Ethel's big Developer Conference kicked off with a huge keynote over two hours
long that was packed full of announcements some were big new products
like the Mac Pro some were tiny little software details like hey in iOS 13
you'll finally be able to rotate videos here are the five things Apple announced
that are going to have the biggest impact on the industry so everybody's
talking about the Mac Pro and the Pro display XDR but at those sky-high prices
Apple is gonna be lucky to sell even a million oh there are very cool products
for serious creative professionals but they don't mean anything at all for most
of the billion plus Apple users out there some of the other things Apple
announced will have much bigger consequences for you take the new
privacy stuff in iOS 13 it's not sexy but it may drastically change the way
popular apps operation right now many apps let you sign in using Google or
Facebook which is convenient but it also gives the app and Google or Facebook all
sorts of data about you personal info you didn't even know you were sharing
the new sign-in with Apple featured gives you the same convenience but it
protects your privacy by sharing no hidden personal details it can even hide
your email address behind a randomized fake forwarding address Apple is making
a policy for the App Store that says that any app that allows the sign-in
with Google or Facebook buttons also has to include sign-in with Apple Plus Apple
is cracking down on apps that scan nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and Bluetooth
beacons to figure out your location even though they didn't ask for it these
changes may sound kind of dry but it means that thousands of popular apps are
going to have to find a way to make money other than gobbling up all your
personal info without telling you about and that could be huge another big
change is the split of iOS and what they're now calling iPad OS for a long
time now the iPad has had features the iPhone doesn't but they're growing even
further apart with all sorts of multitasking splitview stuff and support
for USB drives and the files that happens
it's an indication that Apple's actively growing the iPad into a product that you
can do real work with and as it lifts away the limitations of iOS it no longer
seems appropriate to call it iOS when you think about it the writing was on
the wall from the moment Apple replaced the lightning port on the iPad pro with
a USB C port iPads are no longer just big iPhones and it's going to become
really apparent as the iPad OS grows further from iOS over the next couple
years you know what else is gonna become apparent over the next couple of years
that Apple has a real legit gaming platform I mean we all know that a
billion people game on the iPhone but many core gamers don't think of that as
real gaming and nobody games on a Mac right at WWDC Apple announced that the
Apple TV iPhone and iPad will officially support Xbox one and ps4 controllers
that completely changes the game no pun intended
that means big things for the Apple arcade service coming this fall
developers can now make real games for it the kind they're used to making that
rely on the controllers that tens of millions of core gamers use every day
it's a complete capitulation by Apple they could have done this years ago
but instead they insisted on only supporting specially licensed MFI
controllers this is concrete evidence that now that Apple has got a
subscription service to get off the ground they're really listening to game
developers and gamers Apple is making some big changes to watch OS 2 there's
the usual slate of new apps and watch faces but there are even bigger changes
to the way you get apps in the first place right now every watch app needs an
iPhone companion app and it has to be installed through your iPhone with watch
OS 6 you'll be able to browse the App Store by download and run apps entirely
on your Apple watch so far the Apple watch has been strictly an iPhone
accessory and maybe with watch OS 6 you'll still need an iPhone to set up
watch but apples getting dangerously close to making it possible to buy and
use an Apple watch completely on its own Apple watch may soon be the entry point
into the Apple ecosystem from millions of people the first Apple device they
buy it's not a bad idea for such a popular and coveted piece of tech
finally maybe the biggest thing Apple announced at WWDC was project catalyst
this used to go by the codename marzipan and it's a set of tools that make it
super easy for any developer with an iOS app to get it up and running on the Mac
with very little extra code Apple said developers they tested this with got
their Mac apps up and running in as little as a day once there are tens of
thousands of popular iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac we could be looking at a
real surge in back sales I mean a lot more people have an iPhone than a Mac
when they go to buy a computer are they gonna buy the one that has all the exact
same apps they love on their iPhone or are they gonna buy the one when they
have to start over with a new software library from scratch making it super
easy to convert iOS apps into Mac apps could result in the greatest selling
point the Mac has had in a decade or more
now this isn't suddenly gonna make laptops and desktops a hot commodity
again the world is still gonna be all about those phones and tablets but it
could after a couple of years and completely change our expectations for
apps we may start to expect any good app to follow a seamlessly from phone to
tablet to laptop to desktop and that all starts with Apple taking the world's
most influential development environment and bringing it to the map now if only
that Mac Pro were a few thousand dollars cheaper