by
Mark Ollig
Apple
Inc. CEO Tim Cook smiled and waved in response to applause, while taking the
stage during the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week at the
Moscone West building in San Francisco.
Apple’s
highly-anticipated keynote address was given before an audience of 5,000
software developers and others, who were lucky enough to get tickets.
The
26th WWDC had attendees from 70 countries, with 80 percent attending for the
first time.
Apple
reported 100 billion software applications (apps) have been downloaded by users
for its Apple computing devices.
How
many apps do you have installed on your smart device?
The
average is 119.
There
are more than 195,000 educational apps currently available in the Apple App
Store.
Another
statistic from Apple revealed nearly 850 apps are being downloaded every second
to iPhones and iPads.
Apple
says they have paid more than $30 billion for the apps purchased from the
software program developers writing the computer code.
The
young (and older) folks, who learn how to code proficiently, enjoy the
satisfaction of seeing their apps working in mobile devices and on the Web –
plus, they earn money by selling them.
During
this year’s WWDC, Apple officially announced its entrance into the
highly-competitive live-streaming music industry.
A
new Apple Music app will soon be your access to “Beats 1.”
Beats
1 is a live, 24 hours a day, seven days-a-week, online radio station operated
by Apple.
Apple
announced Beats 1 will have studios in New York, Los Angeles, and London, and
will be broadcast to more than 100 countries.
Popular
BBC Radio 1 host Zane Lowe, will be leaving the BBC, and become the disc jockey
(DJ) doing the broadcasting over Beats 1 in Los Angeles.
Ebro
Darden will be the DJ in New York, and Julie Adenuga will be stationed in the
Beats 1 London studio.
Beats
1 is going up against popular online stations such as Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio,
and Spotify.
Apple
Music will include personalized playlists, and offer millions of songs to its
users.
Beats
1 will offer exclusive interviews, guest hosts, and stay current in the world
of music.
Using
Siri (Apple’s intelligent voice assistant), an Apple Music user will be able to
issue voice commands, such as “Play me the best songs from 1994.”
Cook
described Beats 1 as “the next chapter in music.”
Apple’s
new online music-streaming service will launch June 30, with a three-month free
membership.
After
the three-month membership expires, the service will be priced at $9.99 for an
individual monthly subscription, and $14.99 for an account with six users.
It
is estimated by 2018, digital online music streaming will have become a $1.8
billion industry.
Visit
Apple’s Beats 1 website at http://tinyurl.com/beatsone.
Craig
Fedeerighi, Apple’s senior vice-president of software engineering, presented
the new operating system (OS) version for the Mac computer, OS X v10.11.
OS
X v10.11 is code-named El Capitan, and will replace the current OS X v10.10
codenamed Yosemite.
As
many of you know, El Capitan is also the name of the famous mountain in
Yosemite National Park, CA.
The
El Capitan user interface (UI) enhances management of full-screen apps.
A
new feature, called Mission Control, will cleanly display all open windows.
Onscreen finger gestures are used to interact within them.
Working
with software programs inside split-screens was also demonstrated by
Fedeerighi.
Apple’s
dedicated webpage for El Capitan is:
http://www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview.
Look
for El Capitan to become available for downloading this fall from the Mac App
Store.
The
Apple Watch also had an OS upgrade to “WatchOS 2.”
This
version will make it easier for developers to create new software apps, and
access more of the watch’s hardware, using the WatchKit SDK (software
development kit).
One
demo showed an Apple Watch user using Siri for voice-replying to an incoming
text message seen on the watch’s display face.
The
new Apple Watch OS 2.0 will not be out until autumn.
Look
for more goodies for the Apple Watch to be announced then, which,
coincidentally, is just in time for the holiday shoppers.
Apple’s
newest mobile operating system, iOS 9, will be available this fall.
Apple
demonstrated how this new operating system will allow a user to work
simultaneously inside two apps at the same time, via finger swipe commands on
an iPad screen.
The
Apple iPad full-screen “app preview” was demonstrated during the keynote using
the “Slideout” feature.
This
allows a user to multitask within apps using swipe commands, via split-view
screens.
Apple
also announced a new version of it’s Swift high-level programming language,
which is used for building apps for their iOS and OS X platforms.
Their
latest release, Swift 2, is now open source; meaning, its source code is freely
available for app developer’s redistribution and modification.
A
free Swift programming language iBook is available from Apple’s iTunes store.
It can be downloaded onto your Apple iOS or OS X device at
http://tinyurl.com/kewe7bg.
Swift
2 code information and software tools can be found at
https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources.
Resources
needed for creating apps and accessories for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple
Watch can be found in this handy Apple resource page
https://developer.apple.com/resources.
Apple's CEO Tim Cook at the start of WWDC 2015
source: (screen shot from live Apple broadcast)
