Developers

There were so many announcements during the WWDC keynote yesterday that even people who follow Apple for a living (and expected most of the details) were overwhelmed. New versions of iOS, OS X, and watchOS were only three of the biggies, alongside the official debut of Apple Music and a lot of small but interesting new details.

Since the keynote ended, I’ve been sorting through all of the stories, as well as all three new operating systems. What follows are my picks for the ten most game-changing WWDC 2015 announcements, some of them requiring more explanation than others. They’re not in rank order, but there’s definitely one that I thought was the biggest of the bunch. Share your picks in the comments section below…

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A new report by the Financial Times suggests that Apple is looking to change the 70/30 revenue share for certain types of App Store apps. The report claims that Apple wants to change the way revenue is distributed between developers and Apple for music, video and news apps.

The report is a bit circumspect as the timing of the change does not seem to be related to any particular incident, although potentially Apple is forced into cutting the share due to potential anticompetitive complaints with Apple Music, to be announced next week.

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Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off. On Monday, June 8th, company executives will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to provide their annual roadmap for Apple’s software, services, and devices.

Traditionally, Apple has used the conference to introduce major upgrades to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system iOS, as well as the Mac operating system OS X, along with new services. Of course, 2015 will be no different. Apple has been preparing a new version of iOS 9 codenamed “Monarch,” a release of OS X 10.11 codenamed “Gala,” a new streaming Apple Music service based on Beats Music, and updates for the Apple Watch.

Over the last several years, we have provided advance reports on the lion’s share of announcements that will be made at WWDC, as well as a comprehensive roundup ahead of the event. Read on for our roundup of what’s coming, along with fresh new details not found in our earlier reports.

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Apple has today confirmed that the WWDC keynote will be held at 10 AM PST on June 8th as usual, from the WWDC schedule in the newly-updated app. Apple will announce the next-generation versions of its operating systems, iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 with the potential for some new hardware and some surprises. Apple is expected to unveil its new streaming music service, based off Beats. It has also sent out WWDC keynote invites to select members of the press.

Like last year, Apple is teasing developers with a whole host of TBA sessions during the week of the conference with ‘inviting’ names. There’s over 180 ‘secret sessions’ in total. The details of these sessions are currently secret as they rely on information about iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 that is yet to be announced, so for now they use amusing placeholder titles until the keynote is over.

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Apple has just released version 3.0 of its WWDC app for iPhone and iPad ahead of the big developer conference kicking off on June 8th. Notably, the updated version includes support for the Apple Watch for viewing conference info from the new device, including a WWDC glance:
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Apple has just released a new beta seed of the upcoming OS X 10.10.4 update. Users who are part of the company’s AppleSeed beta program and registered Mac developers can download the operating system from the Updates tab of the App Store or the Mac Developer Center.

This is the fourth developer seed that has been released. It comes with a build number of 14E26a. The previous build was released on May 11th with a build number of 14E17e.

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Back in May of last year, Google started enforcing a policy that requires Chrome extensions be hosted on its Chrome Web Store, but only on Windows. The goal was to prevent malware hidden in extensions installable from outside its store, and it even started disabling extensions already installed on users’ systems that weren’t hosted on the Chrome Web Store. Now, Google says it will bring that requirement to Mac Chrome users over the coming months, as well as the Chrome developer channel for Windows that wasn’t previously enforcing the policy:
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Prominent community developer and jailbreaker Comex has posted a video showing a successful hack of Watch OS to get the device running a web browser.

In the video, Comex has managed to get the Google homepage to render on the small Watch display. Apple does not include a Safari browser app on the Watch, for obvious reasons. The video shows that scrolling around even basic web pages on a tiny display is impractical.

More importantly, the video shows that it is possible to get the Watch to run arbitrary code. This could be the first step towards a ‘jailbreak’ of the Apple Watch although Comex makes no such promises to ever release the details of his hack.

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With more than 3,000 apps for the Apple Watch already on the App Store for Apple’s new device, two major analytics platforms today announced support for Apple Watch apps through their respective SDKs.

Yahoo shared that its Mobile Developer Suite has added support for Apple Watch app analytics for developers at no cost through Flurry Analytics, the platform it acquired almost a year ago. By implementing Yahoo’s analytics system, developers of Apple Watch apps gain access to several metrics…
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After beginning to invite developers to test an app analytics beta last week, giving devs that signed up access to new analytic data for their apps through iTunes Connect, today we get our first look at the feature…
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Apple today has published a redesigned version of its Human Interface Guidelines website for Apple Watch WatchKit application development. The new website is far cleaner than the previous website, and introduces lengthier and more interactive descriptions of the different Apple Watch interface paradigms…

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Apple has started offering registered developers the chance to sign-up and test its upcoming App Analytics feature first announced last year at WWDC. Developers have been awaiting the service since it was announced following Apple’s acquisition of TestFlight (and FlightPath), a service which offered its own analytics features.
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<a href="https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/593459473173204992" target="_blank">via Harry McCracken</a>

It was hard to miss the iPhone 6 and iPad Air on stage during the beginning of Microsoft’s BUILD conference for developers. It turns out the Apple devices were used to demo a new feature coming to Office for iPhone and iPad called add-ins…

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Microsoft’s BUILD conference for developers is currently underway, and the first Apple-related piece of news that came out early in the event is a new code editor for Mac. The Windows-maker announced a version of its coding app called Visual Studio Code that runs natively on the Mac.
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Apple has today added a new guideline to the App Store Review Guidelines, the first clause specifically targeted at Apple Watch development. This rule that Watch apps that only tell time will be rejected has actually been enforced since Apple started accepting WatchKit submissions as many developers complained to find their apps had been rejected for this reason. The documentation change now formalizes this rule into an official policy.

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In addition to releasing the second beta versions of iOS 8.4 with the all-new Music app, Apple today issued a new pre-release build of OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 for testers. The latest build comes in at 14E11f. The update is available for both developers and public beta testers.
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As promised two days ago, Apple is now contacting developers who applied for expedited Apple Watch shipments, notifying them that they’ve either won or lost the random selection process. Selected developers are now entitled “to place an expedited order for one (1) Apple Watch Sport that’s guaranteed to ship by April 28, 2015” paying full price for the Watch and, if chosen, AppleCare. Developers have until 5:00pm “local time” on April 27 to complete their orders.

Apple Developer Relations invited registered developers to the random drawing on April 21, enabling some of them to get faster access to Apple Watch hardware for testing purposes. The Apple Watch Sport being offered is a silver model with a blue band, and Apple promises that the orders will be shipped by April 28 regardless of the availability date listed on the Apple Online Store.

Developers who were not randomly selected received letters noting that “you can still order Apple Watch on the Apple Online Store and receive your order as it becomes available.” Both of the full emails are below…

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Update: Developers are still waiting for Apple to update the backend distribution infrastructure, before they can utilize the update to the TestFlight client app.

Apple has updated its TestFlight app to support Apple WatchKit apps embedded inside beta iOS apps. This has been a significant frustration for developers in the run up to the Apple Watch’s release, as it made testing apps for the new platform difficult.

Developers should now be able to deploy beta versions of their iOS apps without removing the Watch extensions.

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