What was previous presumed is now official. Apple will be having their World Wide Developer Keynote at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time on June 4th. The invites to select media outlets have gone out.
I will have my predictions out early next week and will also have a round up of what is announced after the keynote on June 4th. If you have any predictions, let me know and I will include them in with my predictions.
Technology, much like time, is an inevitable march in one direction. At least, it is unless we use technology to destroy our ability to create technology, but that is a whole other discussion. Similar to technology, from time to time Apple will change the minimum requirements for applications that are submitted to the App Store.
Starting in July 2018, Apple will be making a couple of things requirements. The first is that you have to use the iOS 11 SDK for all new applications as well as any updates. This does not mean that you cannot support older operating systems, but you must support iOS 11.
The second requirement is that any new applications, as well as any updates, must support the iPhone X's Super Retina display. This means that you have to have graphics that are 3x resolution, as well as icons that are 3x.
These requirements are not only for iPhone only applications, but also apply to universal applications as well. Luckily for me, my apps already follow these guidelines. This is because I want my apps to work on all of the modern devices.
What this signifies, to me at least, is that there will be more Super Retina screened devices in the future.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and many of them are technology-focused, which likely would come as o surprise to nobody. One of the announcement that Apple made at their Let's Take a Field Trip event was that their iOS app named Classroom was coming to the Mac.
The Classroom app allows teachers to perform a variety of tasks. Some of these include:
Start, focus, or pause student workWhat I heard many times was that the Classroom app was being ported to the Mac because the teachers are more accustom to the Mac. I understand the idea behind it. Meaning that teachers are not used to iPads. I think that for a percentage of teachers this is true, however I do not think this is the primary driving factor. Let us start with a scenario.
Imagine that you are a teacher with 25 kids. You are doing a lesson that involves showing the students the planets and what you are showing them is a video that is within the app. Along with this you would like to make sure that the students are paying attention. Since the iPad that you, as the teacher, are using is showing the app, so you cannot monitor what the students are doing.
Now, with the Classroom app on the nearby Mac, you can now keep an eye on what the students are doing while the video is playing, and if necessary put them back on task.
We are definitely in a transition time, but the immediate thought that teachers are "olds" and need to use a Mac to get stuff done. While that may be the case for a number of teachers, the ability to use the Classroom app on the Mac, in addition to an iPad, will allow teachers to monitor the students even if the iPad is currently in use.
One of my areas of interest is video games. I do own a number of consoles. The list of consoles that I own includes:
I do not generally use all of these. In fact, the only ones that I use on a regular basis are the first four listed. The Playstation 3 is effectively a Blu-ray player at this point.
My go to gaming console is the Xbox One. I do not buy that many games throughout the year. In fact, I generally only end up buying at most six a year. During 2017 I ended up buying more games than normal due to the Nintendo Switch being released. As a matter of fact, I only played eleven different games this year. I thought I would provide a ranking of the games that I have played throughout the year.
The ranking that provided above is for many reasons. I will attempt to briefly give reasons for my rankings.
Super Mario Odyssey is the best game that I have played this year. It worked flawlessly on the Nintendo Switch. It combined the best elements of classic 2D Super Mario as well as Nintendo 64 Mario, and it did this all to provide a great story and fun game play. There were only a couple of sections that I found that I could not accomplish. The new game play mechanics of using the hat did add a nice touch to the game. I hope Nintendo continues using the mechanic in another game in the future. I did not get all of the Moons, but that is okay with me.
I have been of a fan of the Wolfenstein series since I first played Wolfenstein 3D back in the MS-DOS days. I have probably purchased more copies of Wolfenstein 3D than I care to admit. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was not universally loved, like Super Mario, but I enjoyed the story and the game play. You play as BJ Blazkowicz in a continuation of the story in the 2014 reboot, Wolfenstein: The New Order. The gameplay of Wolfenstein II was fun and some new mechanics added a nice touch to a first person shooter. I ran into some issues, which is why it ended up as second in my list and not number one.
To me the Wolfenstein Series, along with Duke Nukem and Doom, will always hold a special place and as long as there is another game in the Wolfenstein universe released, I will likely end up buying it.
I do not play as many new iOS games as others do. On iOS I generally tend to stick to a couple of games, Solitaire and Tetris. PCalc is not a game, on its face. However, there is a full fledged game within the app. PCalc's author James Thomson has been working on versions of PCalc for 25 years now. Every time a new feature in iOS is added, James attempts to include it within PCalc, if it makes sense.
Within iOS 11, Apple added a bunch of new frameworks that would allow developers to add augmented reality within their apps. James has done just this. You can play a racing game, complete with track and even achievements. With the inclusion of the game in the "About" screen, I consider it a game. If you have an Apple TV, PCalc TV is the way to really play the game. Plus, besides the game, you get a fully fledged calculator and you definitely need one on the iPad.
Besides video games I love legos. As a kid, I loved playing with legos. As much as I love legos, Lego sets are a bit expensive and therefore I do not buy as many as I would like; plus I do not have the space for a bunch of sets. Now, if you combine Video games and Legos, it is a no brainer for me to get those. The strangest aspect to this purchase was that I am not a Comic book fan and do not really care to see most Comic-based movies. Therefore, I do not know about most of the characters that are included in these games. However, even with all of this, I did enjoy the Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 game.
The story was interesting and did make for a different gameplay. Despite my love for lego and video games, there was not really enough new to warrant having it go higher than it's current ranking. One of the things I try to do with Lego games is get 100% on them. However, the Lego Superhero games do not allow me to do this. The fact that it is a Lego game, is why it edged out the next game.
Unlike the Wolfenstein series, the Zelda franchise is not one that I generally partake in. The biggest reason that I ended up playing some of Zelda is that when I got my Nintendo Switch back in March there were not many games out, particularly since Mario Kart was not going to be released until April. Therefore, in order to be able to play something I picked up a copy of Zelda.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a visually stunning game. The story really does allow you to become immersed within the world and urges you on. The open world nature of the game provides a way for you to be able to go and explore wherever you want. Eventually though, it did not hold enough appeal for me to continue playing it. For those that love Zelda, it is a great game to play and is one that you should go out and play.
One of the things that is not easy to do is differentiate racing games. Racing games all have a common game mechanic, end up in first. It is not easy to make your game stand out, however for Nintendo it is a bit easier. This is due to having a large breadth of characters. Mario Kart has been the go to Nintendo racing game, not only for the iconic characters, but because of the very
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is not a brand new Mario Kart game, since it was available for the Nintendo Wii U, but the Nintendo Switch provided a boost to sales of the game. Mario Kart 8 is a traditional Mario Kart game complete with classic tracks as well as new ones. If you have played any Mario Kart games, Mario Kart 8 is one you should play as well.
There are only two iOS games on my list this year, and this is the second of them; Typeshift. TypeShift is a word puzzle game that provides you with a set of characters and the object of the game is make words using all of the characters. The catch is that the characters appear in vertical lines and have to shift each line to create the words.
While my explanation may not make a lot of sense, once you begin playing you will catch on quickly. Typeshift has become one of the games that I play daily, besides Tetris Premium and Solitaire by Mobilityware.
You may be able to tel that my primary gaming genre is the first person shooter. One of the most popular franchises is the Call of Duty series. The Call of Duty series started off as a World War II series, but eventually turned to more modern and even futuristic storylines. Call of Duty: WWII brings the franchise back to its roots with World War II, but with modern mechanics.
For me, first person shooters are the single player stories, which is the antithesis of the focus of the series for many gamers. Much like Wolfenstein II, some players did not like the single player story, but I did not mind it. It was not the best story, but you do play as a number of different characters in different scenarios which was a nice adaptation for the series.
I have only played a couple dozen online matches for Call of Duty: WWII and it is not likely that I will play many more. The online matches offer no real differentiation from pervious games and is one of the big reasons that it is number 7 on my list. If you enjoy the Call of Duty series and were hoping for it to go back to its roots, this is one that you might enjoy.
This is the second Lego video game that I have played this year, however it not the first time that I have played the game. Lego City Undercover originally came out in 2013 on the Wii U. When it was released on the Wii U it heavily relied upon the Wii U game pad for interaction. Without a game pad this time, interactions had to be adjusted.
I enjoyed playing through the game again and unlike Lego Marvel Superheroes 2, I did get 100% on this one. Because I had played it did not rank up as high as other games, but that does not diminish from how fun it is. If you take the vast open world nature of Grand Theft Auto or Zelda and place it within a world of Lego characters you will get Lego City Undercover. Lego City Undercover contains hours of fun and will keep you occupied for a long time.
With it being the debut year for the Nintendo Switch there are a number of games that are being released for the console. One of those games is a remake of a classic Nintendo franchise, Bomberman. Super Bomberman R is a rebooted Bomberman game. I never really played any of the previous Bomberman games, but I enjoyed the story mode on this one. There are 50 levels to play through where you have to complete puzzles to defeat the robot enemies. As with most games, there are some levels that are tougher than others, but overall it is a good puzzle game that will keep you entertained. There is an online multiplayer component, but I have not played online
The last game in my list for this year is Puyo Puyo Tetris. Puyo Puyo Tetris takes two franchises, Puyo Puyo and Tetris and intersperses gameplay of both games into one. I originally purchased this game because it was a Tetris game. However, I was quite disappointed with the game overall. I am sure if you were a fan of Puyo Puyo as well as Tetris you would enjoy it. However, for me, it was not anything that I enjoyed.
Those are all of the game that I have played this year. The list may not be very long but I have played all of these games for more than a cursory amount of time. The one thing that I did not expect was to have two iOS games on my list, since my iOS devices are generally where I play most of my super casual games. Typically PCalc would not be included, but everything that James has done with the app, particularly with iOS 11, warrants its inclusion. It is not likely that I will play most of these games much in 2018, excluding maybe TypeShift and PCalc. I will likely go through Wolfenstein II again once the next one is released. I may dabble in Mario Kart and Super Mario Odyssey again, but once I finish a game I typically do not go back to it.
Depending on what games are released in 2018, as well as reaction to the list, I may do another list next year.
iOS 10 for Users and Developers explores the myriad of new features in iOS 10 across all of Apple’s iOS-based devices: iPhone, iPad, tvOS, and watchOS. Some of the topics covered include Widgets, HomeKit, Payments, Unlocking your Mac, Notifications, Messages and the Music Redesign.
For Developers, the biggest changes occur within Xcode and Swift. Swift 3 is covered extensively as well as some of the new frameworks, and the updates with Xcode.
As with previous years, iOS 10 for Users and Developers is now available for pre-order from Amazon. It costs $3.99, or the equivalent around the world.
macOS Sierra for Users, Administrators, and Developers is a book that covers all of the new features of macOS Sierra. For users, some of the categories covered are the new name, Siri, changes to Photos, the Apple Watch and your Mac, Storage updates, Messages, Safari changes, and the Apple File System (APFS).
For Server Administrators, some of the items include updates to permissions, Apple Classroom, security updates, and other supported changes.
For developers, the changes in Xcode as well as Swift 3 are covered. Along side these, the new frameworks that have been unveiled by Apple are discussed.
No matter what your level of expertise, macOS Sierra for Users, Administrators, and Developers has something for everybody.
Just like the iOS 10 book, macOS Sierra for Users, Administrators, and Developers is available for pre-order Amazon. It will cost $3.99, or nearly that around the world.
Today was Apple's World Wide Developer Conference 2016 keynote. As has become the custom, Apple's 10:00 AM Pacific keynote, it is primarily focused towards consumers, with some features shown off to developers. This year's was no exception to this. Apple covered its four major operating systems in the keynote. This recap will only highlight the biggest features.
Introduced just 20 months ago, the Apple Watch has become indispensable for many individuals. The ability to view notifications as well as control applications has become a key function. However, the biggest use of the Apple Watch is health activities. The biggest complaint that users have is the speed of applications. With watchOS 3, there have been some major improvements in all of these areas.
Apps now launch nearly instantly. This is being done by keeping your favorite applications in memory. Along with this, information will be updated in the background; meaning that when you do open an application, the information will be instantly available. According to Apple's test opening an application with watchOS 3 is approximately 7x faster. This should relieve some of the issues that users are facing.
The button on the side of the Apple Watch now has a new function; to show the dock. Just like the dock on your Mac, you are able to switch between all of the applications that you have open. The Dock will show live preview, which means that current information should be shown when you browse to an app.
Health is an important aspect to the Apple Watch. With watchOS 3, you will be able to do even more around your health.
One way that motivates some users is through competition. Apple is enabling you to compare your health stats with only those that you choose. Once you view their statistics, you can send everyone a message. This could either be some encouragement, or more likely, some trash talk.
Fitness is great for everyone, yet there are some who are confined to a wheelchair. Apple has thought about this and worked with a couple of organizations to provide alternatives for those in wheelchairs. Users in wheelchairs will now be able to perform exercises for them. One of the activity rings, the Standing ring, does not apply to wheelchair users. Instead, they will receive a new notification, "Time to Roll".
Life in 2016 can be hectic and stressful. Research has shown that taking a few minutes out of the day and doing some mindful breathing can assist in reducing the stress. Apple has introduced a new feature of watchOS 3, a breathing app. As apple states
"The new Breathe app guides you through a series of deep breaths that can help you better manage everyday stress or just experience a few calming moments. Start anytime and let the mesmerizing animation and gentle taps help you focus. See your heart rate when you’re done, and use the Time to Breathe reminders to fit a session into each day."
The inclusiveness of the new health features will allow more people to become even healthier.
Sometimes we are not always within reaching distance of our phones, when an emergency occurs. It may be helpful to contact emergency services. This can be by holding down the button on the side. When a user does this, a countdown timer will begin to indicate that emergency services will be notified. This will initiate a call with local emergency anywhere in the world. Along side this, a message can be sent to your emergency contacts that includes your location so they know where you are located. This will be a big benefit to all users.
There are some new watch faces, specifically Minnie Mouse and you can even choose her dress color. You can quickly switch between faces by swiping from edge to edge.
There are a few new apps as well. These are HomeKit, Find my Friends, and Reminders. Apple Pay is being expanded to allow Apple pay to be used within apps.
Apple's latest platform is the TV. The 4th Generation Apple TV was introduced back in September. Since then it has received some much needed updates, there are even more with the tvOS 10.
tvOS 10 brings a slew of new features to the platform. These include improved Siri, a dark mode, Home Kit, Single Sign-on, and a new Apple TV Remote app.
Siri is an important aspect to tvOS. With Siri in tvOS 10, you will be able to search by any number of things. The first is that you can combine multiple criteria and Siri will be able to understand you. For instance, can ask Siri "Show me all of the Spy movies from the 1960s" and Siri on the Apple TV will show all of the movies that meet the criteria.
Siri can already search a few sources of videos. However, the biggest one in the world will be added, YouTube. This means that you can ask Siri to "Search YouTube for Cute Cat Videos", and the cute cat videos will appear.
One of the things that would make life a bit easier, for those that have multiple connected devices, would be the ability to connect to your devices when you are away. Apple has allowed this by having your Apple TV be an endpoint to securely connect to your devices when you are away. With HomeKit on iOS, you will be able to remotely change the status of your devices.
This will be a big improvement and leap forward for connected home devices.
One of the issues that can be a burden to the adoption of applications on the Apple TV is having to sign in to multiple applications with the same credentials. In order to combat this issue, Apple is offering single sign-on for video applications on the Apple TV. The biggest benefit is that a user will only need to enter in their credentials once, Apple will remember these credentials, and it will be entered in automatically on new applications.
Along with this, Apple will show you all of the applications that are able to use your sign on for your provider.
The new Remote app will be able to mimic the physical Siri remote and will have all of the same features. This includes the ability to use Siri to search for something, play games, and even display photos and videos from your iOS device to the Apple TV.
iOS was introduced in January of 2007 with a basic set of features. Each version of iOS has grown to include a bunch of new and much needed features. iOS 10 is no different in this respect. Some of the items included with iOS 10 are: Messages improvements and a Music redesign.
iMessage as a service is one of Apple's most used. It serves hundreds of millions of messages. It is nice to be able to send messages to people, but sometimes you want to spruce it up a bit. Apple has enabled a few more options within Messages.
When you message someone there are times that you want to be able to see what is being sent, without having to open the link. Apple has added previews for links. When a link appears, a preview will automatically be generated, if one can be. It is possible that a preview will not be able to be shown.
You can now perform some actions with your messages, before you send them, in order to provide some nice decoration, to your message. There are four different styles:
Slam will send the message and present it as if it were slammed down. Loud will increase the font size. Gentle will make the font smaller. Lastly, Invisible ink. Invisible Ink will obfuscate the text and require you to swipe to show the text. These changes are great for individual messages, but what if you need something with a it more pizazz. Apple has you covered there as well.
Similar to the ability to make changes to the entire screen to add even more to a message. There are five different screen effects to choose from:
Each of these will perform a different effect once you send a message. These are just a few of the myriad of changes within the Message application.
It can be troublesome to have to unlock your phone jut to be able o see the most recent information. Sometimes, okay most times, it would be nicer if there was an easier way to handle this. With iOS 10, there is such a feature, Raise to Wake.
With Raise to Wake, you are able to simply pick up your phone and you will be able to see your lock screen, which will include the currently playing audio on the main screen. If you swipe right, you will be able to see any of the widgets that you have added to Today View.
This will provide you a quick glance at the information that you need to see, right when you need to see it. All without needing to unlock your phone.
If you are using iOS 9 now, iOS 10 should work on your phone, with the exclusion of one; the iPhone 4s. The iPhone 4s will not support iOS 10. iOS 10 will be a free upgrade to all users in the Fall.
If you want to use iOS 10 sooner than this fall, a public beta is of iOS 10 will be available in July. You can sign up at beta.apple.com.
If you line up all of Apple's platforms, much in this manner:
iOS tvOS OS X watchOS
You will see something a bit askew. The biggest is that one of these things is not like the others; that is OS X. Apple is going to be consistent with its naming and renaming OS X to macOS.
Similar to previous versions of OS X, macOS also has a code name. This one is "Sierra". macOS Sierra brings some new features to the Mac, most notably Photos improvements and Siri.
One of the things that Apple has been working on, behind the scenes, is some Artificial Intelligence. This is most apparent with Siri, but Apple is going further. This time with Photos Apple is adding even more.
Photos will now be able to look at all of your photos and videos and categorize them. This could be anything within the photo. From a watch, to an ocean, to a boat, or even a dog. You will then be able to search on this item.
Similarly, Photos can automatically create different sets of pictures through Memories. Memories will be able to show you your favorite moments, or even some photos that you might have forgotten about.
All of this information is done locally on your Mac, and not transferred anywhere else. Nobody else has the information, only your local device. This is the case for both iOS and macOS.
There are many times that you may want to watch a video, while doing something else. It is possible to arrange the tabs so that you can do two things at once. However, this is not always the best option. With macOS Sierra, you will be able to have a video go to Picture-In-Picture and continue doing the tasks you wish to.
You will be able to move the video to any corner of the screen, just like on iOS.
Developers will have to implement this feature, but it would be well worth their time to do so. Once they do, however, it will be a worthwhile upgrade to viewing video.
Apple’s WWDC 2016 keynote has brought new features to all of Apple’s operating systems. On watchOS 3, you can now call for help without having access to your phone. You can also stay more fit, even if you’re in a wheel chair with specific exercises for you. Along with this, you can also compete against your friends to see who is really telling the truth when they say they’ve done more.
With tvOS you will be able to login to all of your available applications by only entering in your information nonce, instead of each time an app requires the information. tvOS will also allow you to find videos on YouTube. And all of this can be done with the Siri Remote, or with the new Remote app for your iPhone and iPad.
iOS brings a bunch of improvements to Messages. This includes new decorations for conversations on both a message by message level, as well as the entire screen. Instead of just having to unlock your phone, you can now use ‘Raise to Wake’ to wake up your phone and get a quick glance at the information you need to see, without having to unlock your phone.
macOS Sierra brings new Picture-in-Picture features, similar to those that iOS 9 brought to the iPad. The new Photos features will help you remember some of the good times you had, particularly if you forgot. With Siri on macOS Sierra, you will also be able to search not just your files, but also perform all of the same Siri searches that your iOS devices can, and even a bit more.
There is much more that is in each of the new operating systems, but these are just the biggest features in each category. There is much much more to each of the operating systems. You can view more on Apple’s website.
As for my predictions. I will likely post the results of those later in the week.
Apple's World Wide Developer Conference kicks off one week from today, on Monday June 13th. The keynote for the event is at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific time. Back in April I posted my wish list for iOS and OS X. Here are my predictions for what we will see next week.
WWDC has seen its share of new hardware being released. However, last year as well as in 2014, WWDC did not see any new hardware released. Even though the past couple of years have been hardware free, I think this year's WWDC will see some new hardware. This will include things that developers will love; a new Mac Pro and a new Thunderbolt display. If Apple were to announce high-end hardware like this, WWDC would be the best place to do so. Besides this, developers are one of the target audiences for the Mac Pro, and there is no where better to announce new hardware for developers.
Language is a fluid and dynamic entity. New words are being created, and other words are being re-appropriated for other uses. There are times though that words do not always accurately evoke the sentiment that we are looking to express. This is where Emoji come in handy. Emoji are handled by the Unicode consortium. The latest release of Emoji are to be included with Unicode 9.0, which will be released on June 21st. It is almost a foregone conclusion that we will see the Emoji of Unicode 9.0 in iOS 10. It may not be in the first beta, but it will likely be in the 2nd or 3rd beta, and most definitely by the first public beta.
I am thinking that Swift will be a giant portion of the conference. There are a couple of indications that this is the case. The first is that the WWDC site is full of Swift code. This is the first indication. The second is that Apple is preparing Swift 3 for release. Swift 3 is set to bring many new features to the language, including it being the last one to do any major code-breaking changes.
Apple's biggest selling product, the iPhone, is supported by iOS. There haven't been any rumors leaked as to what we will see with iOS, but here is what I think.
With this year's WWDC, it will be the 10th release of iOS. If tradition were to continue, Apple may just name the release iOS 10. Alternatively, Apple could name it iOS X and start changing the numbering she me. However, the 10th release is a good time to change tact. Instead of continuing to use the same numbering scheme, it may be time to change to a code name instead. Apple could start using the same code name as OS X. Given that there are times that the feature of iOS work best with the corresponding release of OS X. This approach may just work best in the long run. Yes, it would require users to know the name of the OS installed on their iPhone, yet the version of the OS could still appear under Settings.
The audio on the iPad Pro is excellent. One of the areas where iOS lacks is in the audio arena. Currently on iOS you can only record audio, but not listen at the same time. This limitation makes it difficult to be able to do a podcast entirely on an iPad, or even an iPhone. I predict that Apple will announce the ability to not only listen, but also record simultaneously. If Apple does indeed add this, there will be many happy podcasters. Additionally, this would make it even easier for non-techies to create and edit their own podcasts.
tvOS is Apple's latest operating system, based on iOS. There are many features that could be added to tvOS. One that users have been asking about is the ability to allow developers to be able require a controller for their game. Currently, Apple does not allow this to occur. If Apple really does want to make the Apple TV viable as a gaming platform, the ability to require a controller is key. I think this will be an increase in the number of podcasts, with decent audio, being released; beyond what is happening now.
watchOS has been around for just about 18 months. It was originally released in November of 2014 with the first release of Xcode with WatchKit. Last year at WWDC 2015, Apple unveiled watchOS, which allows developers to create applications that run natively on the watch.
I think there will be a slight improvement with watchOS. I think the biggest improvement will come with applications becoming faster. Some of the current speed issues is due to limitations in the hardware, but the applications do need to become faster.
The only other feature that I think we will see is the ability to create and use custom watch faces. Imagine that any company, or developer, could release a custom watch face that was able to look how one wants. It could allow for even more customization for the Apple Watch.
Along with the developer betas of iOS 10, tvOS 10, and watchOS 4, comes the oldest Apple operating system, OS X.
One of the rumors for OS X is that the name of the operating system will be changed from OS X to macOS. I did not originate this idea, but as I stated in my OS X post then:
On Episode 123 of The Talk Show with John Gruber Apple’s Vice President of Marketing, Phil Schiller, was asked about the casing of the various operating systems of Apple (iOS, tvOS, watchOS). Gruber asked why OS X was different. Schiller responded “give us time”. As Jason Snell of Six Colors has postulated “OS X will be renamed to macOS”. This is entirely possible and given the hints, it is likely to occur.
I think we will see this. Instead of being macOS 10.12, it will just be called macOS, without any numbering. If Apple is going for a cleaner look, this will definitely assist in that coming to fruition. During the 3D Touch demo at the September 2015 event, "...Apple showed an email with three place names within it. These names are Manteca, Tehachapi, and Arroyo Grande".
As mentioned above, iOS could utilize a codename instead of continuing the numbering that has been prevalent since its initial release. I think macOS and iOS codename will be "Arroyo Grande".
There have been rumors that Siri will make its way onto the Mac. The rumors also state that Siri will replace spotlight. Siri will be able to do everything that is possible on iOS. In addition, Siri will be able to search users files, much like Spotlight can do now, except it can be done via voice.
With having a large battery, power conversation is less of a concern for the Mac, but it is still important. I think Siri will gain the ability to perform tasks via voice. For instance, you will be able to say "Siri, turn off the screen", and the screen will turn off. Or something similar, like "Siri, open Tweetbot", and the Tweetbot application will open.
Here is what I think we will see, in order of likelihood.
Regardless of what Apple does end up unveiling next week, I know I will be watching the keynote live. I will also be installed the iOS on my iPhone and my iPad, macOS on my iMac and my MacBook Pro, tvOS on my 4th Generation Apple TV. I will also be posting a recap of the event as well as how well my predictions did. So be sure to check in again next week.
As I mentioned in my OS X wish list Apple has held their early 2016 event and the next event is likely to be Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). The most successful product in Apple's history is the iPhone. The iPhone managed to come about at the right time to allow Apple to propel itself to become one of the most valued companies in the world. Besides the design of the hardware, the other crucial aspect of the package is the software, iOS. Let us look at some new features of iOS that some would like to see this year.
iOS has come a long way since the initial version, iPhone OS 1.0. The feature set within iOS has definitely grown over the years. One of the biggest changes that was introduced iOS 4 was multitasking. Multitasking allows users to have applications run in the background while they are performing other tasks with their iOS devices. While multitasking has made progress, the biggest change to multitasking came last year with iOS 9. That feature is the ability to have side-by-side applications. This recent feature has made tremendous progress in productivity gains for users. While at WWDC 2015, when Apple unveiled the ability has to do side-by-side applications, as well as slide over, no one could predict that Apple would unveil the 12.9-inch iPad Pro in a few short months.
The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is the product that the side-by-side applications was designed for. While side-by-side also works on the iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 4, and 9.7-inch iPad Pro, the 12.9-inch iPad is the device that can demonstrate the utility of the feature the most. On the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, you are able to run two applications in portrait mode, and will only be missing a minimal number of pixels. This means that you effectively have two iPad Air 2's side by side.
Many have indicated that the iPad has not had the best marketing message over its six short years. This includes the initial message that the iPad was for consumption. Over the past few years Apple has attempted to change the prejudice towards the iPad by providing features that make the iPad a productivity device. Regardless of the message and what one may choose the believe, there is one thing that people cannot deny; the word "Pro" in "iPad Pro" is meant to indicate the it is professional device. There are a few applications that could cement the iPad Pro as a truly professional device. The biggest one that come stop mine is absolutely a "Pro" application. That app is Xcode.
The ability to run applications side-by-side, as well as the sheer horsepower that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro has under its hood, has lead many developers to wonder "Where is Xcode for iOS". While there are many tricky areas that would need to be flushed out in order to make Xcode on iOS a reality, it is possible. One of the limitations of any development environment is memory. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro has 4GB of memory, while the 9.7-inch iPad Pro has 2GB of memory. This would be enough to do some development directly on the device. This is one of the reasons why the iPad Pro would be the preferred platform. The iPad Air 2 also has 2GB of memory, but it may not be ideal given the reasons below.
One of the downsides of Xcode, as it stands right now, is that to be able to develop an iOS application you need a Mac. Imagine, if you will, the ability to build an application, its assets, and test an application all on iOS device. There are a couple of justifications for this. With Xcode 7, you are now able to run your own applications on your own iOS devices, without paying for an Apple Developer account. Now imagine being able to build an application that only you will use, and doing it all on your iOS device. Even better, doing so with Xcode and your application running side-by-side. Talk about live debugging.
One of the possible issues with Xcode on iOS is building interfaces. One of the best tools for this would be the Apple Pencil. Given the iPad Pro has the ability to use the Apple Pencil, the ability to create smaller touch-targets would make this easier to do. The ideal would be to require an Apple Pencil, so that the touch targets would be smaller. Even without an Apple Pencil, it would be possible to do some basic interface building. Being able to snap the interface to a grid, could be an option when not using an Apple Pencil.
The last possible reason for Xcode on iOS to exist only on the iPad Pro is to give the iPad Pro a truly professional-level application. One of the possible issues with this idea is that it would require the ability to be able to target specific devices, or limit installation and options based upon device capabilities. Apple could use some private APIs that would allow them to limit applications to specific devices, if they chose to do so.
Many developers have requested a feature that would allow them to target specific devices. This would be a significant benefit for game developers. It would allow developers to build assets tailored specifically for devices. This is already doable, to an extent, using asset slicing and on-demand resources.
To fully implement this, it would take some work not just within iOS but also on the iTunes Store. One of the requirements would be the ability to indicate on the store what devices the application is compatible with. Besides this, it would also require some work on the developer's part to verify compatibility as well as indicating which devices are compatible. This last aspect would be the least of the concerns, since it would behove the developer to provide the best experience possible for their applications.
Apple knows all of the devices that a user has attached to their iTunes account, so Apple would be able to alert users that an application is not compatible with any of their devices and would allow them to confirm they want to purchase the application regardless of their inability to actually use the application.
One of the possible downsides to adding the limit would be that some developers would only allow the latest and greatest devices. Alternatively, Apple could allow developers to just set minimums for applications that they submit. It is not likely to be a feature that comes about, but one that could add some appeal for both users and developers.
A side benefit for this could be personalized application curation. A section on the iTunes store that would show users applications that would work best on their devices. Again, this would take some integration between the iTunes Store and iOS, but it could be feasible.
iOS has seen its share of new features in the last 9 years. Just as one might begin to think that the new features that will be added will begin to wane, Apple surprises users and developers and keeps adding new features. It will be exciting to see what Apple has in store for this year's World Wide Developer Conference.
There are many different things that users complain about regarding their iPhones. The biggest complaint that many users have had in that their iOS devices seem to be losing a significant amount of battery, even when using a brand new phone. This has lead to users complaining to Apple. One of the things that Apple has done with multi-tasking is to pause applications when they are in the background. There are certain situations where this does not occur. These include background app-refreshing, background audio, Voice over iP (VoIP), or GPS.
Sometimes, it is so bad that some users purposefully force quit applications in order to preserve battery. Users do this despite there being no practical reason to do so. However, maybe users who do this may not be too far off the mark.
Last week it was uncovered that Facebook's iOS application was using a significant amount of battery even when users were not actively using the application.
Bruce Geerdes on Twitter has this tweet:
https://twitter.com/bgeerdes/status/651098925990940672
Within the image, 13% of all battery usage for the last week was due to audio. Now, why is Facebook's app even using background audio? It is not a streaming any audio what-so-ever.
As Federico Viticci states in his piece on MacStories.net:
My guess is that Facebook is hijacking audio sessions on iOS by keeping silent audio in the background whenever a video plays in the app. And because, by default, videos on Facebook auto-play on both Wi-Fi and Cellular and few people ever bother to turn it off, that means there's a high chance the Facebook app will always find a way to play a video, keep audio in the background, and consume energy to perform background tasks.
I think Federico is spot on with this presumption. Facebook is the world's largest social network, and how do you make sure that your users are "always up to date", play silent audio in the background so the application can auto-refresh without consequence, that's how.
When questioned, Facebook stated they were "looking into" the issue, and subsequently Facebook has informed TechCrunch that they are working on a "fix".
This is all well and good, but I think Apple should take a stance and remove the Facebook application from the iOS App store. This gesture would make it abundantly clear that Apple will not tolerate user-hostile actions like this from any developer, including the world's biggest social network. Removing the application would likely have some ramifications on users because they would not be able to download the application, but it would send a very strong signal.
Do I think this will happen? In a word, no. I do not think Apple is willing to remove the largest social network's application from its App Store. However, I think Apple could do a couple of things to make sure that no application is able to do this in the future, not even Facebook.
The first is do some additional testing for any applications. See what usage they have after a set amount of time. I would not expect Apple to disclose this amount of time, so developers cannot work around it. The second is to keep a database of developers whom violate the rules, and scrutinize their application updates for what they had previous violated. This means that developers would not be able to break a user's trust repeating the same action they have in the past.
Ultimately, I think if Apple really wants to have the best experience for users, they should be holding developers accountable for their actions and punishing those developers who violate the rules and provide a significantly negative user experience. One thing that I would not be surprised at is if Mark Zuckerberg gets a phone call from Tim Cook or another Apple executive inquiring as to why this is occurring.