WWDC Craig's Notes
Like Live Tweeting, But Almost Twelve Hours Later
June 04, 2018
Though it's been a few years since I covered WWDC in earnest, I still make a note to catch the keynote every year. Work has been pretty busy, so taking two hours in the middle of the day to catch the stream isn't practical. It was rainy, so I watched the stream while I sat on the exercise bike and took notes. This isn't a comprehensive list of everything, just what I found interesting. If you want to see the whole keynote, it's here on Apple's site.
iOS
- iOS 12 is coming, which shouldn't surprise anyone. It should surprise you that iOS 12 is going all the way back to the iPhone 6.
- AR is featured again heavily. Though they are pushing gaming applications and other fun stuff, it's actually the rather boring demo of measuring an object using just a phone that was really intriguing. In the long run, practicality is going to really sell AR, the games are just to get the press and developers excited.
- Shortcuts looks to be what everyone has been asking out of Siri for the last five years. It also gives you a hint of what the Workflow team has been up to inside Apple.
- iBook being renamed as Apple Book clears the way for an iOS laptop relaunch of the iBook brand.
- The improved Do Not Disturb makes it easier to use. The specialized night and morning lock screens are particularly cool.
- Screentime is going to be a big help for parental controls and device imposed self-control. I am a little scared to see how much time I spend playing dumb games. The multi-device sync and remote parental management are impressive and show how the educational features roll back to the consumer side.
MacOS
- Mojave is a cool name, as is the transitional default wallpaper. Does that mean that we can have animated GIFs for wallpapers?
- Along with that is the systemwide Dark Mode. This is a huge improvement of the inconsistent settings currently.
- The finder quick actions are neat, and the improved screenshot controls are going to be a big help at work when my work Mac gets Mojave in two years.
- Safari is going aggressive on privacy protections. Apple is not messing around, you now have to explicitly enable even social sharing on sites. It's not going to be as aggressive as Privacy Badger or Ghostery, but it is a great start for everyday users of Apple's browser. (I switched to Opera after it added support for Chrome extensions.)
- News is coming to Mac. I have meant to check out moving a bunch of my Feedly feeds over there, but it's not an App I ever use. Once I can sync between the two maybe it'll be worth a couple of weeks of testing it out.
- Mac privacy protections are extended. There are many more places Apps will have to ask for permission to access. This seems to be a good compromise between the hard sandbox rules of iOS, and protecting users from skeezy apps.
- The Mac App Store gets a similar redesign to last year's iOS App Store changes. Office and Lightroom are both scheduled to make an appearance. I'll be interested to see how much Apple tries to fix this ecosystem and renew developer faith in selling via Apple.
- Continuity is getting some serious improvements, allowing you to use the iPhone as a scanner to add pictures to your Keynote document. This is probably one of the more exciting features.
- iOS apps on MacOS are promised as well, though not in Mojave. This is a multiyear effort, and see UI Kit getting support for keyboard and mouse/trackpad. (cough cough iOS laptop cough cough)
Everything Else
- Apple TV gets some love, mostly in improved device integrations and new TV providers.
- If I had a watch, that section would be more interesting. WatchOS looks better every year. I'm still on the fence if it looks good enough to finally pick up an Apple Watch.
- Group Facetime is a great feature. Apple smartly senses that lots of people are unhappy with Skype, and are giving people all in on the ecosystem a reason to stay there.
- I have been making the iBook joke for a year now, but I do wonder if the ports of UIKit to support more hardware means the rumored replacement for the MacBook Air might be an iOS laptop not macOS on ARM.
MikeNM
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