WWDC 2014 Keynote

[Ravynmagi]

Apple is streaming the WWDC 2014 keynote now (started half an hour ago). But you'll need to use Safari from an Apple device or Apple TV to see it.

http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2014/


Right now they are talking about OSX Yosemite. Mavericks always felt weird to say.
The UI looks a lot more like iOS 7. Lots of uses of transparencies. Looks pretty nicely done.

Looks like they are improving iCloud with iCloud Drive that lets you store any type of content. Supported on iOS, Mac, and Windows.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Airdrop works between iOS and Mac. I don't really know what this means, but it got a big cheer.

Handoff looks neat. For example if you are writing an email on the iPhone and are near your Mac it will recognize that and ask if you want to resume on the Mac.
Your Mac can automatically connect to your phone's hotspot without having to enter a wifi password.
Works with phone calls, calls on your iPhone show up the caller ID on the Mac and can even receive or make calls from the Mac through the iPhone.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Presenter is calling Dr Dre, "Apple's newest employee", from his Mac. Haha.

OSX Yosemite coming this fall for free (available to developers now).
There will also be a public beta this fall.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Most interesting thing to me was the call hand-off part. That seems to be just 1 feature, but I suppose they could go further and mirror notifications like Pushbullet. Anyway, Pushbullet was the first thing I thought of when I saw the call hand-off. Hopefully we get that for Android someday, although it'll be tough. We're kinda limited w/ Chrome and FF extensions. Apple will have the advantage in terms of iOS and OSX integration for sure.

 

[Ravynmagi]

They are talking about iOS 8 now.

Some mail improvements like being able to mark a read email as read and add flags.

QuickType had predictive suggestions. iOS didn't have this? I guess I didn't notice.

The Handoff feature also works between iPad and iPhone. Automatically connecting to hotspot, caller ID on the iPad, making calls from the iPad, etc.

 

[Ravynmagi]

iCloud Drive. Lets you open files on an iOS with different compatible applications. This might not sound impressive to Android and Windows users, but I'm hoping this is a solution to the iTunes issue. Such as being able to copy an MP3 file and open it with an audiobook app for example. Unfortunately they spent no more than 15 seconds talking about this feature before moving on.

 

[TheStu]

Airdrop works between iOS and Mac. I don't really know what this means, but it got a big cheer.

Handoff looks neat. For example if you are writing an email on the iPhone and are near your Mac it will recognize that and ask if you want to resume on the Mac.
Your Mac can automatically connect to your phone's hotspot without having to enter a wifi password.
Works with phone calls, calls on your iPhone show up the caller ID on the Mac and can even receive or make calls from the Mac through the iPhone.

AirDrop was a feature added to OS X with 10.8, it lets you easily share files between OS X devices on the same network.

AirDrop was added to iOS with iOS 7, but it was not compatible with AirDrop OS X. So, you could send files from iOS device to iOS device, and from OS X device to OS X device... but not from iOS to OS X (or vice versa).

With OS 10.10, and iOS 8, you can now more quickly share files between the two devices.

 

[Ravynmagi]

HealthKit and Health app sound interesting. Sounds like a hub for all your health information obtained by different devices and apps like Fitbit, Nike, smart scales, diabetes testers, etc.

 

[darkewaffle]

Some of the desktop integration with other devices ("Continuity" I think it was) sound cool, much of the rest seems pretty "eh, whatever" thus far.

 

[cronos]

The family sharing thing is neat!

 

[dguy6789]

My initial impression is they're just now beginning to catch up with the big cloud ecosystem Google has where all of your data is accessible from all of your devices and making iOS have Google Now-like functionality. Definitely a big step forward for Apple users but nothing Android users haven't had for a while.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Some nice stuff, particularly the Continuity features like Hand Off. But nothing blew me away and made me cancel my Surface Pro 3 order.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The keyboard looks catchup in terms of adding 3 suggestions and prediction, but I think its important TouchID got app support. It makes a lot more sense to use TouchID than for me to input my 20 character LastPass password. Far too cumbersome. And I'd argue TouchID is in many ways easier and more secure than a PIN.

 

[WelshBloke]

But you'll need to use Safari from an Apple device or Apple TV to see it.

They really do that?

Any technical reasons for that or just being petty?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Overall its interesting how some things Apple has the advantage in due to tight integration and how they designed things. So for example TouchID is absolutely going to work wonderfully once you open it up for other apps to use. Its like a system integrated LastPass kinda. Google can certainly do the same thing, but relying on something like Samsung's S-Touch to do the same job? I doubt you will get that.

On the other hand you can see the homescreen being a huge limitation. Sure there are now 3rd party APIs for widgets, but widgets can only go in the notification bar. So that's quite lame. Shows you how superior Android's homescreen and widget design is.

 

[Kaido]

The keyboard looks catchup in terms of adding 3 suggestions and prediction, but I think its important TouchID got app support. It makes a lot more sense to use TouchID than for me to input my 20 character LastPass password. Far too cumbersome. And I'd argue TouchID is in many ways easier and more secure than a PIN.

Right now, I think the big edge Apple has over Android is integration. TouchID, Carplay, Airplay, HomeKit (home automation), HealthKit, etc. are going to allow you to easily tie in all aspects of your life digitally into a simple interface on your phone. Some Android apps have the ease-of-use down, but it lacks that level of integration - it's a very piecemeal system, despite have the communication abilities already.

I'm curious to see how all this new stuff pans out IRL. I tend to get overly-excited about things, so I want to see it play out & see if it's gimmicky or actually useful.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

AirDrop was a feature added to OS X with 10.8, it lets you easily share files between OS X devices on the same network.

AirDrop was added to iOS with iOS 7, but it was not compatible with AirDrop OS X. So, you could send files from iOS device to iOS device, and from OS X device to OS X device... but not from iOS to OS X (or vice versa).

With OS 10.10, and iOS 8, you can now more quickly share files between the two devices.

This is where I feel Android needs to step it up, although PushBullet's doing a wonderful job right now.

 

[Kaido]

On the other hand you can see the homescreen being a huge limitation. Sure there are now 3rd party APIs for widgets, but widgets can only go in the notification bar. So that's quite lame. Shows you how superior Android's homescreen and widget design is.

Yeah, curious why they don't let you customize the homescreen - only widgets in the Notification Center for developers. I never use Notification Center. I think the original reason I jailbroke my iPhone back in the day was for Intelliscreen:

http://intelliborn.com/intelliscreen.html

 

[bearxor]

Haven't been able to fully watch the whole thing with work so catching bits and pieces.

I will say that it looks like Apple has decided to show up to the game in a big way with iOS 8.

 

[cronos]

I like what Tim Cook said in the end. He's right, in terms of harmony, ecosystem, and how their devices are designed to work in complete synergy with each other, Apple is absolutely the best.

Tim Cook sucks at trash talking though. I guess he's just too nice a person to pull it off

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Haven't been able to fully watch the whole thing with work so catching bits and pieces.

I will say that it looks like Apple has decided to show up to the game in a big way with iOS 8.

Hoping we can get some big changes with the next version of Android. I get that you don't necessarily need to overhaul the OS to add features thanks to Google Play Services, but in many ways, you still need to build in more options and menus into the OS. The potentials with Android are so vast, but its up to Google to build in support.

I just feel like since Android 4.1 we haven't gotten really major changes. Mostly under the hood stuff.

 

[bearxor]

I will say that, with everything unveiled, that it has effectively killed any interest I've had in moving to Windows Phone.

Manual control of exposure and shutter speed was a big one for me. Can't wait for Camera+ to take advantage.

Quick reply for SMS messages was the last reason I jailbroke my iPhone. No need for that anymore.

And I suspect that there will be a company (dropbox would be my first choice) that can, essentially, create a document center for the phone so that all apps can share the same storage for documents now that apps can share their sand boxed files with one another.

The only thing I think I'm really missing at this point is the option for a default applications. That's not a huge deal for me but I know it is for some.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the release. Now just get it posted so I can download it.

 

[Kaido]

Haven't been able to fully watch the whole thing with work so catching bits and pieces.

I will say that it looks like Apple has decided to show up to the game in a big way with iOS 8.

It's all about integration now. There's only so much stuff you can cram into a phone these days. Once you get a 6" 4K 802.11ac LTE whatever phone, do you really want anything more in your pocket? Like with their Metal demo showing off like 5,000 butterflies in 3D...I think we've hit the "acceptable hardware performance & feature set" bar; it's all about tying everything together now.

This is where they demolish Android & Windows. While Android technically can have app collaboration, there's so many independent developers with no centralized system like HealthKit or HomeKit that it's just not going to happen unless Google decides to bind things together like that. They did it with Play, so it's not out of the question for them to do it with other areas like Apple is doing.

Same with Windows. Everything is tying nicely together between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac with Yosemite. The OS is free. The updates are easy to manage. The interface isn't confusing like Windows 8's split screen. While I have seen a ton of people jump ship from iOS to Android, I've seen the same thing happen with Windows to OSX as far as computers go. The price is the only holdup for getting more people to adopt it...it's hard to get people to swallow a $999 pricetag when you can get a very nice 15" Toshiba for $249 at Best Buy (I buy them by the dozen at work, they're pretty good!).

It will be pretty tight to have your computer talk to your phone talk to your house talk to your car talk to your doctor, you know?

 

[kpkp]

For me the single best "feature" for 10.10 is dark mode, beside the kinda rip-off of Alfred called spotlight (honestly Apple should just be cool and send the guy a suitcase with an Apple logo full of money, since they like to sue people for much less).

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

For me the single best "feature" for 10.10 is dark mode, beside the kinda rip-off of Alfred called spotlight (honestly Apple should just be cool and send the guy a suitcase with an Apple logo full of money, since they like to sue people for much less).

Apple's been trying to improve Spotlight ever since Alfred though. And in many ways you can get away from Alfred for the basic user although I'll never let go of Alfred. I actually like that they continue to improve the basic features and not just leave it as bare bones as an opportunity for 3rd party apps to improve on. What they're doing well is giving a solid out of the box experience.

I'd love for Google to look at setting up lockscreen notifications or LED control in stock Android for instance.