Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has just ended and though this is a rather technical event, it gives us a glimpse into what Apple has been up to and what are the updates that will be delivered to your Apple devices. Below are 5 of the most important announcements that will be coming this later half of the year.
Apple Music
Perhaps the most breaking news announced near the end of the event, Apple Music is set to come to your devices on 30 June later this month and you can probably guess already, this is Apple’s music streaming service that will let you discover and play all your favourite songs, plus tune in to a worldwide 24 hour radio station called Beats 1. It’s free to listen and you can subscribe to premium features will cost US$9.99 per month or the family plan for US$14.99 which lets you share music up to 5 other people. Apple Music will also be available on Android later half of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1zs0uHHoSw
OS X “El Capitan”
As expected, the latest OS X release 10.11 or known as El Capitan was announced at the event. Lots of redesign on the user interface and most notably Safari, where you will be able to pin your important sites, so they load instantly upon opening the browser. Spotlight gets a boost in features as well, now comes with better search capabilities. You will also be able to multi-task better with the new windows management that automatically splits the screens among apps.
iOS 9 is coming
Less than a year into iOS 8 release, iOS 9 will be making its way to Apple devices soon. More functional than design changes, iOS 9’s Notes app gets refinements with drawing functionality, Newsstand gets a name change to just News and will have a magazine style browsing similar to the popular app Flipboard. Passbook will also be renamed to Wallet and will now store membership cards in addition to credit cards. iOS 9 is said to take up less space on the iPhone and offers a low-power mode which will give your battery another 3 extra hours.
Apple Watch update
Apple Watch users can look out for a new operating system coming later this year. watchOS 2 will feature new watch faces, lots more interactivity such as replying to emails and messages, transit directions in Maps and playback video and audio directly from the watch. Another new feature called Time Travel will allow you to see what’s going on in your schedule very quickly simply by turning the digital crown.
Swift 2.0 goes open source
Dubbed as the next-gen programming language for iOS and OS X that will replace C and Objective-C, Apple takes a step further to release the next version of Swift and at the same time making it open source. Swift 2.0 will feature better performance, new error handling API and support for availability checking. Being open source, this means Swift will accept contributions from the public and developers can look forward to coding Swift from their favourite platforms.
