Jonathan Mann has been running his “Song a Day” YouTube channel for quite some time now, and without fail, you can navigate to his channel on the day of an Apple event and find yet another song-ified version of Apple’s announcements. He’s a self-proclaimed Apple fanboy, and he was the guy that wrote the song played during the opening to the Antennagate press conference.
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Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is taking place this week following the company’s kickoff keynote presentation yesterday where it introduced the future of iOS, OS X, and its new Apple Music service, among other updates. As is tradition, one of the first presentations after the keynote was to announce this year’s Apple Design Award winners, a small-scale award show of sorts where Apple honors select app developers by recognize their work and success over the last year.
This year’s 12 winners range from games to education and stock trading apps. Head below for the full list of 2015 winners.
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Along with the announcement and beta release of iOS 9 at WWDC 2015, Apple has unveiled watchOS 2.0. This software is currently in beta, but brings along some cool changes you should know about. Check out our watchOS 2 feature video to find out if these changes make your Apple Watch experience better…
Apple’s WWDC 2015 keynote was full of software announcements. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much on the hardware side of things, but we have some important updates for Macs, Apple Watch, and iOS devices. Today we’re checking out the Top 10 features in iOS 9. There’s not much of a redesign happening here, but there are a handful of noteworthy features you should know about…
Roughly one year after spending $3 billion to acquire Beats, a speaker and headphone company cofounded by music industry veterans Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, Apple has officially revealed its all-new streaming music service built on that massive acquisition. Apple Music, as we first reported the subscription music service would be called, is the company’s answer to on-demand music services like Spotify. As part of the 2014 acquisition, Apple gained its own subscription music competitor in Beats Music, although the new Apple Music service is the company’s first to be built by the Cupertino company. Details below:
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As reported this morning, Apple officially announced a new News app as part of iOS 9. The app takes the place of Newsstand and allows users to easily view and read the news they care most about. With an interface similar to Flipboard, Apple highlights the rich typography.
Apple also touts how users are prompted to pick specific topics in which they are interested and then the app propagates with content relating to those selected topics. Users can also add specific websites and blogs. Some images are below:
At WWDC, Apple has officially announced the new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 9. The update will be available in the fall for free. iOS 9 runs on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Developing. Follow our liveblog here.
Keeping with its recent annual update cycle, Apple showed off the next version of the Mac desktop operating system at WWDC today. OS X 10.11, the latest system version, carries the name El Capitan following Apple’s pattern of using names of prominent locations across California including Yosemite and Mavericks in years prior. Full details below:
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Apple set to introduce Flipboard-Like news product
A late-breaking report from Re/code is indicating that Apple is readying an announcement about news initiatives on iOS. According to the report, the company plans to kill off Newsstand although individual apps will still remain in the App Store.
Apple will also apparently introduce a new service which will present news stories from a variety of sources, such as ESPN, New York Times and Conde Naste. The report describes the product as similar to Flipboard.
The Apple Developer portal has gone down ahead of Apple’s WWDC event later today, where Apple will announce its next-generation software platforms for Apple Watch, iOS and OS X. Posters from within the venue show that Watch OS will feature prominently as a newly rebranded as ‘watchOS’.
Update: The Beta Software Program page has also gone down — potentially indicating that iOS 9 or OS X 10.11 will be made available as public betas today.
The jackets Apple is handing out to WWDC attendees appear to leave little doubt about our exclusive report that the company plans to adopt San Francisco as the new system font in iOS and OS X. As one of our readers tweeted, Apple has used San Francisco for the jacket lettering.
کیفی که اپل به دانش آموزانی که در مراسم شرکت کردهاند داده است #WWDC15 pic.twitter.com/0xkrKKV9g3
— i-Phone.ir (@Apple4Persian) June 8, 2015
There’s also a little in-joke in the jacket labels, Apple using its Swift programming language to indicate the size and country of manufacture.
We reported that Apple plans to replace Helvetica Neue with San Francisco in iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. The new font is already used in watchOS.
[tweet URL align=’center’ https://twitter.com/Apple4Persian/status/607882699651596288]
Apple is aiming to sign up a massive 100M subscribers for its streaming music service, according to a source cited by the Associated Press (reproduced in the NY Times). This would be more than double the subscriptions for all other streaming music services combined.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says that existing worldwide streaming subscriptions total around 41M across all services. The market leader, Spotify, has around 4.7M subscribers in the USA …
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Mashable has conducted an interesting interview with Tim Cook on the eve of WWDC, one of Apple’s largest events of the year. Although WWDC is known for its product announcements, Apple will announce the next versions of iOS and OS X as well as a streaming music service, the interview revolved around Apple’s efforts on company employee diversity.
Asked about the lack of women at keynotes, Cook says “you’ll see a change tomorrow”. This suggests that women will indeed feature more prominently at Apple’s presentation. In the last ten years, the number of women at Apple’s events comes in at the low single digits, most recently Christy Turlington Burns. Apple’s developer sessions have better gender diversity in their speakers but these are viewable only by registered developers, not the general public.
MacStories’ Federico Viticci has posted an interesting image of WWDC banners from the second-floor of Moscone West, the WWDC event venue.
These images show Apple highlighting its three platforms: iOS, OS X and watchOS. These banners do not follow the same pattern as previous years with dramatic photography in rectangular banners. These are more like full-height wall posters with simpler geometric logos. Each image has the name of Apple’s OS written in a light font-face (the image is not clear enough to see whether this is Sans Francisco) on a simple background of multicoloured translucent shapes.
What’s particularly striking about this photo is that it confirms a rebranding of Apple’s smartwatch operating system. On Apple’s current public marketing, the Apple Watch is described as running ‘Watch OS’. By these banners, it can be seen that the new name for this platform is actually ‘watchOS’.
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In a letter received by the leaders of AltConf, it was revealed that Apple is cracking down on the live streaming of its WWDC video content at events other than its own. AltConf, which is a community-based developer conference being held in San Francisco the same week as WWDC, had planned to stream content from WWDC in its Viewing Room, but received a letter from an Apple legal representative which demanded that AltConf cease all plans to stream Apple content.
This firm represents Apple Inc. (“Apple”) in certain matters. Apple has recently learned that AltConf 2015 (“AltConf”) is promoting its intent to stream live content from Apple’s WWDC events, including the Keynote address, and is charging $300 for guaranteed spots in the viewing area for the live streams.
Publicly streaming Apple’s WWDC content in the manner in which AltConf proposes would violate Apple’s copyright rights in the content. This is particularly the case where AltConf proposes to offer the content for profit. Therefore, Apple requests that you refrain from publicly streaming the WWDC addresses.
In the letter, AltConf was told that it will not be allowed to show any content from WWDC at its event. AltConf has shown the WWDC keynote for the last several years with no backlash from Apple.
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We’ve already run down much of what can be expected from iOS 9, OS X 10.11 and Apple Music at the 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference, and now it’s time to run down what 9to5Mac’s editors want to see at the conference. You can find our hopes below, and stay tuned for our comprehensive roundup of what to expect at WWDC.
Google I/O is behind us and brought along interesting integration for iOS users, but now WWDC 2015 is right around the corner. This week we’ll discuss some upcoming announcements and expectations including a native Apple Watch SDK and how Apple plans to take on Google Now in iOS 9. There’s also a new bug feature that made some important changes to the heart rate sensor on Apple Watch. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed…
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With WWDC coming up next week, Apple has started preparing for the big day. Following the launch of the Apple TV channel for the keynote stream yesterday, the company has started decorating Moscone West with Apple logos and banners.
With Apple steadily rolling out its mobile payment service across the United States, support for Apple Pay has now gone live from these new banks and credit unions:
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Insteon, Lutron, iHome, Elgato and Ecobee have all just announced that their HomeKit products are now officially available and/or shipping to customers.
The announcements come on the heels of our report that Apple partners planned this week to launch the first products using the company’s new Siri-controlled HomeKit home automation platform, first introduced alongside iOS 8 last year.
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A week ahead of the Monday, June 8th Worldwide Developers Conference kickoff keynote, Apple has announced that it will be live streaming the event, which starts at 10 AM Pacific/ 1 PM Eastern Time. The company has updated its Apple Events application on the Apple TV to feature next week’s streaming video. Apple is yet to update its website, but the company will likely stream the keynote on its website for both Macs and iOS Devices running the Safari Web browser. While Apple will be live streaming the event, we’ll have live news and analysis over the course of the week-long conference, and especially before, during, and after the keynote presentation. At the conference, we expect Apple to introduce iOS 9, OS X 10.11, Apple Music, and new Apple TV hardware.
Update: Apple has posted the stream availability to its website.
The first home automation products using Apple’s new Siri-controlled HomeKit platform will arrive next week, according to sources briefed on Apple’s plans.
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According to a new report from The New York Times, Apple will, as expected, announce new details and enhancements for Apple Pay at WWDC next month. The report, citing two people briefed on the product, claims that Apple plans to add a rewards program to Apple Pay.
Big improvements will be coming to Apple Watch apps later this year, Apple SVP of Operations Jeff Williams revealed during an interview at the Code Conference. In the current version of the Watch OS software, apps need to run on the iPhone rather than the watch itself, which puts a serious damper on performance.
However, that will change this fall, Williams said, when native watch apps are finally made possible…
