Apple kicked off their week-long developers conference today with one of their famous keynotes. The event included some big announcements from the Californian firm, including new versions of iOS, OS X and watchOS, plus a new music streaming service called Apple Music. Here’s what you need to know.
iOS 9
One of the first announcements Apple made was iOS 9, the next operating system for iPhones, iPods and iPads. The release is focused around refinements rather than big feature additions.
Maps has transit directions. Newstand is now called News, and it’s basically Flipboard now. Passport has been renamed Wallet, and now supports loyalty cards and store credit cards. Notes now allows you to make sketches and write with rich text. HealthKit now tracks UV exposure and menstrual cycles.
Siri is also smarter, with a new mechanic called Proactive that reminds me of Google Now. Siri will be able to access more data on your phone to give contextual information and advice – like adding event invitations to your calendar, putting on a playlist when you run. It can also offer suggestions like people or apps that you tend to use at that time of day. Apple played up the service’s privacy credentials, saying that all requests are anonymised and not tied to your Apple ID or recorded by Apple.
Finally, there are some big improvements to iOS on iPad – including multitasking support. That means you can have two windows up on screen at once – split either 50/50 or 70/30 – and there’s even a picture-in-picture mode for playing videos.
iOS 9 is also much lighter than its predecessor, taking just 1.3GB of space to install instead of 4.6GB.
iOS 9 is coming to all devices that got iOS 8, but the simultaneous 50/50 mode will only be supported by the iPad Air 2… and whatever new iPads Apple will announce this autumn. The developer preview of iOS 9 launches today, a public beta will begin in July and it’ll be released this autumn.
OS X El Capitan
El Capitan is the latest in Apple’s increasingly oddly named OS X updates. The new version includes a more Chrome-like version of Safari, which includes pinned pages and an easy way to see what tabs are playing audio. Spotlight now understands natural language – you can ask it to show you “emails I read from Mobile Fun last month”, for instance. El Capitan also finally adds the ability to snap windows to take up half your screen, which was introduced in Windows 7 some six years ago. Finally, there are performance improvements abound, which should improve battery life, make apps launch faster and speed up certain operations in heavy applications like Photoshop or Premiere. As with iOS 9, we can expect a developer release today, a beta release next month and a full release in the autumn.
watchOS 2
The Apple Watch was released only a couple months ago, but a new OS version is already being prepared. The new watchOS 2 will include new watch faces, including time lapse photos of various locations, keyed to the current time, and a watch face that uses your own photo. You can also use the digital crown to “time travel”, moving forward in time to see how your complications update. You can also do more in response to notifications, like replying to emails using your voice. Developers will also be able to make native apps that do their computations on the Watch itself; previously the only option was to have them take place on the iPhone, then move (slowly) to the Watch. The new watchOS will be released in the autumn, with a developer preview beginning today.
Apple Music
Apple’s “one more thing…” this year was its new music streaming service, Apple Music. Like Spotify or Google Music, you get access to 30 million songs, countless videos and curated playlists for $10 a month. Music also includes a global radio station, manned by former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe. Apple Music debuts on iOS on June 30th, and is even coming to Android this autumn.
Apple Pay in the UK
Apple Pay launched in the US last year, and next month it will launch in the UK. Apple’s contactless payments service will support 8 banks and 250,000 store locations on launch, as well as London transport options like buses, trains and the Underground. Stores supported include M&S, the Post Office, Pret, Waitrose, Lidl, Subway, Starbucks and Nandos. You’ll need an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch to make use of the service, of course.
Conclusion
So there we have it – five big announcements from Apple at WWDC 2015. I’m excited to see the new software updates, and being able to use Apple Pay here in the UK should be awesome as well. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below or your social media outlet of choice.
It’s nice to see the app