iOS 8: Our Complete Overview and First Impressions

iOS 8, the next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system, was unveiled earlier today at the company’s WWDC 2014 keynote. Shipping this Fall, iOS 8 focuses on refining the bold new look launched last year with iOS 7, but, more importantly, it puts the spotlight on new user features, apps, and developer technologies.

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off his iOS presentation noting that iOS 8 would be a “giant release” aimed at highlighting two different stories: end-user features and developer functionalities. The dual narrative of iOS 8 was the underlying theme of the entire segment, starting with improvements to existing iOS apps (Messages, Safari) and features like Notification Center’s Today view to the promising Extensibility APIs and HomeKit.

“iOS 8 offers simpler, faster and more intuitive ways to use your device with incredible new features like iCloud Photo Library, a new Messages app, the QuickType keyboard and an entirely new Health app,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We’re also giving developers amazing new tools to make managing your health and your home from your devices an integrated, simple and secure experience.”

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The 2014 Apple Design Award Winners

The Apple Design Awards recognize state of the art iOS and OS X apps and games that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation and outstanding design to provide an immersive, fun, and compelling experience. These apps raise the bar in design, technology and innovation with rich functionality and high performance; every year, Apple celebrates developers and their outstanding work by awarding them an Apple Design Award trophy and other special prizes. This year, winners received one of every Apple device (from the Mac Pro to iPhone) and the Apple Design Award trophy.

After evaluating the broadest set of apps possible from the App Store and Mac App Store, Apple has picked this year’s winners with a dedicated event at Moscone West on WWDC 2014 opening day. We have compiled the full list of 2014 Apple Design Award Winners below. Read more

OS X Yosemite Overview

Apple today unveiled OS X Yosemite, the next major version of their Mac operating system. Introduced by Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, Yosemite brings a big new redesign to the Mac that is reminiscent of last year’s iOS 7 redesign. Continuity between OS X and iOS is also a huge aspect to the Yosemite release, including a so-called ’Handoff’ feature, instant hotspots, and support for making phone calls and sending text messages from a Mac. Beyond that, Notification Center now includes the ‘Today’ view from iOS (with support for widgets), a brand new ‘Spotlight’ and big improvements to Mail, Safari and the new iCloud Drive.

 “Yosemite is the future of OS X with its incredible new design and amazing new apps, all engineered to work beautifully with iOS,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We engineer our platforms, services and devices together, so we are able to create a seamless experience for our users across all our products that is unparalleled in the industry. It’s something only Apple can deliver.”

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Apple Posts WWDC 2014 Keynote, “Apps We Can’t Live Without” Videos

For those who didn’t follow the live stream or news as it unfolded on Twitter and blogs, Apple has now posted the video of its WWDC 2014 keynote held earlier today in San Francisco.  The video can be streamed here, and a higher quality version should be made available in a few hours through iTunes (on the Apple Keynotes podcast). To avoid streaming errors, Safari is recommended for the best viewing experience.

Apple has also posted the “Apps We Can’t Live Without” short film that was aired at the beginning of the keynote. The video shows how “developers — and the iOS apps they create — have changed the way we all interact, learn, entertain, work, and live”, and it’s available here.

For more coverage, check out our WWDC 2014 news hub and follow @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

The Numbers From Apple’s WWDC 2014 Keynote

Apple CEO Tim Cook walked on stage today and kicked off the company’s 25th Worldwide Developers Conference with his usual opening remarks and “state of the business” facts and numbers. From the number of attendees to iOS devices sold and OS X stats, these numbers are interesting as they’re typically shared throughout the year in dedicated events or press releases; at WWDC, Apple can provide a mid-year overview before switching gears to talk about iOS or OS X.

We’ve compiled the most important numbers from Apple’s WWDC 2014 keynote below. Read more

Part of Speech Highlighting in Editorial→

Editorial developer Ole Zorn has created a workflow showing how the new Editorial can tag parts of speech in text to highlight lexical classes like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more.

The linguistictagger module is a new Python addition in Editorial 1.1 and it’s reminiscent of the part of speech highlighting found in apps like Phraseology and Writer Pro. In Editorial, you won’t get any editing features, but the basic syntax highlighting will still come in handy to understand how you write when reading a document in the Syntax preview.

Also from Zorn, check out two UI workflows to display a sidebar for Wikipedia and a Markdown preview while writing in the text editor.

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Apple Events Channel Now Available on Apple TV to Stream Today’s Keynote

Apple has just made their ‘Apple Events’ channel accessible again from any Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation), ahead of today’s WWDC keynote. The channel will allow users to stream the WWDC keynote from 10am, San Francisco time, as Apple previously announced. The channel also allows users to stream past Apple events, just in case you have some time to kill whilst you wait for today’s event.

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Directional: Extra Special Q&A→

This week Federico and Myke take questions from the audience. They discuss a whole range of topics including their favourite games of all time, what they perceive as the future trends in gaming and they also come up with Pokemon characters for each other.

A fun episode, with lots of questions answered. Get it here.

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