Apple WWDC 2015 Keynote – iOS 9

This year, one of the biggest news to hit WWDC 2015 (in the wee hours of June 9) was the much talked about iOS 9. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi (who is also a presentation superstar in our books), was again on hand to present the segment during the keynote.

Apple iOS 8 was a major update when it was first announced at last year’s conference. WWDC 2014 was held in June and iOS 8 itself was subsequently released to the public on 17 September of that same year. Till now, iOS 8 has seen an adoption rate of 83% by active iPhone users and Craig went on to compare it with Android 5.0, which is claimed to only have been adopted by 12% of Android users (though the comparison feels a little lopsided as it should have been done with Nexus devices that Google develops). Here are some of the other developments and updates that are expected to arrive alongside iOS 9 when it does.

Siri and Search

For the upcoming iOS 9, Apple continues to improve on the performance and usability of the mobile operating system. First order of business was Intelligence and how it affects Siri. The personal assistant currently gets about 1 billions requests per week, and it is now 40% faster and 40% more accurate than it was a year ago. Word error rate is down to an industry-leading 5%.

Siri on iOS 9 has a new UI, gets contextual search, and the topics that it can understand has been expanded. Users can request Siri to show photos from a certain location at a certain time and it will be able to comply. The Photos app itself comes with a new scrubber bar at the bottom to quickly scroll through or to jump to parts of the gallery.

Siri is also great for reminders and it can do this now by being aware of the user’s location or action. Being context sensitive allows Siri to understand simplified instructions, such as “Remind me about this when I get home” while reading an article on the web, and take action on it. The resulting reminder will include the specific page that was being referred to and will come up when the user arrives home.

With its contextual awareness, Siri can also become a Proactive Assistant and will be able to anticipate the next action based on the user’s location, time, active app, and what the user is connected to. Once Siri knows that a user goes for runs in the morning and loves to listen to music during the run, the user only needs to plug-in the headphone at the usual hours and Siri will automatically show Now Playing on the lock screen. Plugin the device to a car, Siri will be able to load the audio book that the user usually listens to while driving. Not only Siri will be able to take invitations in email and automatically add them to the calendar, it will even add a time-to-leave reminder after factoring-in traffic conditions. When a call from an unsaved but familiar number comes in, the phone can now check through existing email exchanges and suggest who the caller could be.

The proactive approach has also been adopted to Search. The Search screen will now suggest people that users might want to contact (based on upcoming appointments or meetings), apps that they might want to launch (such as the ones that have been downloaded but yet to be used, or apps that are usually launched at that particular time of the day), and relevant locations nearby (such as restaurants or cafes if it’s lunch or break time). Search also knows more than before. Users can search for sports scores or videos and these will bring up cards with descriptive information.

The resulting cards can have the media content, and these can be played right from within the card, without launching another app. With the API for Search, developers can enable the Deep linking feature that allows for searching from within an app. For results that are sourced from within apps, clicking on a result-link on the Search screen will launch the actual app and the aforementioned result.

Even with all of the contextual features of Siri and iOS 9, search is still done anonymously and privacy is still a priority. Craig also went on to add that everything is done on the device and it stays on the device. All identifiers are randomised and searches are not associated with an Apple ID, not linked to other Apple services, and are not shared with third parties.

Apple Pay

Up next was Jennifer Bailey, who is Vice President for the Apple Pay business (and who we also think could be the first woman to go on stage at WWDC, for as long as we could remember).

When Apple Pay started last year, it only had credit and debit card support but even so, the service has now over 2,500 banks supporting it and with more to come this fall. While Apple Pay continues to attract more new retailers, existing retailers are also expanding the service to more of their stores. Apple Pay is expected to be available in over 1 million locations (both big and small merchants) in the US next month.

For small businesses, the popular portable Square card reader is a simple and cost effective way to accept card payments. Jennifer announced that pre-orders for a new version of the reader is available now on Square’s site, and that it will be coming to Apple retail stores this fall.

Apple Pay is credited as the one of the reasons developers are seeing a two-fold increase in checkout rates for in-app purchases, with more new supporting apps getting added daily. Pinterest is one of the companies that users will be able to buy items right from within the app when it adds Buyable Pins later this month.

Apple Pay will be going to UK next month, and will launch with 8 of the most popular banks and with 250,000 UK merchant locations. More banks will be coming onboard too in fall and in total, these banks will represent over 70% of the credit and debit cards that are available in the UK. Commuters too will get to use Apple Pay on the London transportation system.

In iOS 9, users will be able to add store cards, debit and credit cards, as well as loyalty and rewards cards. With that, Apple Pay will be able to automatically present the right rewards cards when purchases are being made. With the expansion of the Apple Pay features, the current Passbook service will be renamed to Wallet, and it will be the one place to store all cards (credit/debit/loyalty/rewards), boarding passes and more.

Enhancements to apps in iOS 9

Notes:

• New toolbar with text formatting (including heading styles, titles, and numbered lists), checklist, image, and drawing options.
• Add images from cameras or library directly into Notes.
• Draw with finger using provided tools and save it to Notes.
• Add links and the description of pages/content from Safari.
• Finding a note will also be easy as they’ll be organised according to time and come with thumbnail of images contained. A new Attachments view will show photos, maps links, web links, and other embedded items instead of the notes themselves.

Maps:

• Transit info including busses, trains, and subway stations are now available. Tapping on a station will bring up all the lines that run through it along their departure times.
• Multimodal routing feature combines all the different ways and the transportation systems that will be used to get to another point.
• Step-by-step directions while in transit mode, including for walking.
• Users can ask Siri too for transit information and directions.
• Transit will start in 10 cities worldwide (Baltimore, Berlin, Chicago, London, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, D.C.), and in over 300 locations in China.
• Searching for locations around user’s current position is quicker in Maps with the Nearby option.

News

News is a new app that delivers personalised content according to the user’s preference. For the presentation of this new app and service, Apple must have broken records of sorts when yet another female VP, Susan Prescott, took to the stage.

With News, publishers can create content with a custom layout, typography, and which can include images, videos, and animations. The personalisation happens at the start of the app, and it continues to suggest different contents and topics to fine tune the reading experience for the user, i.e. the more the user reads, the more the app learns, and the better the suggestions become.

All highlights from the chosen publishers are presented in a single scrollable page/feed with tiles of different sizes. The articles can come from anywhere but to get the best experience, the articles will need to be in the new Apple News format. This will allow for the animations and some ‘jiggly’ things too (content that reacts to user’s navigation of the page). Pages can be bookmarked, articles can be added to favourites, image galleries can be viewed in-line within the articles (and navigated with swipes), and videos too play within articles (similar to a web page). To find something new, there’s an Explore button at the bottom that shows more channels and topics based on reading habits. Finding content will not be a problem as channels like The New York Times is said to be bringing in 33 articles daily, and Conde Nast will be bringing 17 of their magazines to News. The pages of the channels themselves have been designed to retain the publisher’s branding and colour (but minus the ads). Susan mentioned that there are over a million topics that News keeps track of and so, users can be more specific about what they’re looking for.

From the beginning, News has been designed for privacy and is said to be different from other news aggregators that are available now. The articles that users read are not linked to any other Apple services and again, no individual data are shared with other third parties. News will start rolling out to users in the US, UK, and Australia. Publishers can sign up now for access to News Publisher and start producing content in the new Apple News format.

iPad

iPad too gets a whole bunch of updates and new features with iOS 9.

QuickType keyboard:

• Shortcut icons will be incorporated into the suggestion bar. It provides commonly used features like cut, copy, paste, format text, and even to add images or attachments.
• Placing two fingers on the keyboard turns it into a trackpad. Users can move the cursor or select text easily with the option.
• When a physical keyboard is connected, info on shortcut keys will pop-up. These can be used for fast and easy navigation, for app switching, as well as searching in Spotlight.

Multitasking:

• iPad will get a new task switcher that makes better use of the larger viewing area and presents full screen previews of the apps.
• While using an app, a single finger slide from the right side activates the ‘Slide Over’ feature. This will bring in a slimmer but fully interactive iMessage app and dock it as a side panel. It takes up about a third of the screen space and floats above the active app. Another swipe to the right will hide the panel and users can get back to the active app. When the ‘Slide Over’ panel is active, a swipe down from the top of the panel will allow a user to select/switch to another app, which will then become the default ‘Slide Over’ panel app.
• A tap on the divider of the ‘Slide Over’ panel will split the screen and make them sit side by side. This ‘Split View’ option makes both apps active at the same time and they can be interacted with simultaneously. The split can be pulled from the original one-third view, to a fifty-fifty view, and even all they way to one side to make it the only active app. While still in Split View, the active app on the left portion of the screen can also be changed, without affecting what’s on (what used to be) the ‘Slide Over’ panel on the right.
• If a user taps on a notification from another app while watching a video in fullscreen, the ‘Picture in Picture’ mode will be activated. This will launch the other app but will still keep the video running in the foreground; but inside a floating window with a reduced size. The video window can be resized and moved around to however or wherever the user wants it.

APIs will be provided to allow developers to make their apps work with these new features. ‘Slide Over’ and ‘Picture in Picture’ will be available for the iPads Air, Air 2, mini 2, and mini 3, while ‘Split View’ will only be available for iPad Air 2.

Other iOS 9 features

• Battery life: iPhone will get about 1 hour extra with typical use on a fully charged device. There will be a new Low Power mode that adds a further 3 hours of typical use on top of the additional hour.
• Security: Protection for user data will be made available on device as well as in the cloud. The OS will also enhance its two-factor authentication by integrating it directly into the OS, allowing it be used everywhere on the phone (instead of only in some parts), and will require a 6-digit code instead of the 4 currently.
• OTA update: Over-the-air (OTA) update for the OS will require much less free space. iOS 9 will only require 1.3 GB as opposed to 4.6 GB that was required previously.
• Gaming: Apple will be updating the existing frameworks (SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal) and will be adding three new ones: GameplayKit (brings artificial intelligence to obstacle avoidance and path finding), Model I/O (provides beautiful lighting on the 3D models), and ReplayKit (lets users record their gameplay as a video, and then share it).
• HealthKit: Will allow for tracking of additional metrics, including hydration, inactivity (how long the user has been sitting), UV exposure, and reproductive health.
• HomeKit: Manufacturers currently have HomeKit products such as thermometers, lights, and locks, but with iOS9, the kit will have support for window shades, sensors of all kind (the likes of carbon monoxide and motion sensors), and security systems. iOS 9 will allow users to access these HomeKit connected systems from their mobile devices via iCloud.
• CarPlay: iOS 9 will have support for apps made by the automakers, which allows users to control things in the car without leaving the CarPlay system. It’ll also be supporting more types of screens, wider aspect ratios, and higher DPIs. One significant improvement is the removal of the cable from the equation. Devices will be able to connect wirelessly to the car’s system; allowing CarPlay to work without having to take the phone out of the pocket or the bag.

Swift 2

The Swift programming language by Apple has been a major hit with developers and this resulted in more than 15,000 apps to be built with it. Swift 2 will take it even further by bringing new optimisation technology, for complex applications and object oriented programming, called ‘Whole module optimization’, along with a host of other performance updates. But the biggest announcement of all (which had the developers going into a frenzy) is that Swift 2 will be made open source. Apple will be rolling out the compiler and standard libraries for OS X, iOS, and Linux, and all of these will be coming in late 2015.

Closing

iOS Developer Beta was made available on the first day of WWDC 15 and, for the first time in a major iOS release, a Public Beta too for the rest of us. The latter will arrive next month, and the final version will be coming this fall as a free upgrade. iOS 9 will support iPad 2, iPad 3rd gen, iPad 4th gen, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPod touch 5th gen. (Basically, it will run on all the devices that can run the current iOS 8.)

On a side note, Apple also announced that its App store (which was launched 7 years ago) has now chalked up 100 billion app downloads. App store is claimed to be the most profitable and has to date paid out over US$ 30 billion to developers.

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