Posts tagged with "wwdc 2013"

WWDC 2013 Session Videos On YouTube→

Update: According to iMore’s Rene Ritchie, Apple confirmed that the videos are not official and, as suspected, in violation of the NDA.

After the release of the keynote’s video on its website, iTunes, and YouTube, WWDC 2013 session videos have surfaced on YouTube under the account WWDCVideos.

Originally tweeted by Safari and WebKit engineer Timothy Hatcher, the WWDCVideos channel has the following description:

Get an in-depth look at what’s next in iOS and OS X, and learn how to take your apps to the next level. With over 100 sessions, extensive hands–on labs, and engaging events, you’ll connect with Apple engineers and fellow developers for an incredible week of inspiration.

If confirmed official, this wouldn’t be Apple’s first YouTube channel, as the company has been uploading keynotes, promo videos, and TV commercials on the Apple channel for years now; it’s unclear, however, how such videos would be available publicly on YouTube considering Apple’s NDA, which prevents developers from discussing upcoming iOS and OS X features publicly.

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So What’s New With Apple’s MacBook Air?

 

Image credit: iFixit

Apple’s new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs now last 9 and 12 hours on battery respectively, a 4 and 5 hour improvement over the previous generation. Lots of sites have started poking and prodding at the new machines, including iFixit, known for their great do-it-yourself gadget repair manuals.

iFixit’s (mid 2013) 13-inch MacBook Air teardown

Last year’s 7.3V, 6700 mAh battery has been supplanted by a new 7.6V 7150 mAh battery. Apple noted that Flash storage was 45% faster in this revision, and that’s due to the move from a SATA based solid state drive to a PCI Express based SSD. The AirPort card has also been updated to support 802.11ac. It’s still a very proprietary machine: RAM is soldered onto the logic board and many components aren’t meant to be user replaceable or upgradeable, despite otherwise easy access to its insides.

 Wired on how Haswell saves so much power

The MacBook Air is packing a big battery, but those substantial energy savings are owned to Intel’s latest round of fourth-generation processors, known as Haswell. The new Haswell chips in today’s MBAs are part of a special low-voltage series of chips designed specifically for Ultrabooks, which Intel claims is twice as energy efficient as the previous generation.

AnandTech quick and dirty benchmarks

Something to keep in mind is that the new Haswell chips in Apple’s MacBook Airs are officially Intel HD 5000 based and not Iris.

Macworld puts the new MacBook Air through read and write paces

Macworld has the most comprehensive benchmarks at the moment, showing that the new MacBook Airs get substantially better read and write speeds with their new PCIe based SSDs. However, Haswell is pretty much in line performance-wise with the last generation of processors.

The Power of Apps

Power

Power

Amidst talk of inconsistent gradients in the first beta of iOS 7 and Jony Ive’s taste for neon colors, Apple would like to remind us how the world is being changed by technology. Specifically, how real people – actual human beings, not faceless corporations – can make an impact and change someone else’s life with apps.

In a 10-minute video uploaded earlier today on their YouTube channel, Apple has essentially produced a follow-up to last year’s developer video. This year, Apple has decided to showcase apps that are enabling people with prosthetic feet to control their movements from an iPhone; that allow doctors in Africa to instantly diagnose symptoms on people who have never seen hospitals or received proper healthcare; apps that allow a parent to listen to his kid, who was never able to speak. And in the process, Apple focuses on the other side of the coin – the people who make apps. Read more

Matt Gemmell Compares iOS 7 To iOS 6→

The smear of murky tones across the lower-right half of the iOS 6 grid is replaced with whites and a few light blues on iOS 7. Similarly, iOS 6’s handful of different visual styles (and several eccentric outliers) have become essentially two main themes on iOS 7: the paper-like, bright style in about 75% of apps, and the dark utility style for the remainder.

A great piece by Matt, especially in his thoughts on “flatness” and “brightening”. The pixelated screenshot comparison shows just how striking the difference between iOS 6 and iOS 7 is.

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Game Controller Support In iOS 7 and 10.9

As first noted by TouchArcade (via Macgasm), the iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 beta seeds released to developers on Monday include support for a new Game Controller framework that will allow games to connect to controllers plugged into iOS devices or communicating wirelessly with them. TouchArcade writes:

So here we have what appears to be a style of game controller that allows you to see the screen of your phone, as well as an entirely standalone controller with what seems to be dual analog sticks. Also, we’ve heard that Apple has reinforced that if your game is going to support a game controller it needs to be totally playable without.

There are a couple of interesting tidbits worth noting with Apple’s strategy on game controllers. As shown in a slide at the end of the keynote, game controllers will be built by hardware partners through the MFi program, which Apple has typically used for electronic accessories and AirPlay audio devices. This means that, rather than announcing its own dedicated game controller, Apple has chosen (for now) to provide a technical specification that other companies will have to follow if they want to get approval and sell controllers carrying the “Made for iPhone” badge.

Interestingly, the SDK addition follows a rumor from March 2013, when PocketGamer claimed that Apple had booked a room at the Game Developers Conference under a pseudonym to talk to developers about an upcoming physical “joypad”. For now, Apple has opted for consistency across different controller models to ensure game developers will only have to learn a single framework that lets the OS automatically take care of capturing profiles from game controllers. In addition, Apple is making the controllers optional: if a game will add support for MFi controllers, it’ll also have to provide standard multi-touch controls that don’t require a hardware controller.

iOS gaming has long been criticized for lacking the precise input of PCs, consoles, and dedicated portable gaming machines. Over the years, a number of third-party solutions aimed at enhancing iOS’ game control mechanics surfaced, but each one of them came with its proprietary SDK that required developers to manually add support for new controllers in their games. A few notable names include iCade Mobile, a hardware controller, and Joypad, an app to turn iPhones into game controllers for other devices. On the accessory side, external attachments like Ten One Design’s Fling tried to turn on-screen controls often used by developers into more tactile experiences.

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s officially-sanctioned solution for iOS 7 and 10.9 will be met by hardware companies. Apple’s requirement to make game controller optionals won’t allow game developers to build games exclusively targeting the hardware control system, which could pose a new challenge for game makers already considering truly separate touch and controller mechanics.

The iOS 7 App Store Opportunity→

Marco Arment has a good take on what iOS 7 represents for developers: a huge opportunity to differentiate apps that will inevitably remain stuck on iOS 6 from those that will embrace iOS 7’s new modern approach later this year.

As I wrote today, it’ll be interesting to see how developers of existing apps will adapt to iOS 7’s dramatic reimagination of the OS. I do believe that many will try an in-between approach to a) keep their identity in the jump to iOS 7 or b) target both iOS 6 and iOS 7 with separate interfaces. I either case, I don’t think that’s a great solution. And, I am curious to see how long it’ll take designers and developers to exclusively target iOS 7 with different, custom interfaces – as many have done in the past five years.

I’m also thinking about how the App Store team will handle the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7, which should coincide with Apple reaching the 1 million apps milestone (I was off by < 100,000 apps). Aside from App Store improvements that I mentioned in the past, I believe Apple should find a way to clearly promote and organize apps that have been built exclusively for iOS 7. The new OS isn’t just tweaking functionalities or refining some UI elements; I find it hard to envision an App Store that doesn’t make any distinction between “classic” and “modern” apps.

In the past, Apple launched App Store sections for apps taking advantage of new OSes or hardware features, and I’m wondering if, with 1 million iOS apps, differentiation between iOS 6 and iOS 7 should deserve another simple section or something more advanced like search filters, “made for iOS 7” badges, or new editorial efforts from the App Store team.

Properly promoting and organizing iOS 7 apps on the Store can benefit Apple, its users, and third-party developers. The App Store’s back catalog isn’t a new topic of discussion, but with iOS 7 and six zeros getting closer, it’s worth reconsidering it.

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iOS 7 and Aqua→

The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry was around when Aqua was first introduced:

Like with Aqua, these fundamental changes in how things work will stick around for a long time. We may complain about how things look in the short term, but improvements in usability will be something that we value much more in the long term.

But more importantly, and more subtly, is the change of focus within the apps themselves. In the design of Twitterrific 5, we went through the process of figuring out what content was most important and then designing controls around that information. Previous designs focused on the control structure first and then filled it with content.

The more I keep using iOS 7, the more I think apps like Twitterrific 5 and Vesper already are great fits for its new interface principles. They are actual, commercial proof that focusing on content first doesn’t imply ending up with boring, overly simplistic apps.

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Frank Chimero On iOS 7→

Luckily, things like icons, colors, and typography are easier to iterate than userflows, information architecture, and features. They’re also the elements that take more time than expected to craft, so I can see all of these refinements being the most likely to be cut from a tight deadline, and the first up to be revisited by the design team before the official release, or quickly thereafter. If that awful Safari icon bugs you, imagine how the designers at Apple must feel.

I do think that some aspects of iOS 7 beta 1 interface are, indeed, poorly put together. Others simply look odd right now. And I agree with Frank: when you have to introduce a working demo on stage (multiple ones, in fact) and release a developer beta on the same day, refinements are likely cut. The problem is that the Internet will notice inconsistencies; the upside is that Apple designers use the Internet, too.

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Stephen Hackett On WWDC 2013 Keynote→

When Tim Cook said that iOS 7 was the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone, he wasn’t kidding. The UI is of course drastically different, but things like background-updating and better car integration are huge changes.

However, once we can all zoom out a little bit, I think iOS 7 will be seen as an evolutionary change. A big one, perhaps, but one that shouldn’t be seen as all that surprising.

iOS 7 is a new foundation. This is how Apple rolls.

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