Yesterday at Apple’s annual devolpers conference, WWDC the company updated all four of its software platforms, watchOS, tvOS, iOS and the newly named macOS. So here is a quick overview of what Apple released yesterday.
watchOS 3
The first thing in the keynote was Kevin Lynch coming on stage and unveiling the improvements that they had made to the Apple Watch software. One ringing complaint about the Apple Watch is the cronically long time apps take to load up and users have said it’s faster to take out their phone, but now with the third version of watchOS the loading screens are now gone, it does this by keeping your favourite apps in temporary memory so they can load faster.
Other than under the hood changes, this release brings some other changes such as a control centre which replaces glances and also the side button no longer brings up contacts, now instead a multitasking dock so you can easily switch between apps.
In terms of features, the Activity app now allows you to share data with friends so you can compete on various walks or runs. A new Breathe app is designed to help some people practice certain breathing exercises if they have trouble.
watchOS 3 will be coming for free in the Autumn alongside iOS 10, macOS Sierra and tvOS 10.
tvOS 10
At WWDC, Eddy Cue took to the stage to show off the latest version of tvOS for the Apple TV and like everything else this year, Siri took up a decent amount of time on stage with new features. Now on Apple TV Siri can now search 650,000 movies and TV shows and provide complex answers on queries, for example on stage Cue demoed “show me high-school comedies from the 80s” and this deep search now extends into third party apps more extensively, such as YouTube.
Also to help the Apple TV replace the traditional television, Apple is adding in some quick live view Siri commands. Siri can now dig into the streaming apps you have installed and then respond to commands such as “watch ESPN 2” and it jumps right into that live channel, which is huge and this feature is also coming to iOS.
tvOS 10 is also coming in the Autumn.
macOS Sierra
The latest version of OS X for Mac isn’t OS X, Apple have no renamed the software back to how it used to be in the 80s and 90s to macOS to be more inline with the latest software platforms tvOS and watchOS. The new operating system which is called Sierra brings tons of new features including Siri for Mac, new look iTunes, Auto unlock and more.
Siri for Mac has been rumoured for a long time now, and now Apple has brought the assistant to the desktop, and because it’s on your computer it has the ability to answer more complex file based queries.
Apple Pay is also coming to the Mac, with the help of your iPhone or Apple Watch. Supported websites will be able to integrate the Apple Pay API and then you’ll be able to use your phone to authenticate the purchase.
New look iTunes
Apple Music is getting a full redesign
Developing….
