Apple Beat: WWDC 2014 is about extending the ecosystems

Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla 

Today’s WWDC Keynote, the 25^th of a series, saw Apple going back to its roots as one of the most innovative software companies in the business. The event was a frills-free, hardware-free ode to the developer community and it celebrated the coming of age of iOS as well as the ascension of OS X as one of the best designed and most interoperable desktop operating systems in the market today.

Apple’s Craig Federighi took and ruled the stage at Moscone Center, his easy and humorous approach to explaining the latest technologies carried the three-hour long keynote with a little help from developers and other Apple executives like Greg Joswiak, and of course Tim Cook. 

For OS X 10.10 now called Yosemite, we will be getting a more refined desktop experience and one that works and plays nicely with our iOS devices. Continuity was a major theme this year and a vital one for Apple who is tightening the interconnection of their devices and services. 

Standout features for me include Handoff, where your Mac is aware of what you’re working on in your iPad and vice versa. This makes it easy to continue a project, say a Pages document or Keynote presentation on whichever device makes sense at the time.

This feature was demoed to work smoothly, I recall webOS had a touch to share feature that was similar. In true Apple fashion, they’ve omitted the need to touch anything as it happens automagically in the cloud.

The cloud, or in Apple’s case, their massive cache of server farms, is paying huge dividends. The new iCloud Drive feature gives all iOS and Mac OS users their answer to Dropbox or Google Drive. Similar to storage and backup of photos on Photostream, iCloud Drive works for all types of files, further linking iPads, iPhones, Macs and even Windows PCs. 

iCloud Drive also helps the Mail app now since larger attachments, which are usually shot down by mail servers, can still be shared via iCloud Drive. If you don’t have a Mac or iOS device, you get a link to the file. 

Finally, the integration of iOS and Mac OS is even tighter now. AirDrop will be available between desktops, notebooks and their mobile device ilk, which makes it possible to quickly share files without having to email them or upload them to a server in order to download them again.

When your iPhone receives a call, you can opt to pick it up on your Mac. Similarly, iMessages and even text messages can be routed to your Mac, a great feature for people who hate bouncing between mobile and desktop.

iOS 8 was said to be a giant update and while it did offer various refinements and new features, I think it was the expanded sandbox and APK’s that developers were getting, that really made a difference. It is as if Apple unlocked the pantry and now the devs have all the good ingredients to get cookin’.

In true Apple fashion, they retired their reliable but ageing dev language tool Objective C in favour of a newer, more efficient, and apparently, more streamlined development language called Swift. That’s a tidal change right there, and a good starting point for many new developers. Swift code can apparently coexist with C and Objective C so transition should be painless. 

There’s so much more to today’s announcements than I can cover in this column. The whole home automation, health and CarPlay angles simply shows that Apple is ready to evolve beyond mobile and the desktop,  the strategy is to grow Apple’s manifold products and ecosystems and make them even more indispensable now that they’re even more integrated with people’s lives.

 

There’s a heck of a lot to chew on and it’s going to take weeks to really dissect the massive software announcements made today.  So, while some are disappointed that no new hardware was announced or shown off (it’s a developer’s conference, people!), Apple is laying the groundwork for their two key platforms for years to come.