WWDC 2014: five key points from Apple's address
In the absence of any big hardware announcements, Tim Cook's biggest news on Monday was iOS 8, due in the autumn
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Well, another Apple keynote has come and gone. In the absence of any big hardware announcements, chief executive Tim Cook's biggest news on Monday was iOS 8, due in the autumn. Here are five other key takeaways from Cook's keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developer conference.
New 'health kit' relies on old hardware
iOS 8, which will be released in the autumn, will include a "Health kit" to organise data from fitness and health devices in a single place; it will also let you control connected smart home gear such as garage doors, smart light bulbs and door locks, and other internet-connected devices that comply with an Apple specification.
Noticeably, Apple didn't announce any new hardware – no new computers, no new phones (though those weren't expected; it releases those towards the end of the year, when people spend more), no "iWatch", no wearable fitness band, no new version of the Apple TV and nothing to do with Beats – apart from a phone call to Dr Dre by Craig Federighi, the head of software.
The search engine that shall not be named
Google doesn't seem to be flavour of the month in Cupertino. Chief executive Tim Cook spent some time talking about how many people Apple had persuaded to shift away from Google's Android mobile software to use iPhones and iPads (130 million in the past 12 months, he said – which, given that Apple sold 230m iOS devices in the same time, is quite a sizeable proportion. Half of new iOS users in China were previously on Android, he said.)
Google was mentioned a total of two times during the two-hour keynote. By contrast there were plenty more mentions for Microsoft's Bing search engine, which will provide translation in iOS 8. Also notable: DuckDuckGo, the tiny but privacy-sensitive search engine, will for the first time be available as a search engine option for both OS X (in the upcoming version, called "Yosemite") and iOS 8.
iMessaging
iMessage, Apple's proprietary messaging service (which sends messages encrypted on the data channel – so your phone can send messages via Wi-Fi as well as the mobile phone network) is getting a steroid injection. It will be able to send audio or video messages (which will expire after two minutes unless you opt to keep them), and group chats have been made simpler to participate in and leave.
Given that the Messages app (used to send iMessages and SMS) is the most-used app on iPhones, Apple is clearly looking to tie its existing user base in even more tightly. (The fact that iMessage ties people to iOS, the iPhone and iPad software, has led to a lawsuit: a woman who shifted to a Samsung phone and didn't get messages sent to her by her existing iPhone-using contacts is suing the company for $5m.)
Apple's non-legal answer to that is to encourage people to stick with iOS – and get a Mac computer too: the combination of iOS 8 and OS X "Yosemite" will mean that SMSs and phone calls that arrive on your phone will be sent, via a technology it calls "Handoff", straight to your desktop or laptop computer, where you can answer them – or initiate calls.
Goodbye, Dropbox
After years in which Dropbox and Google Drive have gotten people used to storing files "in the cloud", Apple is giving its iCloud service – introduced in 2011– a clearly visible file system, where you can sift through the files stored there and (try to) open them in any apps you have to hand on both your Mac and iOS device – and also on Windows, where iCloud will also be available as a web service.
Although Apple was actually ahead of both Microsoft and Google in introducing cloud file storage – it first did it in 2000 with iTools, which offered a mighty 20 megabytes (yes, megabytes) of storage. However, it struggled to cope with the scale of demand, and gradually moved away from file storage – until iCloud, and photo storage.
Photos will also be available across all your connected devices – and while Apple isn't quite offering to store them all forever for free, it is offering 5GB of storage for free (as happens now) and lower prices for larger stores – 20GB will cost $0.99 per month (or about $6 per year; UK prices haven't been released). That could be a problem for Dropbox.
New keyboards! Apps talking to each other!
Finally, for those who prefer Android's system where apps can talk to each other, and you can replace the default one with a third-party keyboard: Apple will introduce that in iOS 8. Third-party keyboards will be allowed, but the keyboard apps themselves won't be allowed to send data to the internet unless you explicitly allow it. (Apple has had longstanding concerns about keystrokes – which of course includes all your passwords for sites – being stolen.)
And apps will get "extensibility" – which means that you will be able to call Bing's translation service if you're on a Safari page, or call up a photo filter app while you're looking at a picture and apply it there and then. For anyone who has ever wanted to apply an Instagram filter to an existing picture they're looking at in their library, and then send it to Twitter, that's going to mean a lot less jumping between apps: rather than going to Instagram and then to Twitter, you'll be able to stay in the Photos app and do it all from there.
iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" will be released in the autumn. Both will be free updates.
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