©Mark Ollig
The San Jose McEnery Convention Center in downtown San
Jose, CA played host this week for Apple’s 18th World Wide Developers
Conference (WWDC).
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, announced the Apple software
developer community now has 16 million registered members from around the
world.
Approximately 5,300 software developers from 75
countries attended this week’s WWDC.
The youngest software developer attending is 10 years
old, and currently has five applications (apps) in the Apple App Store, while
the oldest published her first software app at the age of 82.
This proves a person is never too young or too old to
learn how to program and build useful software apps for today and tomorrow’s
smart devices.
Using Apple’s Xcode 9 software, you can build apps for
the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.
Learn to program apps for Apple devices using Xcode
here: https://developer.apple.com/xcode.
Another Apple programming language tool called Swift is
used for writing programs to support Apple operating systems such as: iOS,
macOS, and watchOS.
Swift 3 and 4 code is said to be a good introduction to
modern programming for students to learn.
Its website is: https://swift.org.
Cook introduced the new iPad Pro with its 10.5-inch
screen, and Apple 64-bit A10X Fusion processor.
The iPad Pro is 20 percent larger than the standard
iPad, and weighs 1 pound.
It supports an on-screen keyboard, as well as an
external, full-size physical keyboard.
Apple also unveiled its new iOS 11 operating system for
their iPhone and iPad devices.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of
software engineering, said using iOS 11 allows your Messages app conversations
to “sync up to the iCloud,” and appear even when switching between devices.
He said a message deleted on your iPhone will also be
automatically deleted across your other Apple devices.
Apple iPad users will be able to drag-and-drop text,
photos, and file content between apps with iOS 11 installed.
Taking screenshots and annotating them with text notes
is another added feature.
Users will also be able to perform a search of their
handwritten text within Apple’s Notes app.
A free iOS 11 upgrade to Apple user’s existing devices
will be available this fall.
Machine learning is also part of the new Apple iOS.
Apple is adding new Application Program Interface
protocols for developers to use for influencing machine learning between
working apps.
To me, this is an indication Apple is pursuing the use
of artificial intelligence in its future devices . . . we’ll see.
Phil Schiller, senior vice-president of worldwide
marketing at Apple, talked about the Apple App Store.
As of this date, Apple users have downloaded 180
billion apps to their devices.
Apple said it has paid $70 billion to the software
developers who created them.
There’s a new iPhone safety feature called Do Not
Disturb. Once activated, it detects when you’re driving, and will automatically
silence itself to incoming alerts and notifications. This feature allows you to
concentrate on driving.
Apple’s Live Photos app will now support “looping.”
This feature allows users to create their own animated
GIF (I pronounce it “Jiff” like the peanut butter) photos which have become
popular on Twitter and Facebook.
It was stated Apple iOS device owners take 1 trillion
photos a year – now that’s a lot of photos.
Videos taken with new Apple devices will use the H.265
video compression standard called High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
HEVC reportedly captures better quality videos, and
uses less storage space.
As for Apple’s personal assistant, Siri, Federighi says
they’re using deep-learning technology to give its voice “more personality.”
The new female and male Siri voices will sound more
human in their inflection and cadence.
Siri will also be able to translate languages in
real-time; just like the “Star Trek” universal translator.
Apple’s new iMac desktop computer will feature
seventh-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, more data storage, 50
percent faster SSD’s (solid-state drive), and up to 3TB (terabyte) of storage
via the Fusion Drive.
Federighi confirmed the new macOS 10.13 operating
system for the iMac is code-named High Sierra, which “is all about deep
technology,” he said.
Apple announced its all-new iMac Pro computer equipped
with an 8-, 10-, or 18-core Xeon processor, Turbo Boost processor speeds of up
to 4.5GHz (gigahertz), capacity for a 42MB (megabyte) cache, and all-flash
storage of up to 4TB.
It also is equipped with four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C)
ports.
The iMac Pro supports a 27-inch Retina 5k display
supporting a P3 color gamut generating over a billion colors; which amazes me,
since the most colors I’ve seen all at once were the 64 inside the large
Crayola crayon box (with sharpener) I had in grade school.
Apple also redesigned the warm-air flow architecture of
the iMac Pro with dual-blowers, a considerably larger heatsink, and additional
air venting.
The redesign manages the iMac Pro’s capacity of 500
watts of power; which is 67 percent more than the previous iMac model.
This new Apple iMac Pro computer will operate extremely
fast; and, I suspect, be extremely expensive.
Look for the iMac Pro to be available just in time for
the December holiday gift-giving season.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter at
@bitsandbytes.
Tim Cook welcomes developers from 75 different countries to WWDC 2017.
