So to start before Tim Cook even came on stage - Siri started out by as she said warming up the audience.
Then out came Tim cook - He gave an update on the state of things. Otherwise known as the marketing push. Talked about WWDC selling out in 1 hour and 43 minutes. Per the App store Tim talked about there being over 400 Million iTunes Accounts on the app store. This is not just 400 accounts created but each with credit cards on file. Or as Tim said the store with the largest number of credit cards on file on the internet. Obviously if you are a dev - that is good news to you. There are now over 650,000 apps in the store and 225,000 of those are made for iPad - that is more about good news for the endusers. There has been over 30 billion app downloads to date and Apple has written checks for over $5 Billion with a B dollars for developers. Apps are available in over 120 countries apps stores now and will soon be available in over 150 countries iTunes apps stores.
Tim then played a video - or more accurately he signaled his AV peeps to play it. The video starts out talking about how the iPhone helped blind people get out and do more. It was really great to see this be the first thing apple went over in the video - there are many blind listeners of this show - and it is great hearing from them about how the iPhone helps improve their quality of life.
Apple then went over education, and AirBnB and finished up with apps for children with learning disabilities. The video was very heart warming and shows that the Apps and iOS devices have helped change users lives and it showed some of the devs that helped make that possible.
Tim then introduced Phil Shiller and he went over the changes in the Apple laptops. Which just made me really drool on the new Mac Book Pro Retina - the one I want will run a cool 36 hundred bucks. I am thinking it will be some time before that happens. Oh well.
Then Craig Federeaky came out to talk about Mac OS 10 - and lets just say Craig did not pass the degree all in moment. He Talked about Mountain Lion.
Next up was Scott Forestall and Scott went over iOS.
Scott started off talking about iOS 5 adoption vs previous versions and over 80% of iOS users are running iOS 5 or later. He then compared it to the competition - i.e. Android. Which brought about a few laughs just saying he would compare it. Because well Android adoption of the latest versions is a joke that Devs are all to aware of. Scott said They released their dairy product 4.0 about the same time Apple released iOS 5 - And today only about 7% of Android users are running the latest version vs over 80% for iOS. Most Android users over 80% are running Android 2.2 or 2.3. Ouch.
Scott then went on to talk about push notifications saying they send out 7 billion pushes a day and over 1.5 trillion pushes to date. Which mean one thing - Apps send out way way way to many pushes message. He then introd iOS 6 - with over 200 new enhancements. But to start with he talked about Siri.
Scott started out talking about new Siri features with regards to Sports. Where he asked for the score of the last giants game. And it knew he meant the Sanfrancisco Giants and not the NY Giants. Right now doing that on Siri gets her asking if you want to do a web search - but with iOS 6 - Siri speaks back the score of the game. He even asked Siri about the batting average of one of the players. So this will be nice when doing some research for fantasy sports. Then Scott went over Siri and Resturants via Yelp integration - Gee Sports and Food - almost sounds like guys are doing the dev work here - think. Well any doubt was removed when Scott talked about Siri and Movies and then asked Siri what movies Scarlet Johanson has been in.
And then Scott talked about How Siri can now launch apps - this brought about applause from the devs in the audience. So in iOS 6 you will be able to ask siri to open Tii. You will also be able send a Tweet with Siri. You will be able to listen to notifications and make dinner reservations. And he introduced the concept of Eyes Free. This is where Apple is working with Car Manufacturers to tap and hold a button on the steering wheel that will bring up Siri on your phone. Per Languages they are adding Spanish, Italian, Korean, Mandarian for Tiawan, Cantonese for Hong kong and both Mandarian and Cantonese for Mainland China. And now in iOS 6 - search with Siri will be localized around the world. Or Globally search will be localized. And Siri will also be brought to the new iPad.
Next up was Facebook integration. So just like with twitter - you can from the settings app add in your username and password and then post directly to Facebook from the Photo app. Website links from safari - locations from maps. And you can now like Apps. You can talk about movies from the iTunes store. Hmmm - Can you say Ping is now officially dead. And they even added both Facebook and twitter into notification center - so you can pull it down and quickly post to either. And they are making available API's to allow other apps to work with Facebook.
Next Tim talked about new features to the Phone app. You can now when busy and you get a phone call choose from send a message and give a reminder. With send a message you can pick from a few stock messages or a custom message that is then sent via text or iMessage to the caller. Or for the other option you can choose to get a reminder later. Such as remind me of the call in 1 hour or when I leave or when I get home. With the option of remind me when I leave - you get a little geo fence that once you leave that area - you are reminded of the phone call.
The next feature is one many of you have asked for -and one we have talked about a few times on the show recently. It is called Do Not Disturb. When you set this on - Text Message, Phone Calls, Push Notifications will no longer make a sound or a vibration or light up the phone. They will be waiting for you in the morning.
You can also pick and choose who to get phone calls from. So you could create a group on your contact list - say family - and then calls from your kids or significant others would come through. And there is even an option called repeated calls - so if someone if blowing up your phone - their call will get through. Actually how it works is if you get a 2nd call with in 3 minutes of the first one - the 2nd call gets through - again that is an option.
With FaceTime with iOS 6 - FaceTime will work over cellular. He did not say 4G - he said Cellular. So that should mean it will work over 3G.
The Next updates had to do with safari. The big addition was being able to upload photo's via safari to your favorite websites. This is nice for Libsyn users just using an iPad to podcast with - now you can update your show artwork from the iPad - well in theory anyway.
He mentioned Photo Streams and really it was just about the introduction of shared photo streams. I guess because you know there were still some people not using instagram.
So next up was mail - with the first new item being VIP - which means in my Case I put Laurie my boss as a VIP and her emails will also show up in notification center. They also added a mailbox for VIP and one for Flagged messages. When composing an email - they made it easier to insert photos and videos into the email. They also now allow for unlocking Office docs that are password protected right in the mail app. That did not get a big response from the audience - but I am sure there are some IT managers that are very happy for that addition. I would not be surprised to hear from some that was the biggest announcement in their mind.
Next was the introduction of a new stock iOS App and it is called passbook - and it takes and combines all those passes and tickets you get in other apps into this one app. So if you have a boarding pass from one app and movie tickets from Fandnago and baseball tickets from your local baseball teams app - you can get all of them collected and organized in the passbook app. They even have it working with the lock screen to make it even easier to find your passes. It does appear that the app is geo aware - as they showed an example that when you are near a starbucks - it pops up the slider for starbucks in the lock screen and then when you slide it - it opens to your starbucks card. Obviously - with location services being turned on all the time for this - it will drain your battery - so use with caution.
Next was Guided Access. What this does is it allows you as a parent to lock out some of the buttons on apps and most important it locks the Home button. They call this single app mode. Which is a little strange because you can only use one app at a time anyway. Maybe they should call single app locked in mode. What they did not say was how you get out of single app mode - but I am sure more on that to come soon - as in real soon.
And finally came Maps. As had been rumored / speculated for some time Google got the old heave ho - with regards to maps. They now are using their own maps and info. And even working in anonymous crowd sourced data from other iOS devices to figure out how traffic is moving. Expect class action lawsuit on the use of that data in 3 2 1.
But the real big announcement for Maps is Turn by Turn Navigation. This includes updated ETA info based on changing traffic patterns along your route and if your current route slows down Apple will look at other routes that might be faster and offer up the alternative routes as an option. And most importantly it works in the lock screen mode. And well of course they added Siri Integration - so now I could say - Take me to the Royals game - and Siri would pop up turn by turn directions to the K. I am sure you will be able to also read off the destination address as well for someone house and get directions as well. But one of the biggest items Android people held over iOS was native turn by turn directions - and Finally they are here.
One of the fluff things added to maps is called Flyover - and Apple has had people flying over cities - well not just people - people in Planes and helicopters with photography equipment. Apple has had these people and equipment flying over major cities and taking 3D imaging of those cities.
The Beta of iOS 6 is available today. When it ships in the Fall it will support the iPhone 3GS and later. The iPad 2nd and 3rd generation and just the iPod Touch 4th gen. So yes the original iPad will not support iOS - which to me is kind of a shocker - since it is supporting the iPhone 3GS.
But that folks is iOS 6 in a nutshell. To me it was a good update - but definitely did not see anything I would be running out to my iTunes dev account to get the beta to test out. I know in the past some people have paid to get the Beta early - I am guess that will not be the case this time - at least it is not something I would recommend. I might update one my iPhones to the beta - but more for app testing then anything else.
Again I think these were good - but not great updates and additions.
Tim cook then came back on stage to wrap it all up and do a good personal pitch for why it is so great to work for Apple. And he also came back to the theme that the apps the devs create for the Apple products can fundamentally change the world.
If you want to see the keynote for your self you can go to apple.com/apple-events and you can see 2012 wwdc keynote along with other recent special events going back to september 2010. Link of course in the show notes for ep 227 at today in iOS dot com.