Apple’s WWDC 2014 liveblog!

Welcome to Elie Chahine’s Live WWDC 2014 Blog.

Full Post: All features in details:

Apple announces iOS 8, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, iCloud Drive and more!

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• The End!
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• Thank You!
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• He’s wrapping up all the announcements now…
• “It’s been an incredible morning.”
• “That’s iOS 8 — thank you!” Federighi about to go chug a beer now.
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• Demo time on Swift.
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• Swift code can live right beside C and Objective-C in the same app.
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• “You know how many people at home are going ‘what the heck are these guys talking about?'”
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• “When it comes to speed, Swift is great.”
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• “It’s called Swift, and it totally rules.”
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• “Now I want to move from high end 3D gaming to casual gaming with SpriteKit.”
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• There are about 5,000 petals here being physically simulated. They made a koi pond where each fish has its own AI.
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• A tree just had petals dragged onto it like a paintbrush, a cherry blossom with petals blowing in the wind and off the tree. Stunning, really.

• “An order of magnitude increase in detail.”
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• “We’ve had the opportunity to work with Metal, and we’ve created a zen garden.”
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• “To show you live what can be done with Metal, Tim Sweeny from Epic Games.”
• EA is bringing Frostbite engine to mobile.
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• 1.3 million triangles on the screen at a time on Plants vs Zombies. EA is using its Frostbiteconsole engine to run this thing.
• “We’ve been working with premium developers. What they’ve done is stunning.”
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• Big graphics booster here, focused on gaming.

• Next up… ha — Metal.

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• CloudKit lets your access iCloud auth, storage, and search for web apps. And it’s “free.”
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• Next — CloudKit.”
• Siri integration — you can say “get ready for bed” and your house will respond by locking doors and dimming lights.
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• Home automation certification from Apple.
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• “Next, Cameras.”
• TouchID for devs!
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• “And that’s a quick look at extensions in iOS 8.”
• The new sharing features have been a long time coming. Very welcome.
• Widgets inside of Safari will allow inline translation. Think Chrome extensions?
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• “Third party apps can define widgets.”
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• Photo filters inside of photos — VSCO inside of the photos app!
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• “This enables some great things — in addition to sharing options, an app like Pinterest can offer sharing.”
• “To handle extensibility in the iOS way, extensions live in app sandboxes, but apps can reach out to those apps.”
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• “I want to start with something I think is most profound. Extensibility.”
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• “Now that brings us to the SDK.”
• Everything available in the fall.
• “We’re also introducing a new beta test service called TestFlight.”
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• New editors choice logo for “the best apps.”
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• “We’re making finding your search even better by adding a continuous scrolling list.”
• 75 billion apps downloaded.
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• “And these people aren’t just browsing — they are downloading.”
• “The marketplace around these apps is incredibly vibrant.”
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• “But there’s a lot more.”
• “If we ended the keynote now, it would be a giant release.”
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• “So that’s a look at the consumer part of iOS 8. To tell the other half, I’m handing it back to Tim.”
• “Greatly improved Maps in China.” That’s very specific.
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• Shazam integration with Siri. That’s helpful.
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• He’s showing cross device syncing — favoriting a photo with realtime updates on devices.
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• He’s about to show off some editing on a dark photo.
• Craig is checking out some pics.
• “So here I am in my large photo collection.”
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• “Now we’re bringing together photos with iCloud — every photo you take available on all your devices.”
• Next up, photos.
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• “In the home we’re used to sharing physical media, but increasingly our media is in our devices. Now you can get at not just your purchases, but the purchases of everyone in your family.”
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• “We’re also working with the Mayo Clinic.”
• “We carefully protect you privacy…” Third party apps will plug into HealthKit.
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• Enter HealthKit.
• Craig is pointing out how the iPhone has been applied to many health apps and devices, but there’s no centralized place to see the data.
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• Next up… “Let’s talk about health.”
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• “98% of Fortune 500 companies use iOS. And we’re going to get those other 2%.”
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• “So this is super duper easy. You notice it said it would expire in a few minutes… these will auto destruct.” Oh people will eat that up.
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• Do not disturb by thread, and you can leave the thread.
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• “Messages is the most frequently used app on iOS.”
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• “I think we’re all going to be typing a lot faster.”
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• “It does all this learning on the device and it protects your privacy.”
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• It will guess the next word you want, and learn from your habits. Very much like Google Keyboard or SwiftKey.
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• “In iOS 8 QuickType supports predictive suggestions.” Not Apple’s idea, but a good idea.
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• Craig is talking about the difficulties of all the new features of keyboards.
• “Next is the keyboard, and something we call QuickType.”
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• This is basically Siri, but without Siri!
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• Search for apps, points of interest, news, songs — even on iTunes.
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• “So let’s talk about Spotlight.”
• “We’re all going to love doing mail this way.” I’m in love already.
• Craig is showing off the swipe feature so you can open another message in your inbox and then get back to the message you’re working on.
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• You can add events to calendar from within mail with a dropdown contextual menu.
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• The new quick access to contacts from task switcher is very smart.
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• You can like Facebook right from notifications.
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• Demo time for iOS 8…
• New action to swipe down a message you’re working on in mail and open your inbox. Interesting tweak.
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• New mail gestures for flagging and marking for later in Mail.
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• Tab view in Safari for iPad, and the Yosemite sidebar.
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• “In iOS 7 we gave quick double tap access to multitask — now you can use it to get at the people you contact the most.”
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• Works on the lockscreen as well.
• Reply directly from a notification — a la Android.
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• “With iOS 8 we’ve refined notification center — but I love our interactive notifications.”
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• “It builds on the design of iOS 7.”
• “Let’s talk about iOS 8.”

• “I missed you guys.”

  Craig is back up!

  “We want to start by talking about the user features.”

  “So you can extend your experience and build apps you couldn’t do before.”

• “iOS 8 is a giant release. And it’s really two stories not one. It has great end user features, but it also has dev features.”
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• “Today we’re announcing iOS 8.”
• “We could not be happier with iOS 7.”
• “They can’t get security updates… which is particularly important for these users because Android dominates the mobile malware market.”
• “Android […] dominates the mobile marlware market.”
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• “Many users are running an OS from 4 years ago. That’s like ancient history.”
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• “This is in stark contrast to Android.”
• “And if you look at what’s happened with iOS 7, almost 9 out of 10 people are running the latest version.”
• “One of the reasons why customers say they love iOS is that we make available our software updates for as many customers as possible.”
• “Changewave recently measured it at 97 percent. These are customer sat ratings that no one gets.”
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• “Nearly half of our customers in China switched from Android to iPhone.”
• “They decided to check out iPhone and iOS.”
• “Now many of these customers were switchers from Android. They had bought an Android phone by mistake… and then had sought a better experience, and a better life.”
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• “This is incredible — but what’s even more impressive is how many new customers to Apple these devices have brought to us.”
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• We’ve now sold over 800 million iOS devices.iPod touch has passed 100 million unitsiPad has passed 200 million units.iPhone has passed a half a billion units.
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• “Each device has set its own sales record in the past year.”
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• Tim is out. “Next up is iOS.”
• “You can sign up on the web and receive access to Yosemite through the summer.”
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• “Now we’re doing something a little unusual this summer — we’re doing a public beta.”
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• “It’s available to devs… today.”
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• “So that’s Yosemite.” Craig is wrapping it up now.
• “Dre it’s been great chatting with you, I’ll see you around campus!”
• “Talk soon.”
• “I can’t wait to get working with the team at Apple.”
• “I’m glad you called. I heard Tim gets in early — what time should I show up for work.” Ha.
• “You’re on speakerphone on my Mac with all our devs.” Large cheers.
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• “Hey how you doing, this is Dre.”
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• Oh boy — he’s about to call Dr. Dre.
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• Contextual menus pop up when you’ve selected a number.
• “I would like to show you how you make phone calls.”
• “This is my space.”
• Federighi just denied a call from his mom. The audience AWWWWED hard!
• The location awareness and the fact that Apple has a dedicated desktop OS to speak to is notable.
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• Keep in mind Google has been pioneering this kind of placeshifting with Gmail and its web apps, but this is a much more complete approach in some ways.
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• A Continuity demo… of course.
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• Now this is very smart and innovative stuff. Demo time!
• “It’s also a great way to dial the phone. Even on a webpage. You can call it right from your Mac.”
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• “We’re able to do the same thing with phone calls. You can accept the call on your Mac and use it as a speakerphone. And this works even if your phone is across the house.” Huge applause.
• It also works with Phone calls. You can accept the call and use your Mac as a speakerphone.
• “Your phone acts as a relay.”
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• This is kind of awesome and amazing.
• “But they don’t show up on our other devices… until now.”
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• “We love iMessage, but we have these green bubble friends. You know they have inferior devices.”
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• “The next thing we wanted to handle was SMS.”
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• You can start a hotspot on your iPhone from your Mac. It just recognizes your phone is nearby and lets you set it up.
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• It will pickup mail you’re writing on your phone, see that it’s near your computer using proximity awareness, and prompt you to finish the mail on your Mac.
• You can swipe your work from one device to another to pick up your activity in realtime.
• It’s a new lock screen icon on the lower left. If you swipe up on it, it lets you continue with your work on the iPad.
• “It starts with AirDrop — it now works between iOS and the Mac.”
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• My god, Apple has created the Continuous Client.
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• “We want the transitions between devices to be as natural as possible.”
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• “I hope the rope is multithreaded.” Nerd humor alert.
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• He “drew” a messy cartoon bubble with the trackpad and Markup automatically turned it into a very pretty cartoon bubble.
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• Looks like fairly powerful image editing from within the browser. Very much a Sketch-alike
• Called Markup.
• New feature within Safari — image editing a la Sketch for sharing.
• “Sharing couldn’t be easier in Safari. Now I can use the recent recipients menu to send it to Craig.”
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• Scrolling tabs, and a new “tab view” which looks insanely confusing.
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• “If you use tabs, you’re going to love this.” Hey everyone in the world, you’re going to love this.
• Google search now named checked on stage.
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• Time for a Safari demo. Nothing like a demo of a web browser to get the fires of my heart a-cracklin’.
• Craig’s now telling us how Safari is standards compliant, and it doesn’t require plugins to play video. That’s a big deal because it can (allegedly) get you up to 2 more hours of battery life when watching video. It also has the fastest JavaScript compiler of any major browser (read: Chrome)
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• It’s much cleaner, simpler look.
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• Now, we’re on to Safari. The favorites bar is not visible by default, because you get your favorites popping up as soon as you click on the address bar. It also delivers RSS feeds in your Safari sidebar, and it’s gotten one click social sharing with a single button in the righthand corner.
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• Mail Drop is a new feature that’ll allow you to email attachments up to 5GB in size. How? It automagically separates the file from the email, shoves it into iCloud and forwards a link to the file along with the email. Mac users will get the file without clicking, other clients can get to it through the link.
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• Now, we’re talking about Mail. Reliable syncing, fast message fetching and the new Yosemite look are all a part of the new version.
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• Next up: iCloud Drive. All of your iCloud drive files are available in folders from Finder now. Those files are auto-synced across devices and are fully searchable and taggable
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• Spotlight is really getting closer to Google now. Craig just showed us how it can do conversions for distance (feet to meters), and it can give you food recommendations and movie times, depending on what you’re looking for.
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• Craig’s jumping around here… now he’s talking about Spotlight again. Showing us how a person search gives you their contact info and any other documents or other appointments you have scheduled with them.
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• Back to the notification center. Weather, world clock, stocks and reminder widgets are all available (along with several others like ESPN Sportscenter and calculator).
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• Calendar now gets a new day view, along with a right side bar that gives you the details of your appointments.
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• Spotlight is going to be taking center stage, too. Literally, a big search bar shows up in the middle of your screen now, with results popping up beneath it as you search.
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• Notification Center is getting a refresh as well. You get a today view that shows your full day ahead along with a notifications pane. Tabs let you switch between them.
• Looking at left rail navigation for multiple applications (Facetime, iMessage, etc.) to give it a uniform interface.
• Yosemite now comes with a dark mode, so you can have dark gray toolbars instead of the white translucent framing of prior versions.
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• Among the new icons: a refreshed trashcan… looks like frosted glass now instead of metal mesh.
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• The focus of OS X design is clarity and usability. The window title bar is now translucent, so you can see doc scroll beneath it, and the finder window changes its color temperature to match your wallpaper.
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• Yosemite comes with a new design. OS X began with a bold aqua design, which has been refined over the years. Now we’ve got a video showing off some reworked typography and iconography.
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• Ultimately, they arrived at OS X Yosemite. Good choice, Craig.
• Craig’s telling us how Apple’s marketing team searched for the next version name for OS X. Among the discarded ideas: Oxnard, Rancho Cucamunga, and Weed (all real places in California, btw.)
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• But enough about the past, now Craig Federighi is coming up to tell us about the future of OS X.

• Time to take shots at Windows 8 adoption — only 14% of users have made the jump, according to Cook

  Over 40 million copies of OS X 10.9 Mavericks have been installed, which is over 50% of Mac users. That’s the fastest adoption in history.

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• We’re starting with Mac and OS X. “We’re shipping the best Macs in history.” The PC industry is shrinking (by 5%), but Mac adoption is growing.
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• Tim’s telling us that this year is all about OS X and iOS, and that they’ll be better integrated than ever.
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• Now he’s regaling us with WWDC’s history, how it began in 1990, and it’s grown incredibly since then. Now over 1,000 Apple engineers are here, and 2/3 of the attendees are here for the first time (me included!)
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• “From all of Apple, thank you very much.” (he’s addressing the devs in the audience)
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• “Good morning. Welcome to San Francisco,” he says. We’re here to celebrate the dev community.
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• In summary: we’re watching an extended commercial for Airbnb, Words with Friends, Tinder, etc.
• The video’s moved on to testimonials about how much folks love various apps.
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• And we’re starting things off with a video of people on the street explaining what a developer is.
• Lights are dimming…. LET THE MADNESS BEGIN.
• 2min folks!
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• T-minus ten minutes if things run according to schedule. GET PUMPED, PEOPLE.

Introducing iOS7: The mobile OS from a Whole New Perspective!

iOS 7 started with a desire to take an experience people love and make it better. To make it even simpler, more useful, and more enjoyable — but still feel instantly familiar. The design of iOS 7 is beautiful because it’s all of those things. And it’s the start of a new chapter for iOS.

Control Center, AirDrop for iOS, and smarter multitasking are just a few of the great new features in iOS 7. And all your favorite apps have been enhanced to make everything even easier to get to and use. So with iOS 7, not only is your device more capable, you are, too.

Control Center

Notification Center

Multitasking 

iTunes Radio

Photos

AirDrop

Camera

Safari

Siri

Mail

Weather

Messages 

NOTE:

1. Panorama format is available on iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPod touch (5th generation). Square and video formats and swipe to capture are available on iPhone 4 or later, iPad (3rd generation or later), iPad mini, and iPod touch (5th generation).
2. Filters in Camera are available on iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation). Filters in Photos are available on iPhone 4 or later, iPad (3rd generation or later), iPad mini, and iPod touch (5th generation).
3. AirDrop is available on iPhone 5, iPad (4th generation), iPad mini, and iPod touch (5th generation) and requires an iCloud account.

iOS 7 will be compatible with:

iPhone 4, 4S and 5.

iPod 5th Generation.

 

iPad 2, iPad Retina and iPad Mini.

iOS 7 icons and other details leak ahead of Apple’s WWDC keynote!

Spoiler alert! For folks who don’t want to ruin the surprises Apple has in store for us tomorrow, I recommend you stop reading now. The folks over at 9to5Mac say they’ve just been given a sneak peek at an early beta of iOS 7, and have described it in detail.

Contrary to a report from earlier today, it sounds like most of what we’ve heard about the next version of iOS is spot on. The entire UI has been completely redesigned with flat icons and other elements, and a new, Helvetica Nueue Ultra Light-like font…

No, those aren’t the actual icons you see above. But they are photoshop creations, by Michael Steeber, that are based on descriptions which closely match what the site believes we’ll end up seeing tomorrow. They’re quite a bit different from previous leaks.

According to 9to5, the iTunes icon is purple-ish with white iSync-like arrows instead of a music note. The Camera icon is done in a gray gradient and the icon is the same shape as the Lock screen grabber. Also, the Maps icon location is in a different place.

Here’s more from the site:

“Perhaps most interesting: There are two color schemes for many of these apps – one black-ish and one white-ish. We’re not sure if they are A/B decoys, if white iPhones and Black iPhones will have their own color schemes or as someone else suggested, the different color schemes might be invoked by the amount of ambient light or the time of day. But it is super-interesting, especially since we’ve heard whispers that the whole UI might shift slightly based on external factors similar to the way the music volume icon switches based on how you hold the iPhone.”

The report goes on to say that when a user is in ‘Black mode,’ the keyboard is black with gray letters. And when it’s in ‘white mode,’ it has gray keys with white letters, similar to the stock Android keyboard. It’s going to be quite the departure from the current version.

And they just posted a full screenshot mockup:

There’s a couple of things of note here. For one, notice how the signal bars in the top lefthand corner have been replaced by tiny white dots. And checkout the dock. The standard transparent, shelf-like graphic has been replaced by a simple straight white line.

Of course, there’s always the chance that the iOS 7 Apple shows off tomorrow could look nothing like this. But given 9to5Mac’s excellent track record in Apple intel, and the slew of matching reports we’ve seen over the months, we wouldn’t bet our money on it.

Stay Tuned for our LIVE coverage of Apple’s WWDC 2013 Today: Liveblog

LiveBlog Apple’s WWDC 2013

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Thanks to everyone for reading! Stay Tuned For ECB’s Future Posts about the new releases and future WWDC 2013 Posts !

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• “This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How will it make someone feel? Does it deserve to exist?”
• “We’ve created an ad to express this, and I’d like to share it with you now.”
• “The words we showed you at the beginning reflect our values. You’ll see these reflected in our products in the future.”
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• “We are incredibly proud of all these products. I’d like to thank everyone at Apple that works so hard to create them.”
• “What a morning. OS X Mavericks. New, incredible MacBook Airs. The next generation Mac Pro. iWork for iCloud…”
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• iOS 7 available to developers today, for everyone else in the Fall
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• “This is a major release for our developers as well. Over 1500 APIs.”
• “If a thief tries to turn off Find my iPhone or wipe the device, they will not be able to reactivate it.”
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• Activation Lock
• “There’s one feature I want to talk about in more detail.”
• FaceTime audio! , Notification Sync
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• “There’s more to iOS 7 than we had time to talk to you about today.”
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• This will be the first streaming service that has Led Zeppelin. So that’s exciting.
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• So, you can listen to radio stations, and then buy if you like the song.
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• A little demo hiccup… “Once you have a station you love, you can share it with a friend or start a new one based on the song.”
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• “Today we’re introducing an amazing new way to discover music: iTunes Radio.”
• “You see all of your purchased music right in your library.”
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• Next up, music. “This is the best music player we’ve ever done.”
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• You no longer have to manually manage app updates.
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• “What if you could get iOS on the screen that’s in your car?”
• “We want to take car integration to a whole other level.”
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• You can adjust settings with siri like brightness.. and u can now search Twitter with Siri, and Wikipedia
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• And new international voices. Very HAL-like.
• Siri has a new voice. And a male voice. And they sound really, really real.
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• “New Gorgeous interface!”
• “Let’s talk about Siri.”
• “Integration with internet services is a huge part of iOS, and never more so than with iOS 7.”
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• Apple now supports video via iCloud photo sharing.
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• AirDrop, iCloud, Twitter, Facebook… looks like there’s another icon.
• You can share into other people’s photo streams, and other people can share into yours it looks like
• “We also have great new ways to share your photos.”
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• You can tap and scrub over the photos in the year view to see larger photos.
• You can zoom out to entire years. Very interesting. “You can make out patterns of photos.”
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• New photos app automagically organizes your pictures, based on where and when — called “moments”
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• New camera app has automatic “square” camera for Instagram shots. Ha!
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• iPhone 4S will not get Airdrop, nor will the iPhone 4.
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• “You just tap to share. You don’t need to wander around, bumping your phone.”
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• Airdrop for iOS
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• No reloading of apps — looks really slick.
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• Multitasking is now almost exactly like webOS.
• Switching over to Control Center, the slide-up quick toggles menu
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• The tab overview features a very smooth animation, each page has its own preview, and you’re no longer limited to just eight.
• Tabs work as a kind of Rolodex roundabout, flying backward and forward in 3D
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• One-tap access to all your Safari favorites.
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• Your most-used apps will get priority on background cycles.
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• New multitasking for all apps — “with great battery life.”
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• Swipe up from bottom of display and reach control toggles for your oft-used settings
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• New gesture from the left edge of the device, it moves you back in an app — it’s a gesture back button!
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• Semi-parallax scrolling in Messages app
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• “You can see behind the icons, it’s really incredible.”
• “We ran out of felt and wood.”
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• “When you move the device in your hand, it actually tracks your motion.”
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• New Game Center logo and design
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• “It’s unbelievable, it’s just gorgeous. From the typography to the homescreen.”
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• Weather app not only has not active date, but no longer says 73 degrees
• “You are going to love iOS 7.”
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• “I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity.”
• “Ultimately, design defines so much of our experience.”
• Video : Jony Ive: “We’ve always thought of design of being so much more than the way something works.”
• “iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of iPhone. It’s packed with tons of new features, and a stunning new user interface.”
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• “The team at Apple has been working incredibly hard on the latest version of iOS. And today it’s a great thrill that I announce iOS 7.”
• “This is why we get so excited about working on a new version.”
• “If you look at the customers using the latest version, it’s not even close.”
• “Over 90% of iOS users are using the latest version of iOS. That stands in stark contrast to Android.”
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• “iOS blows out everyone else in satisfied users.” Interesting, Windows Phone satisfaction higher than Android on this chart
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• JD Power loves iOS devices. 9 consecutive awards.
• Mobile shopping traffic is higher on iOS devices. That’s a weird metric.
• “Just like iOS customers buy more of your incredible apps, they also buy a lot other stuff.”
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• “iPhone users use their phones 50% more than Android users.”
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• “I’m happy to tell you people are using our products substantially more than other products.”
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• “iOS powers the world’s best mobile devices.”
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• Tim is back. “Next we’d like to turn our attention to iOS.” Huge cheers.
• “We support Safari, IE, and Chrome.”
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• “I’m sure everyone wants to know how this works on Windows.” Chrome and IE being shown off.
• Image rotation, very speedy. “This is all happening in a browser!” Finally they get some applause for the rotation. Keynote 3D animation, in a browser.
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• Very slick interface for the web, however. Looks more intuitive than Google’s offerings.
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• “Let me tell you a little bit about iWork.”
• Ooh, iWork discussion…
• New iCloud icon?
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• Tim is extolling the benefits of Game Center (on iCloud).
• We now have 300m users of iTunes in the cloud.
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• “You gotta love the Mac Pro. Next I’d like to talk about iCloud.”
• Tim is back now.
• Finally, a computer for real Americans, made by real Americans.
• “This is the future of the Pro desktop. It is coming later this year. It is designed in California, and assembled here in the US.”
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• “It is a stunning product.”
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• 4 USB 3 ports, 6 Thunderbolt ports.
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• It’s 1/8th the volume of the old Mac Pro. WHAT!?
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• OH MY. It’s tiny!
• “It is a Mac unlike any we’ve ever made.”
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• Supports 4K displays.
• This delivers over 7 terraflops of performance. C’mon Phil, you just made that up.
• 
• Dual AMD CPUs. AMD!
• Thunderbolt 2.
• 
• 
• 
• The new Mac Pro looks exactly like the Braun KF 20 coffee maker.
• We’re seeing spherical shapes in a video now.
• 
• Extremely low sub bass.
• 
• “The engineers have come up with something truly radical.”
• “We didn’t just want to make the same version of the desktop idea that everyone has.”
• Also, MacBook Airs start shipping today.
• Oh snap. New Mac Pros.
• 
• 
• 
• 11-inch starts at $999. 13-inch at $1,099.
• 
• Think about all the data you’ll lose when those mechanical drives fail.
• New Time Capsules — 2TB or 3TB hard drives.
• New Airport base stations, entirely new designs. 4-inches by 6-inches.
• 
• 
• Up to 10 hours of movie playback.
• 
• If that’s true, it’s fantastic.
• 11 inch will get 9 hours, 13 inch will get 12 hours.
• “But the biggest benefit is battery life.”
• 40% faster graphics.
• 
• “The MBA is based on Haswell ULT. It’s a great processor for battery.”
• “We’re really pleased to tell you that we’ve updated an entirely new line of MacBook Airs.”
• 
• “Good morning everyone. I’d like to talk to you about the MacBook Air.”
• Phil Schiller is out.
• Developer preview of Mavericks available today. Final release this Fall.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• You can select chapters. Gripping stuff.
• Now working his way through books. They’re books. On your Mac.
• 
• Also, didn’t Jobs love these faux textures? Making fun of the old look feels a little harsh, though certainly warranted.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• The scarcity of POIs shown on Apple Maps is striking if you’re a Google Maps user. Paris looks like a ghost town.
• Beautiful maps on your Mac. I would just double check the directions on Google Maps
• 
• 
• Demo time, again.
• Your full library from your iOS devices, available on your Mac.
• 
• “Finally, we’re bringing iBooks to the Mac.”
• “We’re providing an SDK to add mapping functions to your apps.”
• Push directions from Maps on your Mac to your iPhone.
• 
• 
• “No virtual cows were harmed in the making of this.”
• 
• New calendar. Leather is gone.
• Push notifications from apps will push iOS alerts to your Mac. Notifications on the lockscreen. It will also do app updates in the background.
• 
• 
• Reply right to notifications. Email, FaceTime, Messages.
• 
• 
• “Next, some improvements to notifications.”
• 
• Will also remember credit cards. “But you have to remember your own security code.”
• 
• Looks like Google Chrome sync is coming to Macs and iOS devices — Apple style. iCloud keychain will hold all of your passwords in the cloud, across devices. Safari will also auto-suggest passwords.
• “We have some more improvements that I think is really going to help you with your browsing. One of them is iCloud keychain.”
• “And that’s Safari in Mavericks.”
• Deep Twitter integration into Safari. Almost like a limited Twitter client (as Walt just suggested).
• 
• It intelligently focuses power on what app / window you’re focused on while working. Very cool.
• 
• demo time
• Mail tweaks. “Super glassy smooth scrolling.”
• “It uses way less energy than Chrome, and when you compare to Firefox, it’s just sad.”
• Craig going through Safari’s performance wins over competing browsers.
• 
• New Safari has a sidebar bookmarks bar. Reading lists on the sidebar, also Twitter and LinkedIn.
• 
• “The engine in Safari is used by over 1.5 billion devices.”
• 
• “Next let’s talk about Safari.”
• 
• 
• 
• “In Mavericks, we intelligently align the work of your computer’s power transitions, which reduces CPU activity up to 72%. It’s pretty awesome.”
• “Now I’d like to talk about some advanced tech in Mavericks.”
• 
• Using an Apple TV connected display / TV as a second monitor looks handy. An extension of mirroring in some ways.
• 
• “Mission Control has been supercharged for multiple displays.”
• Multiple display tweaks are nice. Will make a lot of nerds very happy. Regular people just now hearing about multiple displays for the first time.
• 
• Applause for tags. Actual, human applause.
• Tags and tabs. Hot for 2013.
• 
• You can also drag items into a tag window to add the tag.
• 
• Craig is just running through tab use. Next up is tagging.
• 
• These tabs look quite handy.
• 
• “I’m going to go up here and merge all my windows.”
• Demo time!
• 
• “Finally, if you have an Airplay connected HDTV, it acts as a full power connected display as well.”
• “With multiple displays on the Mac, its always been a powerful way to work.” Dock, menubar now on both displays.
• 
• Huge cheers!
• 
• “Next, multiple displays.”
• 
• “Tags are great for search as well.”
• Tags for documents. Where ever they are.
• 
• “We’re bringing tagging to the Mac.”
• “Next, tagging.” Someone yelled “yes!”
• “It’s also a great app to take full screen.”
• So, you can work in the finder with multiple windows, but now you can draw all of those windows together in tabs.”
• 
• “I want to talk about three of them right now.”
• “It has great new apps and enhancements.”
• “For our first CA themed release, we went just to our backyard. OS X Mavericks.”
• 
• “We want a name for the next 10 years. It’s the places that inspire us here in California. Where OS X is designed.”
• 
• “We thought maybe we could take this in a different direction. So I’m proud to present: Sea Lion.”
• “As we turn our attention now to the 10th version, we’ve hit an issue. We do not want to be the first software in history to be delayed because of a dwindling supply of cats.”
• 
• 
• “Let’s talk about OS X.”
• Craig Federighi is on stage.
• “We’re making the best Macs, but we’re not standing still.”
• 
• “It’s our best-selling release of all time.”
• “We had lots of innovation for the Mac last year. One of those was Mountain Lion.”
• “For us it’s never been about making the most. We care more that the Mac is number one in customer satisfaction and quality.”
• Average annual growth rate for Mac is 15% versus 3% for PCs.
• “The MacBook has continued to define the future of the notebook. It’s the number one notebook in the US.”
• 
• “The install base is incredibly strong. 72 million.”
• “Next I’d like to talk about the Mac.”
• “On behalf of Apple, I’d like to thank all of the developers here for making such incredible apps.”
• Tim is back. “I think these guys are going to be incredibly successful.”
• 
• Anki Drive is available today. “We are a robotics and AI company, and this is only the beginning.”
• “With Anki Drive we use technology to take gaming to a whole new level. You can play against your friends, or take your chances against the AI.”
• And the car uses weapons to shoot other cars off of the road. “This is a video game in the real world.” Big applause for that.
• This is pretty cool — the cars are using AI to try and outsmart and outrace each other.
• 
•  Boris placed a car on the track and it began lapping the other vehicles. Think those old track racing games you played as a kid. But with no weird pin-track.
• “Alright, he’s a little camera shy.”
• 
• 
• “We’re so excited to give you a peek at our first product, Anki drive.”
• 
• Boris Sofman from Anki is out to talk about the product.
• 
• “They’re using iOS devices and the platform to bring AI and robotics into our daily lives.”
• 
• “One thing we love about the app store is that it levels the playing field between large and small developers.”
• “That’s three times more than all other platforms combined.”
• 
• 
• “We are incredibly proud this morning to announce we have now paid developers $10 billion.”
• “We have 375k apps designed for iPad, to take advantage of the full, beautiful canvas.”
• 
• “Thanks to you we now have 900k apps in the store.”
• 50 billion apps downloaded.
• 
• “It’s a fantastic store in a great location. Only Apple can do this.” Well…
• 
• 
• Honestly, you usually don’t see Germans emote this much. They seem pretty psyched.
• 
• Now a video showing the opening of the store in Berlin. You’ve never felt this pumped about a retail outlet in your life.
• We recently opened this beautiful store in Berlin. It was originally one of the first theaters in Berlin.”
• 
• Tim is now talking about Apple’s retail stores. “The people who work at our stores are passionate about how technology can affect people’s lives.”
• 
• “We sold out WWDC in just over a minute.”
• 
• 
• “I’m really glad you liked that. Those words mean a great deal to us, and you’ll see that reflected a great deal today. Welcome ot the Worldwide Developers Conference. You’re going to have an incredible week.”
• Tim Cook is on stage! Huge applause!
• 
• The video is haunting, simple, beautiful… flat, admittedly.
• 
• “How can anyone perfect anything? we start to confuse convenience with joy.”
• 
• Here go the lights. We’re ready to begin!
• “Ladies and gentlemen, please switch all electronic devices to silent mode.” And now, upbeat Vampire Weekend!
• Device are being ordered into silent mode. Everyone’s been warned.
• 7 minutes lef!
• By the way, we are now TEN minutes away from keynote commencement. Are you ready? We sure are.
• By the way, Microsoft’s E3 event is trucking along right this very moment! Microsoft just announced a new Xbox 360! Because, why not?
• The tone right now is much calmer and more mellow than past WWDC events.
• Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer shows up for WWDC.
• Just spotted Jony Ive in the house. Just in case you were wondering if he’d show.
• 
• The connectivity there is absolutely brutal. House WiFi: down. Verizon LTE: down. AT&T: barely hanging on.( Be Patient!)
• 20 minutes left!
• 
• Apple reps: We’ve added an additional 2000 seats this year at the event.
• Still about a half hour to go — the very big room is starting to fill out.
• Tim Cook, meeting and greeting!
• 
• By the way, we have two folks wearing Google Glass
• 
• Mr. Cook’s got the top two buttons unbuttoned. Rocking the executive casual look.
• 
• People are taking their seats
• Apple’s Online Store is now down ahead of WWDC
• 
• The line at WWDC is crazy right now!

_________

It’s time for WWDC 2013! Apple’s developer conference is going to take place today starting at 10AM PT (8Pm Beirut Time) and of course, we’re super-excited because we know we’re going to see iOS 7 for the first time.

As you probably know, iOS 7 is expected to the first major renovation of Apple’s mobile platform since its very beginning. Under the management of Sir Jony Ive, iOS 7 is said to sport a more contemporary, “flatter” look. However, exactly what new features Apple has in store for us remains to be seen.

 Be sure to stay tuned to Elie Chahine’s Blog as we’re going to cover all the news coming out of

WWDC 2013 for you! The keynote will begin at 1PM ET | 12PM CT | 11AM MT | 10AM PT | 5PM GMT | 7PM CET | 8Pm Beirut.

Apple WWDC 2013: What to expect ?

Monday can’t come fast enough for fans of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant is expected to announce a plethora of software and hardware goodies at the keynote for its 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, which takes place June 10-14.

Apple has been playfully decorating the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco this past week, and by the looks of the various colorful banners, Apple will indeed be introducing the next-generation software for Mac computers — OS X, likely 10.9 but possibly  11.0 — and the iOS family, which includes iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. But Apple is also said to have several surprises waiting in the wings at the event, including new Mac desktops and laptops, a redesigned 9.7-inch iPad (“iPad 5”), its long-awaited music streaming Pandora-killer iRadio, and even its highly rumored futuristic wristwatch called the “iWatch.”

Until Apple raises the curtains at WWDC 2013 on Monday, here’s what we’re putting our money on regarding Apple’s various hardware and software announcements.

1. iOS 7

Apple has released a new iOS each year since the first iPhone in 2007, and WWDC 2013 will be no different. But unlike past years, where iOS 5 and iOS 6 made minimal additions to the iPhone and iPad experience, iOS 7 is expected to introduce major visual and functional changes to the ecosystem for the very first time since 2007.

Since longtime iOS chief Scott Forstall got the boot from Apple in October, lead designerSir Jony Ive  has taken over “human interface” duties at the company, and has reportedly spent a great deal of time redesigning iOS for iOS 7, removing the operating system’s manyskeuomorphic  elements — those ornamental elements that only serve as decorating metaphors instead of functional features, like the lines on the yellow Notepad app and the green felt texture on the Game Center app — and replacing them with “flat,” simple features and textures. For more on iOS 7, check out some alleged screenshots of the new operating system in action, the 11 features we’re hoping to see in iOS 7, as well as the improvements to Siri we’re hoping to see when Apple unveils iOS 7 at WWDC 2013.

2. New Mac OS X, Either 10.9 Or 11.0

We don’t know which big cat Apple plans to name this new Mac OS X build after at WWDC 2013, but we do know that Apple’s been working on OS X 10.9 for some time now: According to 9to5Mac, Apple began developing Mac OS X 10.9 simultaneously  with last year’s OS X “Mountain Lion,” which similarly sought to integrate more iOS features into the Mac experience, such as the Notification Center, Notes, Reminders, Dictation, and document syncing in iCloud. As Apple continues to tie iOS and OS X closer together, we are largely expecting Apple to release Siri and Apple Maps — its two most-used applications on iOS — in Mac OS X 10.9, as well as introduce iBooks and Newsstand to the Mac, and ensure the new Mac design mirrors the new simplified experience in iOS 7. We’re also expecting Apple to gift some of its “power users” with some added functionality to the Finder, as well as the ability to port full-screen applications to multiple displays.

3. iRadio

In 2012, iRadio rumors heated up and suddenly dissipated as deals with the major record companies reportedly stagnated; then in January, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield  said the iRadio was back on, and that Apple was close to finishing its Spotify-like music streaming service, which is said to communicate with a user’s iTunes Store account and Genius software to suggest music for listening or purchasing. While it’s unclear if the iRadio service will be free or require a subscription, Apple is said to have incorporated its iAd advertising platform to then share part of the ad revenue with the record labels. With the last of the major record companies reportedly signing on  earlier this week — Sony, which was not-so-coincidentally the last remaining holdout when Steve Jobs originally tried to seal the deal with the iTunes Store —  it looks like Apple is finally clear to introduce the iRadio on Monday at the WWDC 2013 keynote.

4. New Macs

At last year’s WWDC, Apple upgraded its Mac lineup, refreshing its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops with newer processors and also introduced the first MacBook Pro with Retina display. Considering how Apple fans were upset at how the Mac Pro wascompletely neglected at WWDC 2012 (and Cook’s response to a concerned fan) consumers can expect Apple to introduce a new Mac Pro tower desktop, likely with a complete redesign, at WWDC 2013.

“Our pro customers are really important to us,” Cook said . “Don’t worry, as we’re working on something really great for later next year.”

We’re fully expecting a completely redesigned Mac Pro  to release at WWDC 2013 – we’re even surprised Apple hasn’t released the computer even sooner, considering how Apple can no longer sell the computer in Europe, given a new regulatory guideline that went into effect on March 1. But besides the Mac Pro, it’s likely Apple will releaseupgraded versions of its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air at WWDC 2013, and possibly remove the non-Retina MacBook Pro model from its inventory, citing low sales of the computer. China-based DigiTimes said  in April that Apple would release “its new MacBook products at the end of the second quarter,” while reliable analyst from KGI Securities Ming-Chi Kuo predicted in January  that Apple would “do away with the non-Retina MacBook Pro line in 2013, moving to an all-Retina lineup at cheaper price points than the current Retina models,” and even make a few tweaks to the design of the Retina MacBook Pros. Recent reports have said Apple will endow its newest MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro with Intel’s new fourth-generation Haswell processors, and will make the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro a bit thinner too.

5. iPad 5

Considering all of the other announcements set to take place at WWDC 2013, nobody really thinks Apple will also announce its fifth-generation full-sized iPad at Monday’s event. That said, rumors of the tablet have been floating around for months, and one case maker — citing “inside sources” — has gone all in on iPad 5 rumors by launching new iPad 5 cases based on rumored specs long before the tablet is even announced. The iPad 5 is said to be a bit shorter and narrower than the iPad 4, and to be similarly built like the iPad mini with a dark aluminum finish, tapered edges and extremely thin side bezels, which reduce the overall size of the tablet without affecting the 9.7-inch Retina display. We’ve been hearing about this iPad for months, so it’s possible Apple will simply release this redesigned tablet to accompany the release of iOS 7. But if we don’t see an iPad at WWDC 2013, there’s a great chance we will finally see the unveiling of…

The iWatch.

Apple’s take on the super spy wristwatch has been rumored for some time now, but even if we don’t see the iWatch released this summer, there’s a great chance we will see it unveiled for the very first time at WWDC 2013, which would give Apple plenty of time to build hype for the iWatch before its alleged release date in late 2013 — just in time for the holidays.

With rival companies like Samsung and Google working on their own smart watches, Apple has reportedly already begun producing 1.5-inch OLED touch-sensitive displays to build roughly 1,000 units of the iWatch, which isn’t enough for mass production but is enough for a small-scale trial, or possibly even an unveiling.

Like the Pebble E-Paper Watch, which debuted on Kickstarter and raised more than $10 million last April, Apple’s iWatch would work with your iPhone or Android smartphone to track one’s general exercise, but also control one’s music and notifications from their calendar, or even Facebook and Twitter, directly on the watch’s tiny display. But with the ability to store data in the cloud with iCloud, an iWatch wouldn’t need massive amounts of storage to use Siri, Apple Maps, or Bluetooth to send information back and forth to one’s smartphone. With its release date expected later this year, Apple could drop many jaws by unveiling this enticing wearable device at WWDC 2013 before a full announcement just before its release date later this year.