A Different Apple At WWDC

Source: Ars Technica A Different Apple At WWDC

2020 Brings Changes To Apple’s Yearly WWDC

This year Apple’s big announcements are exclusively virtual, with no tech publishers nor hordes of adoring fans physically in attendance.  That has led to a very different feeling but hasn’t discouraged Apple from putting on a show while introducing their newest software and hardware.  The new products include a brand new Apple Watch as well as OS updates for both their mobile and Mac products.

iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 will bring you a completely different home screen, now combining similar apps into groups using the new App Library.  Instead of having to manually move apps on top of each other to manually create folders the phone will now be able to group them automatically for you.  This should clean up the home screen somewhat and reduce the number of pages you need to scroll through to find the app you are looking for.  Widgets are also getting improved and you will be able to resize them and move them around just like you can an app.

Next up in the mobile category is watchOS 7, and a peek at the Apple Watch Series 6 both of which would like you to free yourself through the power of dance.  There are a number of innovations in the renamed Fitness app, with Apple suggesting it will be able to more accurately determine the motions of your body so that the app can track and differentiate core exercise and strength training.  It will now also register dancing as a fitness activity and provide you a guess at how many calories you’ve burned off.   It will now also be able to judge your rest with the release of their first native sleep-tracking app and your hand washing activities as well; though as Scott points out if you never wash your hands the watch will never be able to start a countdown to remind you to hit the sink again.

No, you can’t have third party watch faces though there is now a bit more customization available for you.

Last is the new 10.16. Big Sur OS for Macs, with a huge update to the Safari browser which Apple claims will be 50% faster than Chrome.   New features will include a privacy report toolbar button to let you check any website tracking and extensions will now get permissions for each website instead of universally.  You will also see a version of Control Center with volume and brightness sliders plus you will be able to drag the controls of your choice into the status bar.  Ars Technica and Gizmodo both delved into that topic.

Apple on Monday announced iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, the latest versions of its mobile operating systems for iPhones and iPads, respectively. As has become tradition, the company detailed the new software at WWDC, its annual developer conference.

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Jeremy Hellstrom

Call it K7M.com, AMDMB.com, or PC Perspective, Jeremy has been hanging out and then working with the gang here for years. Apart from the front page you might find him on the BOINC Forums or possibly the Fraggin' Frogs if he has the time.

3 Comments

  1. lcarsos

    Missing the headline here. No more Intel Macs. Apple’s developing “desktop” A*Z (demoing an A12Z) variants of their mobile chips and transitioning over 2 years to only Apple designed processors (and presumably GPUs). Development Transition Kits begin to be available next week. Official hardware by the end of the year.

    A big FU to the people that bought the new mac pro expecting to get 10 years of life out of an actually expandable and upgradable machine.

    Reply
    • lcarsos

      oh apparently the a12z is the chip that’s already in the ipad pro. I don’t use apple products personally. I just manage macs for ios build environments.

      Reply
    • BillDStrong

      They are planning on releasing x86/64 Intel Macs for several more generations. I expect this will be especially true of the Mac Pro that can net them 10’s of thousands per machine. I expect the ARM chips will be in their mobile lines, the mini lines and the iMac lines for the most part.

      They have done this before, from the move to PowerPC to the move to Intel, and they have survived. They have a forced ecosystem advantage with needing to buy a Mac to dev for their actually popular product, the iDevices.

      Reply

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