Here Is Why This Year’s WWDC Totally Rocked.
So every year, Apple kicks off it’s WWDC in June which brings plethora of new features for iOS and OS X users along with newer capabilities and opportunities for developers. This year also, Apple released the next versions of iOS and OS X which are iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan respectively. But this year, There were some things which surprised us all quite a bit. Here are few of them:-
1. Swift Becomes Open Source
Perhaps the biggest highlight of WWDC for developers, Due to which everybody was awestruck was the announcement of Swift becoming open source. The potential of the language just increased by 500% due to it being open source. Developers are already bracing themselves to modify,play and make stuff from Swift in 2015. Swift will now be available for iOS, OS X and Linux! How cool is that?!
2. Apple Music
The buzz about Apple Music was already there before the conference, But what really blew people was that it would be available on “ANDROID“! Yes, After listening to this, Some people had to check from their neighbours whether they listened it right! On top of this, It comes with a free trial of 3 months and 9.99$ per month after that, Making it a direct competitor of Spotify. The family sharing pack for 14.99$ is just an icing on the cake!
3. Apple Watch Becomes DEV-y
Apple has previously never allowed developers to control the hardware of any of their devices. The devs have been screaming to have control of the volume buttons of the iPhone but with no luck. This year, Apple allowed developers to access the prestigious Digital crown of the Apple Watch along with speakers,the other button used for accessing contacts , motion controls etc. This will bring a ton of new apps. They even added support for native Apple Watch apps, This is a great news as now devs will be able to take full advantage of the Apple Watch.
4. iPad Goes Big
The iPad, Since it’s release has been using a version of iOS quite similar to the iPhone save some gestures. iPad is even the primary computing device for many households. So, This year, Apple went big with the iPad with a ton of new features. The major ones being – Split screen multitasking, Slide over, Motion trackpad, Picture in picture etc. iPad will now be able to handle 2 and even 3 tasks at once making it a whole lot productive. The shortcuts now available on the keyboard along with the motion trackpad make it all the more exciting!
5. Metal Arrives On Mac
Mac users have been struggling with games for a long time now. Apple has also been fed up with developers not giving enough attention to Macs for gaming (Recent example is the launch of GTA V only on PC). To change that , Apple has primarily focused on optimising the performance of the mac. Metal has now been introduced for mac (Previously available for iOS) which is stated to improve gaming performance 10X and graphic editing,Video editing etc performance by 8X. This will be a major change that is expected to flood the Mac App Store with new gaming titles.
6. No Devices Dropped!
Every year, As the new version of iOS arrives, 3 year old Apple devices are dropped from the list and do not receive any update further, but this year, Apple optimised iOS 9 such that even 4 year old devices are being supported by it. This is great news for people stuck with their old devices. My suggestion though would be to update your devices ASAP, They are getting old!
These are the reasons why I think this year’s WWDC totally rocked! If you saw something else, Please comment below.