Some thoughts on the WWDC keynote
by Volker Weber
I cannot remember that Apple ever talked about so much new stuff in a single keynote. Where do I start? In no particular order:
- iPadOS, finally. The iPad gets its own operating system, based on iOS but with more features. The two most important ones for me are multiple windows from the same app -- think two Word documents -- and better file management. You will be able to access SMB file shares from Files, as I do today from apps like Documents or PDFpro, as well as USB-connected file systems. This also means you can import from cameras into other apps like Lightroom. Files will be able to handle ZIPs etc. All of these things I can do in third party apps but bringing it natively to iPadOS will enable more people to use the iPad as their only computer.
- tvOS gets a new home screen. Again. More importantly it gets multi-user support. I wish Apple would bring this to the iPad to enable sharing a family device. Apple wants to use AppleTV as a gaming console and will support two gaming controllers: Xbox One S and PlayStation DualShock 4. I don't know a thing about gaming and I had to write this down.
- Mac Pro, finally. Apple has been teasing the return of the cheese grater for years and they announced it today, coming in the fall. Starting at 6000 dollars and easily going into five digits when built out with options it is their best Mac ever. Would be crazy if it were not, right?
- A new display to go with it. 5000 dollars, plus 1000 for the stand. Or 200 for a VESA mount. The Mac Pro can drive six of those at the same time. Are we hitting six digits already if you take the RAM to 1.5 terabytes and add all the optional components? It is fascinating but I never had workloads for a Cray supercomputer either. MKBHD will want a couple. Cheaper than his camera gear.
- iOS 13 has dark mode. I just switched my Windows desktop to light mode. :-)
- Apple reworks a lot of apps in iOS 13, and there is way too much stuff going on here to tell it all. Most importantly they have worked on performance a lot, making existing hardware faster. They are also providing some interesting privacy features like random mail addresses for apps, a Sign In with Apple features so you don't have to fall for the ad profiling of Sign In with Google or Sign In with Facebook. Reminders will be useful.
- HomePod gets three important updates: radio streams through iHeartRadio, a handoff where you can take the iPhone out of the loop of streaming music, and the ability to recognize multiple people by their voice. That handoff is what I always wanted from Sonos. Come home with your podcast and let the HomePod continue, without casting through AirPlay. This should survive the beer test. (Go get more beer from the supermarket, without interrupting the HomePod).
- macOS Catalina will let you use an iPad as a secondary display. Apple calls it sidecar. Developers will be able to let their iPad apps run on Mac. This was previewed last year as Marzipan and it may be able to bring new apps to the Mac. Has to compete with PWAs and Electron apps, both of which just package web apps.
- iTunes: R.I.P., split, burn. Gets split up in Music, Podcasts and TV. Device syncing moves to Finder.
- The biggest news was a new SwiftUI framework on top of Swift, superseding the use of AppKit and UIkit. Way over my head. And I still don't get AR. Everybody seems to be excited about it, but I am not.
- Least exciting was watchOS 6 and that is why Apple started with it. Watch gets an App Store and apps that can run independently from iPhone apps. This could enable Watch to be a platform of its own, not requiring an iPhone. Remember how Apple cut the iPod loose from the Mac and took over the world?
watchOS 6 runs on all watchOS 5 hardware. All Macs from 2012 onwards support macOS Catalina. iOS 13 drops the iPhone 5S and 6, keeping all others. iPadOS will run on iPad Air 2 and newer, including all iPad Pro, iPad mini 4+ and iPad 5+.
The 2018 iPad Pro made me use an iPad as my only computer, switching from a Surface Pro. I was concerned I did not have access to USB thumb drives but never really needed one. I keep running Windows computers and switch between the iPad Pro and Surface as well as Yoga, but I don't have to. iPadOS will only accelerate this move.
The video that Apple did not show:
Comments
The only use I ever had for iTunes is backup and restore of iPhone and iPads. Well, actually not even myself, because I don't own any iStuff. But the ... (how do you translate "Scheffin"?) made good use of it in the past and probably in the near future. Will B&R move to Finder?
Yes
The question is: where will it move on Windows? Or will they integrate Calendar and Mail into iTunes in the Windows version as shown? ;-)
You didn't mention that mouse support seems to be available as an Accessibility option (when needed. The UI demonstrations during the keynote hinted there would be no conceptual obstacles to this, at least).
In some of the industries we support data loggers are a fact of life. They almost universally present themselves as a USB-mounted filesystem with their data in Excel or CSV format - no need to resort to private APIs to grab that data now :-)
wrt AR, imagine you perform engineering surveys over time on equipment for which measurements must be taken regularly at the same spot. Now imagine using your iPad or iPhone to overlay the correct measurement locations on the object you're inspecting. If you have a HUD display for the measurement locations, you've just saved one or more hours of groundwork which would otherwise be spent taking physical measurements to simply set up for the actual readings.
Apple tends to play to mass market journalists and young developers at these events. Even when there are actual grown-up usage cases, they don't get the stage.
And yes, SwiftUI was the most significant thing showcased - I've lost count of the number of half-baked libraries and frameworks I've used or created over the years to do just this sort of thing. Unlike Facebook's entries over the past half decade, this appears to be useful for general app development rather than just a newsfeed.
UIkit:
With Swift, Apple added a modern programming language.
Objective C is from the 90s and shows its age.
Swift makes it more comfortable to write code.
Meaning: Less code for the same problem.
SwiftUI is just a UI framework that is optimized for Swift.
It takes full advantage of the language features.
It makes it more comfortable to handle GUI code.
There is nothing magic about it: The AR features would have been technically possible with the older UIKit and also without Swift.
But it SwiftUI looks like a very good package.
From what I can see, it easily rivals everything else out there for mobile UI development.
The SwiftUI demo briefly (very briefly) made me want to fire up Xcode and start developing again. I envy the tools and packages "youngsters" can use to develop now - especially for mobile applications. I weep silently when I remember how we used to develop WML/WAP "apps" back in the day.
Time to buy that rocking chair and move to the porch.
Yes, mouse can be used ... tested with Wireless Magic Mouse. But as far as I know it's not limted to that.
It works, but you have to get used to the way how it works (and decide what you put on the second button ... I made it "Home" for a fast way to leave an app)