On TechCentral yesterday we gave our top five predictions for Apple’s 2015 WWDC keynote. As expected, there wasn’t much you would call ‘innovative’ but there were a few surprises. So, in no particular order, here’s how we did:
1) Apple Music
That Apple revealed a streaming service wasn’t news. It was a smart move to make it the last item in the keynote just to keep people following the live stream all the way through. That it will be subscription-only for $9.99 for a single user of $14.99 for a ‘family’ package is purely business as usual for the service formerly known as Beats Music. Nothing to see here? Not quite. Apple will be operating a 24/7 live radio service from London, LA and New York. Oh and as with Beats Music, the first three months are free.
Two things we couldn’t have predicted were Android availability and Connect – a new feature allowing artists to send updates to their fans, which doesn’t remotely resemble the defunct social network Ping. Not at all.
2) OS X
OS X El Capitan won’t be released until next year – a welcome departure from the annual upgrade cycle – but it will have a public beta starting in July so users can have plenty of time to get to grips with it. As expected, its focus is on improved performance and stability, including faster app launching and switching. The introduction of apps running side-by-side is something familiar to the majority of PC users since Windows 7 arrived in 2009, but the management of multiple desktops by dragging and dropping applications is smoother than in Windows 10. We weren’t expecting to be blown away by anything here, nor were we.
3) iOS 9
We predicted an update of iOS was due and we got one with a few notable features. Siri is getting busier in terms of managing calendar, contacts and telling you which devices are connected to your handset. Maps is getting transit system information (not here, though), Passbook is now Wallet and a bunch of new partners have signed up to bring contactless payments to the UK with Apple Pay. In security, four-digit PINs are being replaced with six-digit numbers – just be sure not to add ’01’ to the start or end of your existing one. Battery life being a familiar bugbear of iPhone owners, iOS 9 promises power saving measure that could add up to three hours to a single charge by managing background processes. Most impressive is the size of the new OS. Where iOS needed 4.6Gb of space, iOS 9 needs only 1.3Gb. This means it will run well on devices reaching end-of-life like the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.
Finally, Apple is intent on poaching Android users and is making it as easy as possible with a new migration app. Out of all our predictions, iOS 9 easily produced the most surprises. A developer beta version goes on release next week with a full version downloadable in the autumn. And yes, there is multitasking for the iPad. Roll on the 12″ model.
4) What didn’t happen
Apple needs buy-in from partners to make the most of their ideas but there was no ‘wow’ moment – possibly so nothing would overshadow Apple Music. Fair enough. We expected to see something from the automotive industry to make CarPlay more enticing but we didn’t get so much as a wacky concept car. Similarly, Apple TV didn’t get a look in, leaving a refresh overdue by Cupertino standards. A sign that it wasn’t going to be a day for hardware was the lack of activity on Apple’s website. Product announcements are foreshadowed by a ‘back soon’ page but there was no such luck yesterday. It was all about the software.
5) What we completely missed
There were two elements we completely did not address in our preview. The first – and no one had this – was the open sourcing of Apple’s Swift programming language. This should open up iOS app development to more coders of all levels. One of the few pieces of trivia rolled out yesterday was that 100 billion apps have been downloaded from iTunes over the past six years.
Lastly, we had nothing on watchOS2. We expect developers will make loads of customisable home screen options and access to the crown and sensors. But really, was a Watch release date for over here really too much to ask?
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