iCloud window and edit it right there.
These are three separate apps, Pages for iCloud, Numbers for iCloud and Keynote for iCloud. And they’re web apps, not Mac apps.
iWork for iCloud is Apple’s new way of creating documents in the browser on a Mac or PC.
800B iMessages have been sent, 7.4 trillion push notifications sent, he says. Now they’re “deeply integrating iCloud” into iWork, Apple’s productivity suite. That’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Tim Cook is back onstage, he’s talking iCloud. There are 300M accounts he says (tepid applause).
Pretty cool: it has a motion sensor and will light up when you’re looking for the ports on the back. Coming “later this year.” And this is the one Cook has been talking about: it’ll be made here in the USA.
In relation to the old Mac Pro, this new cylinder is really small. 1/8th the volume, he says.
The team went crazy with graphics, Schiller says. Mac will come standard with dual workstation GPUs from AMD FirePro. 2x faster than last generation, he says. Will also support super high def 4K displays. Can hook up 3 of them to this Mac.
It’ll have INtel’s Xeon chips inside, two-times the CPU speed of previous Pro. Flash storage, PCIe based Flash, says it’ll be 10x faster than any Mac before, he says.
“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” Schiller says.
Whoa, it’s a cylinder..not your typical rectangle box. And it’s all shiny metal. Pretty different, as he promised.
Mac Pro is really important to that group. He said they’re trying to not just make another desktop. “Truly radical,” he claims. Now w’ere getting a video demo with bone-shattering bass. Yikes.
Schiller is showing us a “sneak peak” of the new Mac Pro, which gets a huge amount of applause. For musicians, graphic designer, software makers are waiting for this, he admits.
11 inch Air starts at 999 for 128GB, 256Gb for 1199. (I missed the 13 inch pricing, sorry). Both start shipping today.
New Airport Extreme with 802.11 a/c is coming too.
Flash is 45 percent faster, he says. 802.11 a/c WiFi included, which is faster too.
They’ll have Intels Haswell chips. More energy efficient he says, and graphics will be 40 percent faster at the same time. Says it’ll be in standby for 30 days. 11-inch Air will have 9 hours of battery life. The 13 inch will have 12 hours of battery life, he claims.
It’s getting an update: all-day battery life, he says. Hmmm.
Developers get to start playing around with Mavericks starting today. The software will be released to the rest of us “this fall,” Federighi says. And with that, he vacates the stage for Phill Schiller, SVP of Marketing. He’s starting off with the MacBook Air.
We’re onto a demo of interactive textbooks. You can highlight text to create notes and can turn highlights into digital flashcards too.
Calendar now autosuggests locations when you create an event. It’ll also give estimated travel time right there in the event. Can set up notifications so you know when to leave for an appointent (pretty much what Donna was trying to do on iOS). Wouldn’t be surprised if we see this in iOS Cal later today too.
He’s showing us Flyover Maps on the Mac…Paris looks pretty good in this demo. He just bookmarked a restaurant in Paris on his Mac and it synced to all his iOS devices. Can do the same thing with directions.
Your iBooks library from iOS will be available on your Mac as well. We’re going to get a demo of it now.
Also coming to the Mac from iOS: iBooks.
Maps is also available for the desktop now. You can send directions from the Mac app right to your iPhone. There’s a new SDK for devs to add Mac Maps to their apps too.
In Calendar, it sucks in your Facebook events too. Also adds weather and travel times (they’re learning from their competition on iOS).
New notifications improvements: you can respond to iMessage in the notification that pops up in the upper right. Same thing with FaceTime notifications. Also: you can get push notifications from iOS apps on your Mac now too. They’re also replicating the lock screen notifications summary from iOS. You can get those on your Mac now too.
Now we’re getting a discussion of iCloud Keychain. It’s supposed to be the place you keep all your passwords in one place. It’s for credit cards, WiFi networks, log ins, account information. It’s encrypted. It’ll also auto-suggest a unique password for new sites you sign up for, and then save it.
Again, this is a developer-oriented conference, so a lot of the stuff they’re showing us is making them — and other power users — pretty happy right now.
They’ve optimized scrolling to be really fast on Retina displays and for “certain websites.” He hasn’t said which ones yet. But with AppNap, if you’re looking at a website with a lot of animation but then bring up iTunes, it’ll take power away from the web page running in the background.
He says Safari has more memory for browsing and for individual tabs. He says it also uses less memory than Chrom and Firefox. Now he’s going to show us how this works.
Federighi moves on to discuss Safari. New home page, a more easily accesible sidebar, reading lists with continuous scrolling, Shared Links — can see all links from people youer’ following on Twitter or LinkedIN.
Timer Coalescing intelligently reduces transitions from CPU activity between when it’s idle and when it’s running. To save power and battery, he says.
Now to the power user features: Mavericks has compressed memory for apps, App Nap (can send power only to apps you need), accelerated scrolling, OpenGL4 for graphics, and Timer Coalescing.
He’s adding an Apple TV to the mix (the set-top box). He’s showing how you can use it as a third display via AirPlay and go full screen on a third display without changing your other two displays.
He’s demo-ing how you can move windows across multiple displays. Can choose to open apps on a second display without having to drag it. Can also go full-screen…can have full screen apps on two different displays.
First feature of OS X Mavericks: Finder tabs. All windows can be dragged and viewed via tabs. (Gets a big applause.) Also: tagging is coming. Save a doc to a location, you can tag it and it’ll appear in the Finder sidebar. Can tag in iCloud or locally. Can search via them too. He’s showing us how this all works now.
Mavericks, of course, is the site of big wave surfing down the coast from SF.
He’s getting ready to tell us what the next name is going to be. Needs a name that will carry for the next 10 years. It’s going to be named after a place instead: OS X Mavericks.
He’s comparing the growth of the Mac vs the PC. Says 28M copies of Mountain Lion sold in the last year. For this year there’s “lots of innovation left.” Craig Federighi, who runs the Mac division, is out to talk OS X.
Cook is back, says we don’t have more time for more developer presentations. (Sigh of relief.) Now we’re onto the Mac.
That app is out now, but the cars won’t be for sale until later this year (in Apple Stores and online).
Anki is basically a video game with physical objects. Pretty neat.
They app can track in realtime how these cars are driving around a track. The phone is a brain for these cars, not just a controller, the company says.
The cars are very small, btw. Like matchbox size, not full size.
First app demo of the day starts now: Anki is up first. They make robotics software. Now they’re showing us Anki Drive, an app that controls robotic cars from your phone.
The App Store “levels the playing field between large and small developers,” he says. That’s sort of true — it’s pretty hard to stand out if you’re a nobody — but it’s not impossible.
575 million credit card accounts hooked up to the App Store. That’s more than “any store on the internet that we’re aware of,” Cook brags. And developers have made $10 billion off of App Store sales, he says. $5 billion just in the last year, which is kind of crazy.
50 billion apps have been downloaded in five years, he says. There are 900,000 apps, 375,000 for iPad specifically.
That was mercifully quick. Cook is back, and talking up virtual Apple stores, the App Stores.
And, now we’re on our second video of the day. This one is about Apple’s stores.
Cook’s going over how many there are (more than 400), and talking up the newest one, in Berlin. If you’re an architect, you’re probably enjoying this discussion.
Now, down to business: the Apple Store update, as always comes first.
Cook apologizes that tickets sold out so quickly…he says Moscone West is the largest venue they can get for this event.
Remember this is a developer conference, so he’s going on about how many Apple engineers are here to teach the iOS and Mac developers new stuff this week.
He welcomes us to WWDC, the 24th in a row they’ve done. He says 60 countries are represented. And somehow 2/3 of people here are newbs.
Lots of applause from a very pumped up crowd of developers.
And here comes Tim Cook.
It’s one of Apple’s classic marketing videos about the company’s purpose, vision, and what they do (“delight users” etc).
And, here we go. Lights go down, and we’re being greeted with an opening video.
OK, should be any minute now. They’re asking us to turn our devices on silent.
Hey guys, Om and I are here. It’s a full house here in Moscone West, lots of Apple execs and special guests are milling around the front, while thousands of developers are still finding their seats. We should get going here in about 20 minutes.
Erica and Om are seated and conserving their batteries ahead of the 10am scheduled start time. They let the press in way earlier than usual this year but did not provide power strips, which seems cruel.
Here’s another one of the registration desk at Moscone and WWDC 2013.
Everything gets started in about an hour! In the meantime, Erica took this pic heading up the escalator in Moscone West on a classic foggy June morning in San Francisco.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2013\/06\/07\/live-blog-apple-keynote-wwdc-2013\/wijax\/bb1546e1e124f0cbfe688e923bfebd44","varname":"wijax_a88625b2e36434bc31f208efbdcac5bb","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
