WWDC 2016: the latest news from Apple’s big developer conference

It was probably the most bewildering part of Apple’s WWDC Keynote: in the middle of a rundown of fancy new products arriving with iOS 10, Craig Federighi stopped to talk about abstract mathematics. He was touting differential privacy, a statistical method that’s become a valuable tool for protecting user data.

The details of the system are complicated (there’s a more detailed explanation here) but in essence, it means adding randomized data to mask individual entries without changing the aggregate result. That way you could have a good idea of how many people are using a particular emoji without being able to pin down any specific user to a specific emoji use. But even knowing the fundamentals, we were still left in the dark about what this system would mean for iOS 10.

This week at WWDC, Apple announced a new facial recognition system — although if you weren’t watching closely, you might have missed it. It came as part of an upgrade to Photos, which will soon catalog your pictures according to the faces in them. “The big news in Photos this year is Advanced Computer Vision,” Federighi told the crowd. “We’re applying advanced deep learning techniques to bring facial recognition to the iPhone.”

In some ways, Apple is playing catch-up. The new Photos system is a less cloud-heavy version of the system Google Photos first unveiled last May, which in turn drew heavily on Facebook’s long-standing system of auto-tagging photos and cataloging them by person. It’s a popular feature, one that Apple couldn’t resist building into the iPhone.

Apple announced some sweeping changes to its software this week, including major updates to iOS and its newly named macOS desktop operating system. The company also overhauled Siri, announcing that the voice assistant will finally be available on the desktop and — more importantly — opening up the service to third-party developers. That’s an important step that Apple needed to take in order keep up with the competition, and to pave the way for Siri to become less of a novelty and more of a powerful platform.

What Apple didn’t talk about was solving Siri’s biggest, most basic flaws: it’s still not very good at voice recognition, and when it gets it right, the results are often clunky. And these problems look even worse when you consider that Apple now has full-fledged competitors in this space: Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Assistant.

Apple announced its Swift Playgrounds app at WWDC yesterday, which will teach kids to code in Swift. Interwoven between CEO Tim Cook’s talk of freeing kids’ minds with code and setting them up for successful careers was a familiar storyline and business blueprint. Apple’s efforts to market Swift mirror its selling strategy for the rest of its technology. Swift and Swift Playgrounds look like any other Apple product, function like the rest of its devices, and fit in with the company’s established business model.

Functionally, Swift Playgrounds fits in with Apple’s technology lineup. “Swift is powerful but it’s also simple and approachable,” Cook said yesterday. Just like the MacBook and iPhone, Swift is easy to learn and use. It’s without a doubt an improvement over Objective-C, Apple’s primary programming language before Swift, which is bulky and old-fashioned compared to Swift’s elegant syntax and modern programming paradigm.

The Siri Remote isn’t a great TV remote, let alone a game controller, so it was an odd last-minute decision for Apple to mandate that developers make all their games work with it on the Apple TV. Fortunately, that decision has been reversed again, according to new guidelines posted during the company’s ongoing Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple’s Game Controller Programming Guide now states the following: “When designing a tvOS game, you may require the use of an MFi game controller, but where possible you should also support the Siri Remote.” iOS and Mac App Store games still cannot require a game controller, though of course they can still offer optional support.

Apple’s iOS 10 update doesn’t come out for another three months, but we’ve already started parsing the laundry list of new features the company is including its next big mobile refresh. One of the more useful ones that stands out is per-person read receipts for iMessage.

Up until now, read receipts for iMessage have been optional, but could only be activated for every conversation all of the time. So no matter who you were chatting with, the recipient would always see when you viewed a message. Now, with iOS 10, you’ll be able to toggle the feature on and off by conversation, similar to how you can currently toggle “Do Not Disturb” on and off for certain threads by opening up the “Details” panel in the Messages app.

Apple used the WWDC 2016 stage to reveal some huge new features coming to iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Siri’s moving to the Mac. iMessage is getting stickers, bigger emoji, and third-party app integrations. Apps on the Apple Watch will actually open right away now! And you’ll only have to sign in once to stream from a bunch of apps on the Apple TV.

The list of changes and improvements coming to Apple’s operating systems and devices is rather long. But you don’t have to slog through the entire stage show to see the most important stuff; we’ve cut down today’s WWDC event to cover only the biggest announcements and coolest new developments. And it’s only 10 minutes!

Apple announced today at WWDC that iOS 10 devices will transcribe voicemails. You’ll never have to listen to an annoying pharmacy phone call, sales pitch, or maybe even anyone’s voice ever again. (Google already does this.) The company also announced that it’ll be revamping its Messages so that certain words are suggested to be changed to an emoji. It’s called “emojify.” Craig Federighi, senior vice president of engineering at Apple, joked that the next generation of kids will have “no understanding of the English language.” LOL. Some people probably shuddered at this idea, thinking it means society’s collective doom. In reality, Apple gets what people, or at least what I, want from my phone. I despise phone calls from automated machines, even though they’re often necessary. I hate listening to their voicemails even more.

Are words going to die off, thanks to Apple and Unicode? No, probably not. Will kids prefer to write with emoji? Maybe. Will English adapt to the idea that its speakers don’t want to hear unnecessary voices and read all the words? Yes. If we can simplify communication, boil it down to only its necessary parts, I’m all for it [insert emoji here].

Artificial intelligence tools like deep learning have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, powered by two main resources: cheap processing power, delivered by the cloud; and stacks and stacks of user data. For a company like Apple — which has banged the drum of user privacy like no other — this presents a problem. How does it deliver deep learning smarts without constantly sending your data to the cloud? And how does it get that data in the first place?

At this year’s WWDC, the company promised that it can square the circle. New deep learning-powered features like facial recognition in your photos and conversational suggestions in your messages were showed, but Apple stressed that all the computation was happening on your device. “When it comes to performing analysis of your data,” said Apple’s Craig Federighi. “We’re doing it on your devices, keeping your personal data under your control.” Google’s, by comparison, happens in the cloud.

Despite being one of the premier events in tech, WWDC isn’t traditionally known for being a bastion of diversity. That’s changing somewhat these days, as Apple, right along with the rest of the industry, continues to respond to calls for inclusion. But up on stage, WWDC is still mostly ruled by the white dads.

Who can forget Eddy Cue’s brief but beloved performance last year?

Starting with iOS 10, Apple will be giving iPhone and iPad owners more control over the software that’s installed on iOS devices. For the first time ever, you’ll be able to delete the company’s built-in apps (Maps, Calculator, Music, Videos, etc.) and download them again later. All of the major iOS apps are now visible within the App Store, and they’ve each got fleshed out descriptions and screenshots.

Yet strangely, nothing about this was mentioned on stage during the WWDC keynote. Neither Tim Cook nor software boss Craig Federighi discussed any “unbundling” of apps from iOS 10. It didn’t even appear on the cool, nerdy list of new features during the keynote:

Two years ago, Apple introduced a new coding language, Swift, that it hoped would appeal to a new generation of developers. At its annual developer conference today, Apple highlighted the fact that lots of young coders had taken up that challenge, some of them as young as nine years old. To help continue bringing new programmers into the fold, Apple unveiled a new app today, Swift Playgrounds, that is meant to teach kids basic coding skills in Apple’s chosen language.

The Playgrounds app teaches basic programming concepts like loops and conditionals. It uses an animated character tasked with performing simple challenges in a digital maze to make learning fun. It offers suggested language for code, an autofill of sorts. The app will be free, and Apple CEO Tim Cook called it “a powerful new way for kids to learn to code,” and compared writing code to basic literacy.

Messages is getting a huge overhaul in iOS 10, as revealed onstage at WWDC, including rich media, emoji and a new way for third-party developers to build functions into the system.

The largest change is a new rich media system that lets you embed YouTube links or other web features without leaving iMessage. You can also use “bubble effects” to change the way messages appear within their bubbles, adding a suite of animations. Another feature allows users to “emojify” words after a message has been typed, highlighting specific words in orange and allowing users to transform them into linked emoji on the fly. More minor changes include handwritten texts, a revamped camera module and a “tapback” system for quick replies. Apple also detailed the changes on the company’s website.

Apple’s big developer’s conference today was a very serious affair, as Apple quite sincerely introduced Siri for Mac as a huge update (an idea that Google presented in 2014 and Microsoft copied in 2015) and unveiled an “SOS feature” for the Apple Watch that lets one call 911 by pressing down on a side button. (I like and use Apple products, but this sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.)

Luckily, there was still time for some jokes!

Apple announced a whole raft of new communication focused features with iOS 10 at WWDC today, but really, what we’re most looking forward to are voicemail transcriptions. Why? Because voicemail transcriptions are either a) incredibly useful, or b) hilariously bad. Either way, it’s better than actually having to sit through your voicemail, listening to each and every message just to find that single nugget of information you actually need.

There were actually rumors that Apple would be adding voicemail transcription back in August last year, but that specified that Siri would be doing the job. (And although Siri was everywhere in WWDC, I don’t think the assistant appeared during the transcription news.) Added to this update, iOS 10 will also include built-in phone spam detection, and a new VoIP API that makes incoming internet calls look just like regular phone calls.

Apple has announced an app called Home for iOS 10 that’ll be a single destination for controlling smart home products. Home is meant for controlling HomeKit products, which have been rolling out over the past couple years. There are now a few dozen of them available, and people will naturally be looking for one obvious place to control them all. To date, you’ve had to rely on third-party apps, which didn’t all have the same feature sets or support all smart devices. This should dramatically simplify things.

There isn’t anything particularly groundbreaking in the Home app, but it seems to do all of the jobs it needs to. It has support for scenes and includes a favorites section, which should make it easy enough to quickly control whatever it is you’re looking to control. The bigger deal is that Home is built into Control Center, which should make it far faster to manage smart home devices. No one wants to be stuck digging around for the right app to turn on their lights.

Onstage at the Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple’s Craig Federighi announced that, in addition to other improvements brought by iOS 10, Photos is getting a major update that aims to make the app even more powerful and personal. The new features appear to be Apple’s answer to Google Photos, but with Apple’s polish and commitment to security.

Among the features Federighi demonstrated was facial recognition. The new Photos app will be able to identify the faces of family and friends across your photo library, letting you find them easily. Federighi said that 11 billion computations per photo. In addition, the app has a new feature called Memories, which bundles photos according to events and places. The app can even automatically make montages set to music. What’s more, Photos on the Mac will get most of these new features as well.

Apple Music has received a big visual overhaul and a slew of new features. Apple exec Eddy Cue announced the refresh onstage today at the company’s WWDC conference, and handed presenting duties over to Bozoma Saint John, Apple Music’s head of global consumer marketing. The tabs on the bottom of the app are largely the same, but Apple has redesigned each tab interface to make it easier to use. The service now also includes lyrics and a daily curated playlist in the “For You” tab. The social network-style Connect feature appears to be greatly diminished as well.

The streaming service, which launched last June at Apple’s last WWDC conference, has amassed 15 million paying subscribers, Cue said today. Yet with more than 1 billion active iOS devices in the world, some analysts expected Apple to have a more robust subscriber base at this point. Unlike its key competitor Spotify, Apple Music does not offer a free tier subsidized by advertising. Apple also cuts lucrative deals with artists like Drake for exclusive album releases, something Spotify has shied away from.

At Apple’s WWDC keynote today, the company announced a number of updates for its CarPlay in-car infotainment platform. Later this year, when iOS 10 is released, CarPlay will be able to take advantage of new updates to Siri and Apple Maps.

Apple is opening Siri up to developers, adding messaging support for Slack and WhatsApp and VoIP calling with Spark, Vonage, and Skype. Apple Maps is getting a big update too, allowing users to easily search for roadside services along their route, as well as a cleaner user interface and live traffic.

Apple Maps is getting a redesign in iOS 10. Apple is calling it an “all new design,” but the real focus here is on the interface rather than the look of the maps. You’ll now see much more of the map when you open up the app, being presented with little more than a squat search box to get started. The turn-by-turn navigation view has also been pared down, and Apple is now allowing users to swipe to move the view around while navigation is ongoing. You’ll also be able to search for stops along your route. These updates are also coming to CarPlay.

In what could ultimately be a much bigger update, Maps is being opened up to third-party developers. Apple says, for instance, you’ll now be able to search for a restaurant using OpenTable and then book a ride with Uber. Given that one of Apple Maps’ problems has long been having worse listings than Google Maps, opening Maps up to third parties could go some ways toward resolving that.

Siri might be grabbing the spotlight at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2016, but the company’s biggest software star is still the iPhone and iPad operating system: iOS. Apple has just made iOS 10 official at its keynote in San Francisco and is now running through the major new features we can expect from its next big upgrade. Follow along with our list below or tune in to our WWDC 2016 liveblog for up-to-the minute updates and photos.

- Before diving into iOS proper, Apple introduced a new Apple TV remote app. “A lot of our customers have told us they would love an app on their iPhone with the same capabilities as the Siri remote,” said Eddy Cue. The app uses touch, voice to control Siri, and motion controls for playing games. You can enter text with the regular keyboard.

Apple Pay can now be used to make payments online, the company announced at WWDC today. Apple users might never have to repeatedly type their credit card details in for an online order again. They can authenticate a purchase through Touch ID, just as they can do with the Apple Watch. Apple Pay is available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. It’ll soon be rolling out to Switzerland, France, and Hong Kong.

Apple Pay is also coming to iMessages. Similarly to Venmo, Apple device users can send one another money through Apple

Onstage at WWDC, Apple’s Craig Federighi announced that the next version of the Mac operating system (called macOS Sierra) will come with a built-in Siri module, enabling voice search and all Siri’s other hands-free commands. It’s the first time Siri functions have been available on a desktop computer, although similar functions are available in Windows 10 and ChromeOS.

Rumors of the feature were first reported by 9to5Mac in February, which noted that Apple has been working on versions of this feature since 2012. Screenshots leaked by MacRumors in May also showed Siri icons in the menu bar and dock, rather than a swipe menu like the notifications pane. Earlier this week, reporters noticed Siri referencing Finder (the name of OS X’s file browser) in some query responses, suggesting Apple had deployed some code early.

Apple announced today at WWDC that the Sling TV over-the-top live television service is coming to the Apple TV, joining nearly every other smart TV box in offering the service.

“tvOS on Apple TV takes the Sling TV app to new heights, creating a seamless combination of technology and entertainment,” said Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch, in a press release.

Apple has announced the next version of OS X — and the first thing you need to know is that it has a brand-new name: macOS.

After 15 years as “OS X,” Apple is changing its desktop operating system’s name to macOS. With this update, all four of Apple’s operating systems will share a common naming scheme. There’s iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and now macOS. This particular iteration will be known as macOS.