Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/06/friday-morning-news170616/
On the opening day of WWDC, John Gruber hosted a live version of his The Talk Show podcast, where he was joined by special guests Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller and Apple SVP Software Engineering Craig Federighi. While the audio and video versions of the podcast aren’t available online just yet, the trio talked about many topics in the just-announced iOS 10, including Messages improvements, Siri’s SDK, and even why the Mac App Store appeared to be the red-headed stepchild.
During the podcast, Craig Federighi clarified that deleting Apple’s pre-installed apps in iOS 10 doesn’t actually delete them, but does remove the system hooks and any user data stored within them. Sadly, taking this at face value means that it seems unlikely Apple will allow third-party apps to become the default handlers, as third-party apps are prevented from registering, say, the mailto:// URL handler protocol.
With watchOS 3, Apple has decided to go back to basics and thrown out a complicated user interface, adding speed to make watchOS 3 much more usable. Macworld’s FAQ of watchOS 3 says that glances are going away in favour of glanceable apps, which now launch much faster and support interaction methods cohesive to a tiny, wrist-mounted display.
WatchOS 3 tidbits from 9to5Mac show that you can disable screenshots on your device, and there’s now more granular options for what counts as waking the device (depending on your “session”). There’s now a bunch of new watch face complications which act as shortcuts to apps, which might not be the worst idea now that apps are genuinely usable.
You might think Apple’s focus on Messages improvements in iOS 10 are being a little overzealous or appealing to the under-20s crowd, but Macworld explains that messaging is huge now. After all, Messages is the most-used app on iOS, even in an era of Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and whatever other chat app you care to name.
The first developer beta of iOS 10 appears capable of turning on a “dark mode” on a per-app basis, but only within the iOS 10 simulator in Xcode. It’s entirely possible Apple decided the feature wasn’t ready for the big stage, and instead will release it as part os iOS 10.1 or similar.
MacRumors says that the hardware-free WWDC event means that Apple has set the stage for a busy second half of the year. With every Apple product lineup expected to see big changes (with perhaps the exception of the iPhone), new MacBook Pros, Apple Watches, iPad minis, displays, and other accessories are all eligible for hardware updates in the coming months.
References in macOS Sierra reveal the possibility of a MacBook Pro with OLED mini display (which we kind of knew about already) and Touch ID sensor (which we didn’t). A really cool concept of what a MacBook Pro with built-in OLED display could look like is over at Martin Hajek’s website.
A concept of the rumoured deep blue iPhone show off a really classy device.
Thanks to a jam-packed WWDC week, I haven’t come across any cool iOS games for the weekend. But can I just draw attention to the fact that Craig Federighi dismissed a friend request from Taylor Swift during a demo? Then again, it was probably someone from Apple’s marketing department having a little fun, much like the unrealistic iOS camera and incongruous set of family images.
