Did anything peek your interest at the WWDC 2016?

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Any announcement from this year’s WWDC that you liked? :) Or did the conference perhaps disappoint you?

[Tyler Purcell]

Well it just finished... :)

 

Umm, it was actually not bad this year. Lots of cool software updates which look like fun to play with. I really thought the programming tools towards the end were a breakthrough.

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

My impression is that it all looked like a fun presentation for the kids in a kindergarten. And I don’t mean that in a bad way; it was cute but insubstantial.

 

I also gasped a bit how much of it was catchup, from Siri for macOS (Cortana has been on Windows for how long now?) to rich links in iMessage, for example, and how awfully dated iOS looks. It looks terrible.

 

So I wanted to know your impressions to see if I missed anything that’s really relevant but that I thought was irrelevant, fluff, and catch-up. :)

Edited June 13, 2016 by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos

[Tyler Purcell]

When has WWDC been anything else but fluff anyway? I watch every year (this year I'm syncing audio, so why not have it on in the background) and very few things spark interest.

 

When I was 12 I really liked computers, but as I got older, I started liking the old fashion way of doing things. So even though part of my life is supporting IT solutions for the broadcast and film industry in Hollywood, it's absolutely not my focus.

 

I did like the new coding tools Apple has developed for their products. It's a smart way to get kids involved in coding on mac's, planting the seeds for tomorrow.

 

Apple has had speech recognition (computer control) for 20 years now. I was using it in the late 90's and it worked pretty well. Adding Siri to the operating system has taken longer then anyone expected. However, I believe it was a strategic move, rather then a technical one. I believe they wanted people to buy mobile devices and focus on developing that market before bringing those features to the Mac OS. Apple's eventual goal is to ditch the Mac OS entirely and make the iOS and Mac OS the same product.

 

It's true the iOS has continued to look the same since it's inception. However, that's what drives people to use it. They don't want ever changing interfaces, they want familiar and Apple has been doing just that. I think the iOS interface works great, it's nowhere near as complicated as the Android or Microsoft OS with all sorts of layers on each screen that one small mistouch of the display, causes things you don't want, to open up. If you're very precise with your movements, it works fine. However, we all know what it's like to use mobile devices one handed, precision goes out the door. Siri is pretty much worthless anyway, it can't do much of the things necessary.

 

But yea, mostly all fluff and filler. The days of unique new products and software are long gone. It's probably why I don't care anymore, it's just not interesting.