About an hour ago the main keynote of WWDC 2016 ended, and a few interesting announcements have been made. In this short post, I’d like to weigh in on the announcements. (Note: I do not have an Apple TV or an Apple Watch, so I will be providing quick impressions mainly on macOS and iOS changes.)
OS X (OS Ten, or as it is commonly referred to as OS eks at our office) has been renamed to macOS. A good change, since the X was almost never pronounced as ten by anyone I know. Oh yes, and of course, it’s good that the name now lines up with iOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Personally, there is nothing that grabbed my fancy this WWDC that made me go I want to upgrade now to the new macOS, since I do not use Siri or any of the cloud and integration features that were demoed. I will most likely be disabling shared clipboard and sharing your desktop’s contents via iCloud, since I don’t need those features.1
iOS 10 had some cool improvements, but since I do not use iMessage, Music, or News, the biggest improvement software-wise here is to the lockscreen (and notifications + widgets). Looks pretty sweet. Of course, that iOS is now more capable in terms of analysis of photos is also pretty cool, but I doubt I’ll be using it much.
I was not blown away today, but that’s because I’m not using all of the integrated services that are available; and the reason why I don’t use them is because when it comes to their services, Apple does not have a big market share here in Belgium. For example, iMessage is not as prevalent here as it is in the US. Then, there’s taste: I use Spotify over Apple Music. Finally, some features like Apple Pay and Apple News are just not available in Belgium.
I’m still keeping my eyes and ears peeled for other cool reveals (like whispers of a new filesystem?). I might follow this up with another post if I hear or find out about some interesting stuff.
Also, I’m holding back on commenting about some of the cooler AI and machine learning changes. I’ll need to see how that performs in the real world.
TL;DR: Nothing major, I like some of the changes, was not blown away. Disappointed that some features are not going to be very useful because they are not popular here. Holding back on commenting on AI/machine learning changes.
Also, no new hardware. Wasn’t expecting it, and I don’t need an incentive to buy a new MacBook. No problem for me.
I am far more interested in the new features of Xcode 8, which seems to have improved features for previewing storyboards on multiple devices. Should come in handy, for sure. ↩