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Apple announced several products and updates Monday at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).
An Anonymous Coward wrote in with news of Apple's OS X 10.11 "El Capitan":
The next version of OS X, Apple's laptop and desktop operating system, has been announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference! Its version number is 10.11, and its moniker is "El Capitan," in reference to the superb and truly American El Capitan rock formation at America's premiere national park, the Yosemite National Park.
Details are still coming in, but it's expected to include updates to Safari, Mail and Spotlight. Metal for Mac will combine the "computing power of OpenCL and graphics power of OpenGL into a new API that does both." It's expected to be available in public beta starting this July, with the final public release coming in the fall. This is an important release of OS X that Mac users worldwide are looking forward to.
ghost sent in two submissions to tell us that Apple will open source the Swift programming language:
In today's WWDC keynote, Apple announced that Swift (the programming language from last year's WWDC) will be open sourced sometime later this year. They specifically noted Linux support but neglected to mention *BSD or Windows. (LLVM, the back-end behind Swift and clang, supports *BSD and Windows). Reactions from Open Source advocates were tempered, as they noted the source code has not yet been released, nor has the license been announced.
The Swift Blog has been updated with information about new features and the open source efforts: Swift source code will be released under an OSI-approved permissive license. Contributions from the community will be accepted — and encouraged. At launch Apple intends to contribute ports for OS X, iOS, and Linux. Source code will include the Swift compiler and standard library. Apple thinks "it would be amazing for Swift to be on all your favorite platforms".
One of our editors, takyon, scoured the web to provide us with this compendium:
Apple has announced Apple Music, a Spotify clone, that replaces its existing iTunes Radio service. It will offer: a free tier similar to what iTunes Radio provided, unlimited streaming music for $9.99/month, or $14.99/month for a six-person "family plan". The service includes human-curated playlists and a 24/7 "Beats 1" radio channel featuring popular music and interviews. It will be released June 30th on OS X, iOS, and Windows, and will come to Android in the fall. Apple is offering the first 3 months of the paid service for free.
Apple announced iOS 9 for iPhones, iPods and iPads. It will include: a revamped "Spotlight Search" with features that compete with Google Now; transit routes for Apple Maps in major cities, as well as 300 cities in China; and an improved native news application. iPads will receive "Split View" and "Slide Over" multitasking features. A "Move to iOS" app will facilitate wireless migration from Android to iPhone.
WatchOS 2 for Apple Watch will add: new watch faces; a "Time Travel" feature using the digital crown to view information and events from the past or future; FaceTime Audio support so you can call other people with Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches; email voice dictation; and an alarm clock mode for when the Watch is laying on its side and charging. Various iOS 9 improvements to Apple Pay and Maps will also come to the Watch. Finally, developers will be able to make native apps for the Watch that don't require them to run on the iPhone.
Apple Pay is coming to the United Kingdom in July.
Original Submissions: One, Two, and Three.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:05PM
What is so hard about making a portable machine which:
- has a daylight viewable display
- uses a stylus so that one can draw / write on it (I'll even forgo it being active if there's working palm rejection, sufficient accuracty / precision, and an interface which actually supports pen usage w/o needing hover)
What's hard about it is they cost more and most people don't care enough to pay for it, so niche users get screwed.
I'm not as picky about the daylight viewing, as long as it's not completely horrible outdoors, but I prefer 10" or larger screens and I refuse to use a tablet that doesn't have an active pen, so I have similar problems. The pen requirement, especially, tends to limit options, though it's been getting better lately thanks to Samsung and (surprisingly) Microsoft. I went from a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet -- one of the first android devices with an active pen, a bit ahead of Samsung's galaxy note stuff -- to the 12" galaxy note they released a year or so ago.
So far, I've been much happier with the Samsung device than I expected. Screen quality is excellent, good brightness, and the pen (being wacom) kicks ass, though it took me a while to adjust to it because it's much smaller than any I've used before.
What's interesting, though, is how Apple's walled garden approach may eventually lead to another alternative: bluetooth-based active pens. They have very limited usefulness right now, only working in a handful of applications on either platform (Android or iOS), but there's a chance the concept will catch on and become more widely usable. We may reach a point where you can match the other requirements (size, display type, platform) and pick up a bluetooth pen to satisfy the digitizer need.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:01PM
You should be able to use any other Wacom EMR pen --- just won't fit in the pen slot.
I limped along w/ the pen from my Fujitsu Stylistic w/ my Asus Vivotab Note 8 for a while --- just tucked it into the elastic strap which held the case closed.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 11 2015, @12:56AM
You should be able to use any other Wacom EMR pen --- just won't fit in the pen slot.
Unfortunately, that's not quite the case. There is a lot of overlap, such that the pens from wacom-based ("Penabled") tabletPCs should interoperate, but that doesn't hold true for all of their EMR pens. Their Bamboo, Intuos, and Cintiq lines don't play nice with hardware that they weren't made for, and there's been some cases of compatibility between generations not holding up as well. The difference seems to be that the TabletPC technology doesn't change much, and gets licensed out to third parties without change, so they tend to be compatible regardless of vendor.
I think the Galaxy Note pen can be swapped with a standard TabletPC one, but I don't have one to verify. I considered getting one when I first got the tablet, but I got used to the pen size after a while and the urge to do it went away. Might still do it one day, though, if I can find one that seems comfortable enough. I'd love to be able to use my Intuos4 pen -- it's incredibly comfortable -- but it's not an option :(
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Thursday June 11 2015, @01:26PM
Yes, my apologies, agree that would have been more accurate to say Tablet PC / UD-compatible pen.