Today's keynote marked day one of Apple's giant developer love fest, and while we didn't actually get any new hardware, Tim Cook and co. tossed a whole mess of long-awaited goodies to their legion of loyal followers. So in case you didn't happen to spend the afternoon glued to your screen, these are the best and brightest developments to come out of today's onslaught of all things Apple.
OS X Yosemite: Everything You Need to Know About the Big Redesign
Apple's follow up to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, will be OS X Yosemite, following with the theme of naming OS versions after impressive California landmarks. Last year's WWDC was all about giving iOS an overhaul. This year's star will be Apple's desktop operating system. Here's what you need to know.
iOS 8: New Features For Your iPhone and iPad
The new Apple iOS 8 presented at WWDC 2014 is a lot more than Healthkit—Apple's new vital statistics monitoring system—and a few adjustments to the interface introduced last year. Here you will find the complete catalog of new features along with live commentary on all of them.
iOS Is Finally Getting a New, Smarter Keyboard
One of our biggest frustrations with iOS devices has been the less-than-stellar stock keyboard. iOS 8 fixes that with Quicktype, a predictive, content-sensitive keyboard with multiple layouts that learns the phrases you use most and fills them in. It's about ducking time.
iOS Health: All the Important Data About Your Body in One Place
Apple just pulled back the curtain on a new native app called Health at WWDC. Yes, this is thesame health tracking app we heard about a few months ago. And yes, you can buy a variety of compatible fitness tracking devices at the Apple Store. Health does more than count your steps, though.
Apple's HomeKit Is an iPhone-Powered Universe of Gadgets
Instead of jumping head first into the smart home market by allowing iOS users to (finally) control all of their connected appliances and devices from a single app, Apple has instead decided to tip-toe through the connected home's front door with a new API feature called HomeKit that ensures everything can be securely connected wirelessly, and controlled using Siri voice commands.
Apple's iCloud Drive Takes a Swing at Dropbox
Apple just announced on stage at WWDC iCloud Drive, its cloud storage syncing system that sounds sneakily similar to Dropbox. iCloud Drive syncs your stuff across all your devices, and across all platforms—even Windows. Documents are now accessible from the Finder and syncing is automatic. Which means, iCloud is better. And that's a good thing. Although, the main takeaway here is that iCloud is sort of mimicking what Dropbox and Google Drive and whatnot already do automatically.
Yep, iOS Is Getting Widgets
Apple has finally made its Notification Center functional. Now, you can include info- and function-packed widgets right in your Notifications screen. The new widget functions are part of iOS's new, overall extensibility, but here, your apps have been molded into Notification Center-friendly form. For instance, if you have the eBay app, you'll be able to bid directly from your Notification Center. And as with everything else in your Notification Center, the layout is more or less totally customizable. You can pick and choose which apps get their widgets displayed and rearrange them as you see fit.