Table of Contents

Black Lives Matter

Apple covered this topic at the forefront of the event, and for good reason. I gotta say it here as well. Black Lives Matter! 🗣

If you're white, you probably believe that you embody the idea of Black Lives Matter. Thats a start.

I'd put money that unconsciously, you still contribute to making a Black person have a shitty day somewhere in America. In part, The Black Lives Matter movement is about making those unconscious acts of racism conscious (to you). Only then (and after we abolish the police, and reform our justice system) can everyone walk around our society as comfortable as you always have. If you're white, shut the hell up, let go of your ego, listen to Black people (by reading what they have written, not by asking the nearest Black person to speak for all of Black America), challenge yourself and other whites around you to embrace Black perspectives, and have a nice day.

Announcements

Apple announced a lot on Monday, in their first ever streaming-only WWDC keynote, a brand new format brought to you by the coronavirus.

Below you'll find an outline of a lot of the stuff that Apple announced related to iOS 14, iPadOS 14, tvOS 14, watchOS 7, AirPods, macOS Big Sur, and the transition from Intel chips to Apple's own ARM-based silicon. Apple has their own version of this list. I guarantee you that I missed some things, more details will emerge, and features will be added and dropped before these updates are available in the Fall.

My thoughts are included below in itallics. I try to link out to relevant articles or discussions where applicable.

Curious to see what features I want to see Apple to introduce, but that didn't make the cut this year? Check out my Apple Wishlist.

Misc.

  • Third-party apps can tap into the Find My app interface
    • Apple is smart to do this before announcing their own trackers. This will lull complaints of anti-trust behaviors coming from companies like Tile.
    • I wonder if this extends to the Find My offline finding ability update: it does
  • Severe weather tracking and real-time precipitation in Weather app
    • Likely from their Dark Sky purchase
  • Search is revamped
    • On iPad, it doesn't take over the full screen. Like spotlight on Mac
    • "Universal search" – intended to be the starting point for all searches
      • I thought this was always their goal with search on iOS but arite...
  • Phone calls don't take over the full screen anymore
  • Picture-in-picture on iPhone
    • If you leave the app while watching a video, you get a video window floating above everything else. Works like picture-in-picture on iPad today.
    • I really want to see a full-out split view feature on iPhone. Looks like we will have to wait another year.
  • HomePod works with Spotify and other music services
  • Set default email and browser apps
  • Redesigned photo and video picker
  • One for developers, they will be able to formally challenge their app store rejections
  • If the developer enables it, family sharing groups can share app subscriptions
  • FaceTime eye correction. When you look at the screen, it'll make it look like you are looking at the camera.
    • This was from the iOS 13 beta, but got dropped
  • Emoji search in the keyboard
    • So you can type words while you avoid typing words to send an emoji
  • Revamped Podcasts app with curated suggestions
  • Back Tap accessibility setting–you can trigger an action (any shortcut!) by double tapping the back of your iPhone or iPad
  • All iPhone models now feature quick toggles to change video resolution and frame rate in Video mode.
  • A new option allows you to capture burst photos by pressing the Volume Up button, and QuickTake video can be captured on supported devices using the Volume Down button.
  • A new option in Settings lets you capture mirrored selfies, which reflect the front camera preview.
  • The Files app supports external drives using APFS encryption. Simply enter the password to access the content of the drive.
  • Contacts autofill in third party apps
    • should reduce the number of times you have to give an app contact access just to pick a single contact
  • Time Machine now supports APFS drives
  • Long press back button to view navigation stack
  • In app intent handling
    • Android has always had this feature. Recent additions to iOS have made it painfully necessary. What this means is that your apps won't have to jump around between different apps to get things done as much. This was extra painful for Shortcuts.

Voice Memos

  • Mark some voice memos as favorites
  • Enhanced recording setting
  • Folders and smart folders

Apple Music

  • Listen now tab
  • Endless Autoplay when Apple Music reaches the end of a playlist
  • Overhauled sidebar on iPad
  • New search experience
  • Multi-window support for Music on iPad

Notes & Reminders

Good overview.

  • No more texture in Notes
  • Better scan quality
  • Collapse pinned notes
  • Redesigned actions menu in Notes
  • "Send a Copy" action in Notes that exports your notes to other apps, in other formats
  • Touch and hold Aa button to quickly change section styling
  • Assign Reminders to other people
  • New date picker for Calendars and Reminders

Home Screen & App Library

  • You can hide entire pages of the home screen... cuz Apple knows none of us ever touch page 2, 3, 4...
  • The last page becomes "App Library"
    • Broken down by category automatically
    • Has "Suggestions" section with most relevant apps
    • Can launch top 3 apps from each category or tap to view all apps in the category
    • I would like the ability to organize what categories appear in App Library, and which app falls into which category. It seems like Apple could let us put our own folders into this section, rather than using Apple's pre-determined categories.
  • Settings for if new app downloads show up on an app page, or in the App Library

Home Screen Widgets

  • You can drag widgets out of today view onto the home screen
  • Widgets live along-side app icons on your home screen.
    • We been waiting on this for a minuteeeee
  • ‪Widgets come in different sizes. Some are 2x2 app icons big, some are 2x4, 4x4, etc.
  • Special widget called "Smart stack"
    • You can swipe between widgets at will, the OS will sort them based on what it thinks you might care about at that moment
    • This seems like the siri watch face, but on the iPhone home screen
  • In wiggle mode, you can also add widgets, and browse all available widgets for a given app by pressing a + button in the top-left corner of the screen.
  • I would like to be able to put a watch face on my iPhone home screen as a widget

Siri changes

  • No longer takes over the whole screen!
    • Great for if you wanna reference something on the screen while using Siri, to tell Siri to dial a non-clickable phone number or something like that.
  • If you ask for stuff like Weather, it shows up at the top of the screen, like a notification.
  • ‪You can ask Siri to send audio messages‬
  • ‪Voice dictation is run on the device instead of in the cloud. No internet connection required‬.
  • "Siri is getting smarter every day"
    • 20x more facts than 3 years ago
    • Can answer stuff like "how do hybrid cars work"
      • I'll believe it when I see it. Siri was better at complex queries when she dropped in 2010 or whenever it was.

Translation

  • ‪New app called "Translate"
  • Help facilitate conversation across languages
  • Works offline
  • Can translate text and voice conversations between 11 languages
  • 9to5mac hands-on

Messages

  • You can pin conversations to the top of the list so you don't miss messages from people you care about‬
  • Memoji updates
    • Memoji have face masks now... very necessary...
      • People are gonna use this more than they use masks in real life
    • 20 new Memoji hair styles
  • ‪You can mention people in messages... just type their name
    • Setting for group conversation to only be notified when mentioned
  • You can reply to a specific message, and view replies in the conversation, or in their own thread.
    • I want to see this in action. Slack does a terrible job at this and I'm looking forward to seeing how Apple handles it.
  • New display at top of group
    • Custom group photo
    • Latest person to send a message has biggest picture

Maps

  • Will warn you about speed traps and traffic cameras.
  • Apple has finished rolling out the new maps designs from last year to all of the U.S.
    • More countries coming this year
  • "The worlds most trusted brands" can create guides of places to check out
    • They need to make this a feature that any user can create, share and monetize. This is another place Apple could have a direct impact on diversity. Are Black-owned and hole-in-the wall spots gonna be featured in these places from "trusted brands"? No need for Apple to be a gatekeeper of this feature when user reviews could do the job.
    • Update: it seems like it will be possible for users to make and share their own guides, but it will likely be difficult to get them the same level of exposure as guides from "trusted brands"
  • Cycling directions, will tell you what your route will be like
    • Includes cycling paths (duh)
    • Elevation
    • Quiet or busy roads
    • If you will need to carry your bike up stairs
      • Can choose to avoid stairs
    • NY, LA, SF, cities in China
      • They won't have Detroit for years 🙄
  • Directions to electric charging vehicle stations, with knowledge of what stations work for what brands of cars
  • Congestion-based navigation. Tells you if it's too busy to go somewhere. Limited to very few cities.

CarPlay

  • Wallpapers in CarPlay
  • New app categories (parking, car charging, food ordering)

CarKey

  • Lets you unlock and start your car with your phone.
    • This shit sweet but first car w it is BMW so it'll be FOREVER until its a regular degular feature. I still dont have CarPlay in my car... This is the worst part about CarPlay.‬
    • Apple has worked with an open industry-wide committee to support this in all cars, so support for this should be coming to new cars soon.
      • The question is, are asshole car manufacturers gonna up-charge for access to the feature?
  • You can text a key to someone with rules about how fast they can drive, when they can use the car, etc.
    • If you spend thousands more for a car that supports this, you can save hundreds on physical copies of your car key.
    • I want to see this supported at the OS level for smart locks in the Home app too... why is it limited to cars?
  • Coming to iOS 13.6 sooner than later

App Clips

  • Sometimes you want to interact with a part of a service without downloading the full app.
  • Apple gives lots of examples in the keynote, some:
    • Paying for parking - Hold your phone up to the meter and a ParkYourCityNameHere screen pops up for you to pay for parking. No more downloading app for a one-off trip to some random city.
    • Shared scooters - You hold your phone up and can Apple Pay to use the scooter. No account or app download required.
    • Paying at a coffee shop
    • Buying something from an Etsy link that a friend texted you
    • Ordering food from a nearby restaurant (directly from the Maps app)
    • That one friend who insists on using Venmo instead of Apple Pay
  • Never need to use credit card numbers, because they work with Apple Pay
  • Can use Sign in With Apple
  • Won't clutter your home screen but you can still access recent App Clips
  • ‪Businesses can stick these tags on the register, integrate Apple Pay, or people can quickly get info about an app.
  • Yelp can make App Clips for businesses, so individual businesses will be able to take advantage of App Clips without being developers themselves.‬

iPadOS 14

  • A lil history lesson: iPad apps started as iPhone apps on larger screens. People started making apps designed specifically for the iPad that were optimized for the larger screen.
  • Now, people are making iPad apps more rich and powerful.
    • Basically, what Apple is saying here, without saying it is that iPad apps are catching up to Mac apps in power and quality.
  • ‪Photos, Notes, Files, Music, and Calendar apps all getting a new sidebar
    • The 12.9" iPad Pro has had a 3rd sidebar panel for some-time, but it seems they are making it standard & improved for all iPads with iPad OS 14.
  • Filter and sort photos
  • Add caption to photos to add context
  • Redesigned image picker
  • A lot of apps are adding toolbars at the top of the window, letting you control sort order, etc.
    • The Mac been had a lot of these features, but this is all great to see on iPad. Trackpad support makes these features feel necessary, so I am glad to see Apple adding them. This is only gonna increase how much I use my iPad.‬

Apple Pencil

  • You can edit handwriting like text, with cursor, easily add more space between sections, etc.
  • Shapes will sharpen their lines if you pause at the end of drawing them so you can draw straight lines, round circles, etc.
  • Double-tap to select a word or drawing... easily change color or move it around the document
  • Handwritten phone numbers can be acted on–place a call or whatever
  • Copy handwriting into another app and it will paste as typed text

Scribble

  • Whenever a cursor is active, you can write text anywhere on the screen and it will convert to typed text. Fuck a keyboard!
  • You can jump between languages
  • Tap and hold to add space between handwritten text

AirPods

This article has a great overview.

  • Auto-switch between devices.. if you are paired with your iPhone then start a zoom call on your Mac, your AirPods will switch over.
    • This is gonna save me so much frustration. It's shit like this that drives people to update all of their devices to the latest version ASAP.
  • Spatial audio, 3D audio but for AirPods Pro... makes you feel like you're in a movie theater.
    • ‪They talking about how they solve that technically... they use motion data from your head combined with your device to keep the audio scene centered relative to your device's screen, even as you are moving around in physical space. Sounds crazy as shit.
    • Clearly this is gonna be super useful for their AR goggles...
    • I hope this works with the PS5's 3D audio feature
  • Optimized battery charging
  • Charge alerts if you should top off the battery before a meeting
  • Developers can get motion data from AirPods Pro to know how you are moving your head in space
    • this is another precursor to the Goggles

watchOS 7

  • You can now have multiple complications for a single app on the same watch face, so one app can expose multiple features on your watch face.
    • Clever developers were working around this by letting you customize how each type of complication slot behaved, but it is great to see Apple adding a standard, OS-level way to do this. I'm sure it will save lots of developer's time.
  • All the new faces and complications
  • ‪New faces, one with a tachyometer (a tool for measuring speed based on travel time, or distance based on speed)‬
  • Share watch faces
  • ‪You can share a watch face with friends... this is lowkey a genius way to drive app downloads‬
    • ‪If I share a face with you and you don't have the apps, it'll prompt you to download them.
    • The Shortcuts app already does that but everyday users don't use Shortcuts. Watch faces is a feature with much more broad appeal.
  • Redesigned interface for configuring watch faces
  • A new dance workout type
    • ‪People will say "they shOulDa bEeN haD tHis" but they had to solve for different types of dance styles to ensure they all get tracked properly
    • ‪Apple prolly had people dancing in a lab for DAYS...
    • This is where Apple can put their money where their mouth is on the Black Lives Matter front. What all types of dance are supported? They make it sound like a wide range but I'd be curious to see a breakdown of what dancers they measured when building the feature‬. It would not be a good feeling to try out this new feature only to discover that Apple failed to incorporate the ability to track your favorite method of dance.
  • Activity app improvements
    • Overview page, more intelligently curated
    • Renamed to "Fitness"
  • Removed force touch on the watch
  • Faster animations
  • Notification on your iPhone when your watch battery is low
  • Announce messages with siri
    • I don't know if this is like out loud or if this means when the watch is paired with AirPods, it will announce messages

Sleep Tracking

  • This another big one. I been waiting on this for forever.
  • Phone has a "wind down" mode that dims the screen, sets alarm, and lets you specify shortcuts to quickly kick off. If you have hue lights, easy way to dim shortcuts, etc.
    • This ties in with the mood-based lighting feature.
    • I am curious how this relates to Bed Time mode (a feature I find to be confusing.)
  • ‪Watch will remind you to charge when you get home and after you wake up so you will have charge for the day and for sleeping.
    • Or they could just improve the watch's battery life. The cynic in me knows this is a way for them to get people to own two watches‬.
  • ‪Watch OS 7 detect hand watching and times how long you watch, it gives a countdown.
    • They should do this for teeth brushing.

Privacy

  • ‪New location sharing option to share approximate instead of precise location with apps
    • Approximate location is within 10 miles of your actual location
    • This is a great idea
  • Mic and Camera have a recording indicator in the status bar, so you always know if either are in use.
  • App Store policy requires apps to ask you for a system-level permission before allowing them to track you with third parties.
    • I assume the OS will block third party tracking if the user says no to these prompts
  • ‪Introducing a "nutrition labels"-like card in App Store listings for developers to disclose their privacy practices–before you download an app.
  • New ability to convert existing accounts within apps to "Sign in With Apple" accounts
    • They said that when Kayak added "Sign in With Apple", it quickly became their most used login method.
      • This makes sense to me. Its a much better option than Login With Facebook, and I think most people understand this.
  • Safari now blocks Google Analytics.
  • New Privacy settings for Photo Library access–you can give apps like Instagram access to only specific photos instead of the full library
  • Sends a notification when apps read the clipboard
  • Microphone and screen recording indicator in the status bar
  • Apps have to ask permission to track you

Home

  • New standard making it easier for device manufacturers to make new devices and device types for the Home app
  • Automations will be suggested when you add new devices
  • New widget at top of Home app with contextually relevant device controls available–a quick visual status indicator
  • ‪Adaptive lighting: hue has had this forever, but you can make your lights switch from cool to warm based on time of day, simulate sunset and sunrise, among other things.
    • I am excited for the ability to integrate this with HomeKit Automations
  • ‪Activity zones–lets you draw areas to be alerted about activity... so you can ignore cars on the street, but catch people on your walkway.
  • Face recognition for HomeKit camera‬
  • HomePod can announce whose at the door if it recognizes them
  • This sounds creepy, but it all happens locally within your HomeKit system, unlike Amazon's Ring doorbell, which freely shares footage with Police. For the love of all that is holy, don't buy a Ring
  • Pull up HomeKit camera video at any time with Siri on iOS or tvOS device
  • AppleTV will automatically pop up a video window when someone rings the doorbell

AppleTV

  • New Home app
  • New Home controls on AppleTV sidebar
  • ‪Picture in picture system wide. You can watch one thing on AppleTV and AirPlay another thing to another window... this is dope‬
  • You can use a workout app while watching a TV show in the corner
  • Multi-user support for Apple Arcade
    • This is okay, but I wanted a more rich user profile feature. Why can't we have different app layouts for different users? Why doesnt the iPad support multiple user accounts yet?
  • I fasho be wanting to watch two things at once, or watch some shit while I'm playing some shit‬, so this is great.
  • New AppleTV+ series: Foundation (based on the Isaac Asimov book series) (watch the trailer)
  • Audio sharing so that multiple people can listen with AirPods

Safari

It seems a lot of these features are Mac specific. Its not clear yet.

  • 50% faster than Chrome
  • More rich Safari extensions
    • Support for web extensions api
      • Chrome supports this–so extensions should be able to be translated across browsers a lot easier.
    • Privacy controls for extensions–you control which sites each extension can see.
      • You can give an extension access to a site for the hour, the day, or forever.
  • Redesigned tabs
    • Icons in tabs
      • I thought this already existed
    • Tabs will now scale themselves like Chrome tabs do–this is way better. You can see more tabs in the tab bar.
      • This was long overdue.
  • Monitors saved passwords and notifies you if they were in a data breach
    • 1Password already does this, I wanted Apple to make a full-blown password manager
  • Native web page translation‬
  • ‪Safari will report the trackers that it blocks‬
  • Customizable start page
    • Custom wallpaper–drag and drop an image onto the start page to set a new background
  • Can now stream 4K HDR videos in Safari

MacOS Big Sur

We love the Mac, its the tool we use to make all of the products that we put out into the world.

  • They didn't stress this on stage, but the X (10) in macOS X is no more. MacOS is moving on to version 11.0.
  • Major visual refresh. Everything is refined
    • looks more iOS like
  • Apps have their own "Key color" that is used on sidebar icons, list highlights, etc.
    • This seems to usurp the system-level highlight color they introduced with the last MacOS release.
  • New suite of sounds
  • ‪Menu bar drop downs like the Sound menu is a lot more helpful, new designs and better affordances
  • Control Center on Mac.
    • You can drag stuff out of control center straight into the menu bar, and vice-versa
  • Redesigned Notification Center, grouped with widgets, no more tabs
  • iOS widgets supported on the Mac
    • I assume that this is thanks to Catalyst–developers can likely add widgets to macOS super easily if they have one in their iOS app today
  • Messages on Mac works like iOS messages, complete with the new groups features, pinned conversations, better search, an app menu, etc.
  • All new version of Maps
    • Favorites and lists from iOS will show up in Maps on Mac
    • Ability to see friend's ETA progress
    • All iOS maps features
  • Catalyst
    • Lets developers bring their iPad apps over to the Mac with minimal effort
    • Lots of enhancements to Catalyst that developers can take advantage of
    • Maps and Messages are now Catalyst apps
  • osxdaily post with lots of screenshots

Transition to ARM

  • After the Mac demo, they revealed the whole thing was run on an ARM-based Mac.
  • Theres a few components to this, and a lot to be said on this topic, in particular related to app compatibility
  • They rewrote their redesigned Mac apps for their custom chips, but they are backwards compatible with Intel chips
  • You can still run windows within parallels and other virtualization
  • Developers can make their iOS apps available for download on the Mac, running natively, if they choose to
  • First ARM Mac shipping to consumers by the end of this year
  • BootCamp is dead. Seems like virtualization is the wave
  • New system recovery method

How does this benefit users?

In theory, new ARM-based Macs running Apple chips can take advantage of Apple's full-stack approach to designing their devices. My hope is that Apple can deliver two things to consumers with this transition:

  1. Better battery life
  2. Faster year-over-year speed improvements.

The iPhone has been outpacing the Mac in speed and efficiency gains for years, and the theory is that the transition to Apple's own chips can help the Mac play catch up.

Device Compatibility

Check out The Verge's article on this.

Updates

I will update this secton as details of new features emerge in the coming days.

Control Center

  • Announce messages with Siri in control center
  • Hearing toggle in control center
  • HomeKit devices and scenes inline in Control Center

Shortcuts

I am a huge fan of the Shortcuts app. It got no mention on stage, which makes sense since it got a lot of love last year and the year before that. It turns out Shortcuts is getting some updates after all.

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