Michal Marek During this year's keynote at the WWDC developers' conference, a wide range of information was and was not heard, which is not a good idea to summarize and present, because they often logically complement the presented news such as OS X El Capitan, iOS 9 or watch OS 2. What do those fragments from the Moscone Center belong to this year?
Interesting numbers
Each Apple conference traditionally includes a number of interesting numbers, statistics and, above all, lists of the success of the Cupertino company and its products. So let's take a brief look at the most interesting figures.
- WWDC 2015 was attended by participants from 70 countries around the world, 80% of whom visited this conference for the first time. 350 participants were able to come thanks to a special scholarship program.
- OS X Yosemite is already running on 55% of all Macs, making it the industry record holder. No other computer operating system has achieved such rapid adoption.
- Siri voice assistant users ask a billion questions a week.
- Siri will be 40% faster thanks to new optimizations by Apple.
- Apple Pay now supports 2 banks, and next month, one million merchants will offer this payment method. 500 of them will be found on the first day of the service's launch in the UK.
- 100 billion apps have already been downloaded from the App Store. 850 apps are now downloaded every second. So far, $30 billion has been paid out to developers.
- The average user has 119 apps on their device, with 1,5 million apps currently available in the App Store. 195 of these apps are educational.
Swift 2
Developers will now have the 2nd version of the new Swift programming language at their disposal. It brings news and better functionality. The most interesting news is that this year Apple will release the entire code database as open-source, it will even work on Linux.
System minimization
iOS 8 was not exactly friendly to devices with less than 8GB or 16GB of memory. Updates to this system required many gigabytes of free space, and there was not much space left for the user for his own content. However, iOS 9 tackles this problem head on. For the update, the user will need only 1,3 GB of space, which is a decent year-on-year improvement compared to 4,6 GB.
Mechanisms for making applications as small as possible will also be available to developers. The most interesting option is called "App Slicing" and can be explained as follows: each downloaded application contains a large package of codes for all possible devices on which the application is supposed to work. It contains parts of the code that allow it to run on the iPad and all sizes of iPhones, parts of the code that allow it to run under both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, parts of the code with the Metal API, and so on. For example, for iPhone 5 users, quite a large part of the application code is therefore unnecessary.
And this is where the novelty comes in. Thanks to App Slicing, each user downloads only what they really need from the App Store, saving space. In addition, according to the documentation, there is almost no extra work for developers. You only have to separate the individual parts of the code with a label indicating the appropriate platform. The developer then uploads the application to the App Store in exactly the same way as before, and the store itself will take care of distributing the correct versions of the applications to users of specific devices.
The second mechanism that saves space in the phone's memory is a little more complicated. However, it can be said that applications will be allowed to use only "requested resources", i.e. data that they really need to run at the moment. For example, if you are playing a game and you are in its 3rd level, theoretically you do not need to have a tutorial recorded on your phone, you have already completed the 1st and 2nd levels, and you also do not need to have the levels from the tenth or higher.
In the case of games with in-app purchases, there is no need to store game content inside the device that you have not paid for and is therefore not unlocked. Of course, Apple specifies exactly which content can fall into this "on-demand" category in its developer documentation.
HomeKit
The HomeKit smart home platform received big news. With iOS 9, it will allow remote access via iCloud. Apple has also expanded HomeKit compatibility, and you will now be able to use smoke sensors, alarms and the like within it. Thanks to the news in watchOS, you will also be able to control HomeKit through the Apple Watch.
The first devices with HomeKit support are coming on sale now and support was also announced by Philips. It will already connect its Hue smart lighting system to HomeKit during the fall. The good news is that existing Hue bulbs will also work within HomeKit, and existing users will not be forced to purchase their new generation.
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C
Although Craig Federighi spewed out the big CarPlay news in a matter of seconds, it's definitely worth noting. After the release of iOS 9, automakers will be able to directly insert their own applications into the system. The car's on-board computer will thus already be content with one user environment, within which it will be possible to access CarPlay and various car control elements from the car manufacturer's workshop. Until now, they stood separately, but they will now be able to be part of the CarPlay system.
So if you want to use Apple Map navigation and listen to music from iTunes, but at the same time you want to regulate the temperature inside the car, you will no longer have to jump between two diametrically different environments. The car manufacturer will be able to implement a simple climate control application directly into CarPlay and thus enable a pleasant user experience with one system. The nice news is that CarPlay will be able to connect to the car wirelessly.
Apple Pay
Apple Pay received quite a bit of attention at this year's WWDC. The first big news is the arrival of the service in Great Britain. This will take place already during July, and Britain will be the first location outside the United States where the service will be launched. In Britain, over 250 points of sale are already ready to accept payments through Apple Pay, and Apple has partnered with eight of the largest British banks. Other banking institutions are expected to follow quickly.
As for using Apple Pay itself, Apple has worked on the software background of the service. Passbook will no longer be present in iOS 9. Users can find their payment cards in the new Wallet application. Loyalty and club cards will also be added here, which will also be supported by the Apple Pay service. The Apple Pay service is also opposed by the improved Maps, which in iOS 9 will provide information for businesses as to whether payment through Apple Pay is enabled in them.
A unified program for developers
The latest news concerns developers who are now united under one developer program. In practice, this means that they only need one registration and one fee of $99 per year to produce apps for iOS, OS X, and watchOS. Participation in the program also guarantees them access to all tools and beta versions of all three systems.
Add CarPlay: I'd be quite interested, but they probably don't care as much as they should, so far as I've asked, the automakers are silent :-(
But the main news is that the developer account is no longer divided into iOS and OSX, but they merged it, so you don't pay 5k a year, but only half... Finally, it clicked for them...