WWDC 2017 – Predicitions

Posted on by easyos2000

June is upon us and so the annual pilgrimage to California is about to start. I am one of 5,000 randomly selected engineers that will descent to San Jose, CA this year to spend a week learning how to build a digital future on Apple’s platform in the year to come. It’s an insane week with 15 hour days. Sessions & Labs that stretch for 10 hours each day, followed by the necessary evening networking events. It is a very long, but exciting week for all who attend. My predictions (and hopes) this year for what we can expect are:

– iOS 11
– macOS 10.13
– watchOS & tvOS upgrades
– Upgrades to Xcode & Swift
– Siri Speaker??????
– More Siri APIs????
– Server-side Swift????
– New MacBook Pro machines???????

After almost 15 years, WWDC has been moved back to its original hosting place, San Jose. Apple has hosted the event in San Francisco since 2003. Hope you all know the way to San Jose!!!

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WWDC 2012 – Minus 4 days

Posted on by easyos2000

4 days until this year’s Apple WWDC in San Francisco. This is a very special WWDC indeed as it will be the first post-Steve WWDC, where Tim Cook is expected to give the Keynote address. As always there are tons of rumours flying about. Here’s my predictions for what will be announced:

  1. Mountain Lion – this is a given, but we will get even more details on new features and APIs available.
  2. iOS 6 preview – it will come as a great shock to everyone if Apple doesn’t preview this during the keynote.
  3. Google Maps replacement APIs. MapKit is to be revamped to work with the new alleged Apple mapping service.
  4. New hardware – not sure on this one. If any hardware is demoed it will be the new iPhone. I am not expecting new computer models to be released.

Let’s be realistic. This year’s keynote is what? An hour and a half long? Well I bet only 2 topics will covered. Last year’s keynote was 2 hours and only 3 topics were covered: Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud.

Very exciting never the less, as tons of new APIs are too be announced in iOS and OS X!!! Looking forward to new MapKit and Facebook APIs.

See you all there in 4 days!!!

WWDC 2011 – Day 0

Posted on by easyos2000

Registration for this year’s WWDC is less than an hour away. Despite knowing what to expect I am still excited, surprised and thrilled to all the excitement and attention this event attracts. You only need to look around you and there are like-minded geeks everywhere. On my flight to San Francisco yesterday, I was surprised to see three guys, sitting next to each other, with their MacBooks on coding away together and debating technical solutions. While I spent a few hours, with an ex-colleague, debating and discussing design ideas.

Fellow attendees are all over San Francisco. I hooked up with a number of guys from Twitter last night for some drinks. We all walked past Moscone West, and we all took pictures of the venue. Show me another IT company or event that attracts such a passionate response. Yes there’s Google I/O and TechEd, but nothing like WWDC.

Here’s some pictures of Moscone West from last night. See you after registration!

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WWDC 2011 – Day -1 (Minus 1)

Posted on by easyos2000

The pilgrimage begins. In just over an hour, I will be on my way to San Francisco for this year’s WWDC. The last few days have been very exciting in the world of Apple rumours. Some true and some not. But most interestingly is Apple’s slip up on displaying information about ‘automatic download’ over-the-air updates in iOS 5. Of course it will all be revealed in less than 48 hours. I am slightly disappointed as I expected Apple to release 10.6.8 on Friday in preparation for Monday’s Keynote. Of course that is a disappointment as we are all expecting Steve to make Lion available on Monday. That might actually not be the case though :-(.

One final thought, as I am getting ready to board my flight. Apple has now surpassed RIM in US Smartphone usage. I can only expect that Monday’s preview of iOS 5 will make Apple’s competitors push their bar even higher. Apple chose to abandon their usual April preview of iOS, like they have done in the past. I can only assume that what they will be releasing is a much bigger upgrade than 3.0 to 4.0 was.

WWDC 2011 – Day -3 (Minus 3)

Posted on by easyos2000

Everything seems to be going like clockwork. Apple just released the WWDC 2011 App. It’s available on iTunes this year. But you will need an Apple ID that is associated with a WWDC Ticket to view any content. I am afraid I can’t disclose anything in the App or any of the scheduled sessions. But I can say this, Apple did listen to feedback from last year and added some nice touches that will make everyone’s life at the conference much easier!

Also banners have started appearing around the Moscone West centre and the main ones seem to focus on:

Lion + 5 + iCloud = WWDC

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WWDC 2011 – Day -4 (Minus 4)

Posted on by easyos2000

Well Day -5 was certainly very interesting and full of surprises from Apple. First of all Apple confirmed that Steve Jobs will be the Keynote speaker. Although the PR story goes on to state that Steve won’t be doing all the work this year, and that “a team of Apple executives” will help him along. Well we can only guess who these guys are, usual crowd. The one question that will be on everyone’s mind is, why isn’t Steve doing the Keynote by himself? Is he just filling in the gaps between the VPs of all the different technologies presented? Is he still too ill to actually host a two-hour keynote by himself? Let’s hope not.

So Apple officially let the cat out yesterday. iCloud. So iCloud is actually going to happen. But what is it? What will it do? Did Apple invest billions of dollars in a new North Carolina data centre so that we can all just store our music and videos there? I don’t think so. I can’t possibly see Steve going on stage on Monday in Moscone West and saying “guess what? here’s Apple’s DropBox!”. No that is not Apple. Apple innovates rather than throw something together quickly. Also we are forgetting the most important aspect here. This is after all a Developers conference and not an iTunes/iPod Media Event. iCloud will have to do more than just storage and will have to have some relevance to developers.

On a final thought, yesterday Lodsys did actually file law suits against some high profile developers that use In-App purchasing in their Apps. Personally I think it very lame of Lodsys to go after these guys, when there is a very clear licensing agreement between Apple and Lodsys. This will certainly be a breaker for Lodsys. Apple is more than certainly going to back the devs up, and Lodsys will pay and will pay well!

There are already images of Moscone West getting decorated with the usual Apple logo, but as I am not in San Francisco for another 3 days, here’s one picture from last year’s event.

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WWDC 2011 – Day -5 (Minus 5)

Posted on by easyos2000

Lion, iPhone, iOS 5, iCloud….

What ever happened to Apple TV? Do you really think Apple will just drop a “non-hobby” project in your living room and stop making money out of it? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact I think iOS 5 will be the OS to actually allow devs to start making money out of Apple TV with Apps. Well maybe not Apps, but maybe “enhanced widgets”. Over the next few days I will look more in-depth into widgets and iOS 5. Maybe Apple is combining functionality?

My feeling and opinion on the matter, is that Apple should introduce a Widget platform for developing widgets that would work across all iOS devices. Think about it, we have universal apps for iPhone & iPad. Same code but different UI. Well why not have widgets for all iOS devices (inc Apple TV) same code, different UI.

I have to say it is fascinating that there has been no mention of this anywhere, with all the rumours flying about.