The WWDC 2017 Platforms State of the Union, during which Apple laid out what’s new for developers, brimmed with updates. The session at Apple’s annual developer conference focused on fundamentals of and refinements to iOS 11, Swift and Xcode, delivering vital details for coders.
Relive the session’s highlights with these sketchnotes, which should give Apple developers and Apple users alike much to be excited about.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Coding is intimidating. It seems preposterously hard. So technical. You need degrees and training and a certain kind of brain.
But Jessica Dennis, a programmer working in upstate New York, says that’s not true.
To become a programmer, you just need to know how to Google.
Apple’s most affordable 13-inch MacBook Pro has been discontinued.
The 2015 model has held onto its place on the Apple online store as a more affordable alternative to more recent MacBook Pros, but you’ll have to buy one of the company’s latest notebooks if you want to stick with a 13-inch display.
Apple is planning to cut down on its reliance of Samsung displays with future models of the Apple Watch by adopting microLED screens. According to a new report out of Asia, the switch could come as soon as next year.
When Apple revealed the name of its next macOS update this week, Jonathan Mann — like a lot of Apple watchers — found himself somewhat amused by the “High Sierra” moniker.
If you don’t know Mann by name, you may well be familiar with his work. A YouTube musician and Apple fan, he has composed more than 40 songs about his favorite tech company over the years — including one that once made Steve Jobs dance.
Check out his appropriately smoky macOS High Sierra song below.
That line, the best camera is the one that’s always with you, gets associated with the iPhone. SANDMARC says its newest product is the camera accessory you will always want with your iPhone.
It’s vying for that place with a claim of adding “cinematic drama” to your iPhone photos with a set of clip-on polarizer and neutral density filters that will improve dynamic range, reduce glare and reflections, enhance color and add motion blur.
Apple brought drag and drop to the iPad with iOS 11, making it easier than ever to transfer content between multiple apps. It turns out the feature will also be available on the iPhone — but it won’t be anywhere near as good.
Rather than completely overhauling the Home screen in iOS 11, Apple settled for a few neat tweaks that will make using your iPhone easier. One of the coolest new features makes the previously clunky process of organizing your Home screen a lot less annoying.
Rather than painstakingly dragging individual app icons across the pages of your Home screen, iOS 11 lets you move multiple icons simultaneously with this hidden trick.
For all the use we get out of our iDevices, iTunes doesn’t offer much choice in how we manage their data. Whether it’s hidden files eating up storage, or the complex dance required to move a single song from one place to another, it can be more hassle than convenience. There’s just has to be a better way. And of course, there is.
iMazing 2 is a popular app that offers a spread of tools for moving and managing every category of iOS data. No wonder this app calls itself the Swiss Army Knife of iPhone, iPad, and iPod management. Easily browse and manage backups, extract and print text messages, drag and drop songs from one device to another, all without jailbreaking or other trickery. And right now is your last chance to get iMazing 2 for just $24.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Do you hate going outside without anything on your feet? Happen to have a spare $30,000 sloshing around? Then you could be the lucky owner of an incredibly rare pair of authentic 1990s Apple sneakers, going up for auction this weekend.
Part of a Beverly Hills auction titled “The Future is Now” by Heritage Auctions, the shoes will be sold off on June 11, alongside an assortment of “sneakers, surfboards, skateboard decks and street art.”
With its new reality show Planet of the Apps, Apple didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It slapped a new body on a well-worn vehicle — wannabe entrepreneurs pitching their precious ideas to a panel of questionable celebrity experts — and drove straight to “Meh-ville.”
iOS 11 can prevent apps like Uber and Waze from using your location at all times.
Apple has added a new location option in the update that will rollout to everyone this fall, which only allows certain apps to access location data while they are open and active.
iOS 11 won’t run any 32-bit apps. Most of the time, that won’t make any difference — most apps you use every day were updated to be 64-bit a long time ago. But we all have a few of those old apps laying around that haven’t been updated in years. Perhaps they’re still useful for you, or maybe Apple kicked the app out of the App Store and there’s no modern alternative?
Under iOS 11, those apps will no longer work. You may as well just delete them. And to help, there’s a spot in the Setting app where you can see a list of all those incompatible apps.
iOS 11 has gotten a big upgrade to its QuickView video player, the one that takes care of videos playing in apps, on web sites, and so on. Previously you only got a basic video scrubber, a volume slider, and a play button. Now, you can not only access subtitles and AirPlay right from the video screen, but you can control pretty much everything in the new iOS 11 video player with a keyboard.
Do you have any websites you read regularly in Reader view? Maybe they’re covered in popovers that keep distracting you? Or perhaps the design hurts your sensitive eyes, or the otherwise smart author insists on using Comic Sans for the text body? Well, there’s good news: Safari on iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra now let you activate Persistent Reader View, which automatically switches the clean Reader view in as the page loads.
This week, student Kenny Batista will be writing a diary from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Kenny won a coveted WWDC Scholarship, which includes food, lodging and VIP access.
SAN JOSE, California — Amazing first two days here at dub dub. Let me give you a detailed, eye-witness journal entry!
Today was Day 2 of WWDC. Former first lady Michelle Obama came in to speak on stage. She was truly inspirational. And Christine Darden, a NASA engineer portrayed in the book Hidden Figures, taught us all about supersonic airplanes.
Apple is looking to move away from the honeycomb-style app selection screen that debuted on the first Apple Watch.
With the new watchOS 4 software update coming to the public later this fall, Apple added an option that lets Apple Watch owners change the way they view and select apps.
Ditch the honeycomb for good with these steps:
Talking to Siri can be a bit embarrassing when you’re in crowded public spaces, but with iOS 11, Apple is finally allowing users to submit questions to the digital assistant via text.
Apple didn’t mention the new feature during its WWDC 2017 keynote, however it’s already become one of our favorite additions in the new beta because it gives iPhone and iPad owners the closest thing yet to a command line.
To enable the feature, follow these steps:
Sitting on a cash pile of billions, Apple’s not a company that’s used to being left behind. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, that’s exactly what has happened in recent years. While companies like Google and Facebook led the way with cutting-edge AI, Apple lagged. It was embarrassing for a company in Apple’s position to miss out on the single best tech revolution taking place at the moment.
But during Monday’s WWDC 2017 keynote, Apple went a long way toward making amends.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a bunch of apps installed on your iPhone, taking up precious storage space, that you never use anymore. When iOS 11 drops this fall, you’ll have the option to get those apps uninstalled automatically.
This story has been updated to include comments from Bozoma Saint John.
Bozoma Saint John, one of Apple’s most entertaining keynote presenters, is leaving the company to work for Uber as the ride-sharing startup’s chief brand officer.
Her task? Fixing Uber’s tarnished image in the wake of sexual harassment allegations and other recent turmoil
There’s a lot of stuff Apple didn’t get a chance to tell us about in iOS 11 during Monday’s WWDC 2017 keynote. Most of the new iOS 11 features look awesome, but you might not be so keen on a couple of changes — like the disappearance of a number of popular social media services.
Lightning cables are the lifelines for our most used mobile devices. Without them, we can’t charge or sync the data on our iPhones, iPads or iPods. And if you buy a wonky third party alternative, you’re often going to get a lot of buzzing and failed connections thrown into the mix. These ultra tough, MFi-Certified Lightning cables address all of the above. Worthy of any Apple device, they’re built to Tony Stark standards of toughness so that they’ll outlast the devices you connect them to. And right now, you can get a two pack of Toughlink MFi-Certified Metal Braided Lightning Cables for just $29.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
When you spend time working at the keyboard, you inevitably waste time by typing the same thing over and over. You might not notice it, but these small patterns can add up to a lot of wasted time. TextExpander is a popular app designed to cut down on these time-wasting typing patterns. It works via a set of custom shortcuts that you can call up whenever you need them. And right now, you can get a year of TextExpander for just $19.98 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Apple is finally embracing virtual reality with new Macs that are powerful enough to run VR apps and games. To support that commitment, Valve has launched its SteamVR platform on macOS in beta.