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.
Related Stories
Swedish telecom operator TeliaSonera has spent $115 million for a 1.4% stake of music streaming service Spotify. In total, Spotify raised $526 million on the funding round that ended on June 9, valuing the company at $8.53 billion. Competitor Pandora Media is valued at $3.5 billion. The Jay Z owned Tidal recently launched but is reportedly struggling.
The announcement of Apple Music has led to speculation that Apple will use its deep pockets and user base to try to crush the existing music streaming services:
One advantage Apple does have is an installed base of 300 million iPhone users. Every iPhone user who upgrades to Apple iOS 8.4 will be able to get a taste of Apple Music for free for three months -- it'll be up to Apple to woo them enough during that period to stay and pay.
[Music industry blogger Bob] Lefsetz called Apple Music nothing more than a "better looking Spotify," however Apple's $9.99 monthly music-streaming subscription service, slated to be available on June 30, is actually a bit more than that. Several of its features are borrowed from Spotify, Pandora, Google Inc. Rhapsody and Jay Z's recently relaunched service Tidal. In a sense, Apple Music combines the best features of each. The app will enable users to stream music from the entire iTunes catalog (more than 30 million songs), download that music for offline listening (currently only an option available to Spotify Premium users paying $9.99 a month), and combine existing music libraries, including songs ripped from CDs, into a single app (Google Music also lets users do this, for $9.99 a month). It will also offer a 24/7 global radio station, curate playlists using a team of humans, rather than the industry-standard algorithms, and produce behind-the-scenes artist content.
Yet, skepticism remains regarding how successful Apple will be in getting people to pay. Only 30% of people in the U.S. indicated any interest in subscription music services in a January survey conducted by Morgan Stanley. Just a third of those people said they would consider paying for a streaming service priced at $10 or higher. Free streaming services have been outpacing digital downloads. "Our survey work, and history, suggests subscription music services will not achieve mass-market ubiquity," Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne said this week in a note to clients. "Free music will drive the lion's share of audio consumption over the long-term." Despite Apple's entry, Swinburne maintains a cautious view on the music streaming industry. His models suggest growth of digital streaming advertising will outpace subscriptions.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:34PM
https://developer.apple.com/homekit/ [apple.com]
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8750515/philips-hue-apple-homekit-integration [theverge.com]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/09/apples_homekit_so_you_know_it_exists_and_all_that/ [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/08/apple-homekit-wwdc-update/ [engadget.com]
http://9to5mac.com/tag/homekit/ [9to5mac.com]
It's got what your home craves
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:31PM
Sorry your home will be kept at 45 °C until you buy an iPhone that you install HomeKit on so that you may buy a license to change the room temperature..
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:49PM
I rather desperately need to replace my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 which is what ultimately replaced my Newton MessagePad (which in turn replaced an NCR-3125 (donated to the Smithsonian by the guy I sold it to) running PenPoint).
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)
For bonus points, I'd like GPS and the option of a cellular data plan.
Currently trying a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10, but it fails on the daylight viewable display point.... I like to use my machine outdoors, and to use it as a mapreader when travelling --- I need a transflective LCD or some equivalent technology. Something nicer than Windows would be nice.
Please.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:54PM
YotaPhone 2?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:15PM
My apologies, having a usable screen size and the ability to run arbitrary applications was implied, but not explicitly stated.
Big thing is I need a Beziér curve drawing program (yes, I did w/o one on the Newton --- it was portable enough w/ long enough battery life and I was at a point in my life where note-taking was more important than productive work), a font editor would be nice, and I'd like a full TeX environment.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:36PM
It's an Android device, and the e-ink display is 4.7 inches at 540 x 960. That's better resolution and roughly the same display size as Newton.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:54PM
Agreed and understood. The thing is, I'm no longer able to make do w/ such a small display --- the Newton happened at a time (college) when I didn't need a Beziér drawing program, or a larger display.
Still glad to know about the device, and I hope that it presages a return of daylight viewable displays.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:11PM
The YotaPhone 2 is bigger than the original, so I could imagine a third version approaching phablet sizes. That's about the best you can hope for before it becomes a large tablet and not the PDA/smartphone you originally described. An e-ink tablet [cnet.com] (that does more than an Amazon e-reader) probably exists but doesn't likely fit the features or price point you want.
I think we all want to see a 10+ inch bendable e-ink tablet device (bonus: in color).
YotaPhone size progression:
YotaPhone 1
Primary screen: 4.3 inch. 1280 x 720. 342 PPI.
E-ink screen: ??? inch. 360 x 640.
YotaPhone 2
Primary screen: 5.0 inch. 1920 x 1080. 441 PPI.
E-ink screen: 4.7 inch. 540 x 960.
YotaPhone 2C = ???
YotaPhone 3 = ???
“We’ll be launching a new phone by the end of the year, and it will have a different-sized screen,” is all Sawan will say about YotaPhone 3. [emirates247.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:00PM
What you want is called a Motion CL920. It is designed for industrial use so it is probably more than what you are willing to spend but there it is. Motion has been making the tablets you would actually want to buy for years and they really have locked up the niche of "tablets for people who actually need tablets for their jobs".
https://www.motioncomputing.com/us/products/rugged-tablets/cl920 [motioncomputing.com]
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:41PM
Actually, I considered getting a refurbished CL900 from Gainsaver.
The things which put me off:
- battery life
- expense of a refurbished machine vice the new Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10
- machine weight / size
- daylight viewable display isn't transflective --- instead it's sort of daylight viewable 'cause it reduces reflections and burns a lot of power pumping the brightness up (see above for battery life)
- lackluster reviews
All told, I regret getting the Toshiba and wish I was instead just making do w/ my old machine (it would cut down on the amount of web surfing which I do, since I limit myself to known safe sites on it).
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:50PM
The new ones are quite good on battery life. Motion and Fujitsu seem to be the only manufacturers who "get" tablets... everybody else just makes breakable youtube screens IMHO. I have a T731 that I can use as defensive weapon in a pinch. The new R12 is pretty amazing but, unless work is paying, I am not dropping > $2k on one. I am interested to see some more useful Metro apps especially for my medical clients. Great tablets but they get used in "Desktop" mode like 90% of the time.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:44PM
Yeah, I left out rather a long list of Fujitsu tablets which I used before the ST-4121:
- Point PT510
- Stylistic LT C500
- Stylistic ST2300
- Stylistic ST4110
I've got quite the collection of power supplies, docking stations, &c.
Really regret that Fujitsu isn't making a direct replacement. I'd've gotten a Q584 if it just had a (true) daylight viewable display.
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:10PM
Yeah the market seems a bit confused at the moment. Samsung seems to be flirting with moving upmarket but has not really committed. You get a digitizer but not much else to make the form factor worthwhile. Wacom has the Cintiq but the price is really off the wall unless you REALLY need it or have cash to burn. Not sure where Fujitsu is going. They are still a good choice but they are losing a lot of the edu market as well as mobile sales forces to iApps. I was surprised that they did not do a big tablet push with Microsoft with touch apps since they have such a long history.
The daylight viewable stuff gets really tough. You are right, most of it is just "turn up the brightness really high" so goodbye battery life in the field. The iRex 1000s was really a neat product for its time... it had its issues (which were mostly fixed by the end) but bad timing to try to compete with the iPad.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:02PM
Which machine had the best transflective screen?
My thinking here is that a transflective and touch/pen sensitive screen is the hardest thing to come by. So perhaps it's easier to find a working screen and then doing some transplantation of the hardware that runs it.
(Score: 2) by kbahey on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:13PM
Wow! Someone really did use those. They were among the the earliest commercially available hand writing recognition "tablets".
I worked for NCR for many years, and remember demoing the 3125 for a difficult customer. We did not intend to sell him those in particular. We were just trying to make them shed the perception that NCR is just a so-so company without cutting edge research and technology.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:46PM
Yep. It ran PenPoint quite nicely, and Windows for Pen Computing well enough.
Really miss PenPoint --- it paired really well w/ my NeXT Cube.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:56PM
For anyone that cares it had the specification [wordpress.com]:
* CPU: 80386SL @ 20 MHz (has about 15 MIPS)
* RAM: 4 MB
* HDD: 20 MB
* Weight: 1500 grams
* Pen: passive
* Display: LCD 640 x 480, 16 gray shades
* OS: MS-DOS plus PenOS or PenPoint or PenWindows
* Interfaces: VGA, keyboard, RS232C, Centronics, all via a “I/O Connector Adapter”
* Released: 1991
* Initial price: 4795 USD
(got slightly curious..)
(Score: 2) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:08PM
The pen line there is wrong.
It had an active digitizer / stylus done by Wacom --- only binary though, no pressure support, so it only registered on / off.
(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.
(Score: 1) by canopic jug on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:56PM
I don't follow Apple much but am curious about the digital restrictions. I've skimmed about a half dozen summaries of the event and haven't seen if their streaming music service remains DRM-free. It was a big deal for Jobs and one of the major points he used in selling. I'm guessing that since we haven't heard one way or another, digital restrictions will be snuck in, but it would be useful to have some concrete statement to point to.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:08PM
I don't see any direct confirmation, but it almost certainly uses DRM. Most streaming does nowadays. The apps won't be browser-based so that eliminates common ways to get at cached music.
This editorial [theverge.com] made it to Slashdot [slashdot.org]. Steve Jobs' 2007 essay on music DRM [archive.org] is no longer on Apple's site. It's an odd move to censor your deity's teachings.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by canopic jug on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:26PM
The removal of the editorial seems like it might be signaling a shift in the way they've done music. Jobs used to be in control. Now it looks like Cook might have Apple on the other end of the leash in regards to the music industry. But again, in now close to two dozen summaries of the event, I've not spotted any mention of them staying DRM-free.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:34PM
I have been on the phone with my niece six times today. I use a Mac maybe three times a year. Anyhow, the problem is she wants an AV (I doubt this will fix her problem) and the only suggestions (Avira, ClamX, AVG) I have all seem to require Mac Helper which she says seems to want her to pay something. I am not going to give my CC to be used on a potentially compromised system.
In short, I do not understand the Mac realm. DRM is only logical with them.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:44PM
It's an odd move to censor your deity's teachings.
Oh, I wouldn't say its unusual at all for a religion for the implementation to become darn near the opposite of the teachings. Think of stuff like prosperity gospel.
So now that I've pissed off those who speak for their gods, I may as well piss off those who think Apple is God:
Something I find disconcerting is the disconnect between anything I care about and the recent WWDC stuff. I had an ipod touch and used it as a PDA. I used a nano for listening to podcasts while exercising. Good products! But the recent crop?
Well, we have a nerdgasm over swift, which is sorta a newborn baby scala, except its mostly vaporous as opposed to being free and available. Why the hell they have to NIH and not just use Scala is a total mystery.
I'm probably never going to wear a watch again for the rest of my life, so thats just time wasted. Much as I'll probably never install a CB radio into my car again, or wear bell bottoms. Can't we just flush this turd and get onto the next fad? I hope the next one is more interesting.
Multitasking has officially been invented despite my first experience being microware OS-9 in '83 or so and pretty much continuously since on some unix-ish thing or another. First thing that came to mind is battery use/life.
Oh look we had the front end people redesign our music app into a bad clone of an app I already have no interest in using. Streaming is listening to someone else's selection of tunes (not mine) at the same time as everyone else, it has all the appeal of listening to a neighbor turn up his stereo too loud making the whole neighborhood listen to his music. Its something I'd actively avoid. Kind of like talking into my phone (or watch) like a total dork.
Next time I go to China I'll start to care about the maps of China. Till then, well, its not even aspirational for me. I gave my old ipad to the kids when I got my android tablet and I don't see this making me trade it back. I'm sure with the intentional artificial upgrade treadmill its too old to run new stuff anyway, F apple for that too.
There's more to the new apple pay system than just adding the UK, from looking at some summaries of the announcement. Next time I visit a dying legacy brick and mortar store I'll probably care, or I'd care if I had an iphone, but I have an android and for no good reason I can't run the app on my android despite it having the same NFC and wifi hardware. So if I went to a store I don't want to visit, I could use a phone I don't have, after waiting in a line I don't want to wait in, to pay money I don't have (credit card only, right?) for shit I don't want, presumably to impress people I don't care about. Although why I wouldn't just whip out the plastic is a complete mystery to me, my CC is millimeters from my drivers license and centimeters from my keys. But I can pay cash quicker yet and I have that too and it doesn't incur fees, debt, tracking, or spamming. Other than that everything about it is awesome. I suppose everybody has to have their own NIH silo'd payment system to be considered a player today. Can't wait for that stupid fad to go away too.
My wife will get the bug fix OS release on her mac desktop, but they keep on tossing in useless UI changes that frustrate her while lowering productivity. Its getting to the point where the PITA factor is lower with windows, so she'll be willing to take the security hit and go back. I can't wait to hear the crap about it, because being the computer guy I obviously wrote the new OSX and am responsible for it.
And more good news, god only knows we don't have enough 3D acceleration standards, so thank you apple for inventing a new completely closed and proprietary one, maybe this market fragmentation can kill some of the open and free standards, that'll be a real win for the community.
I watched some live blog coverage of it and rather than exciting me, everything about the WWDC was more a sense of dread, like watching a sewer drain gradually backflow and flood. I mean, couldn't they have done one thing thats good or right or useful or desirable? Just throw us one bone? The whole presentation was a stinking cloud of NIH, fads, and stuff I just don't care about.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:50PM
I started wearing a crap $5 watch for kids again, and the ability to check the time without pulling out a smartphone is worthwhile.
Now add in a bunch of calendar and Dick Tracy features that are a pain to use, and ask yourself, is this worth $100? $180? $250? $400? $17,000? Or just $5?
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(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:33PM
I'd rather wear a watch than carry around a cinderbl, er... smartphone in my pocket. I mean, I have one, but it stays in my backpack unless I'm using it.
The watch is better for camping and places where you might not be able to charge up that phone if it dies too. I'm not talking about stupid expensive $1000+ watches. I have a $20 Columbia that keeps time just fine.
I mean, the premise of the watch itself is a great one. Modern consumer electronics could learn a thing from them. They're simple, efficient, and reasonably reliable. Why hate 'em? Of course the smartwatch isn't really simple, efficient, or reliable, and requires a cinderblock in your pocket still, so I do agree with you overall at least there.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:44PM
WRT the velvet shackles of consumer electronics, I suppose it varies by social circle but I like having it occasionally be OK for the battery to be dead. Even when it isn't actually dead, sometimes. The world will go on after I'm gone, so I'm sure it'll survive a camping trip without me. Phones are for grind games, meaningless social drama, tracking, never being off call, pretty much all the opposite of a good camping trip or vacation in general.
I've run into similar arguments about my GPS device. Well, it floats, I can buy a set of replacement batteries anywhere in the world for practically nothing and have a full charge by swapping them in about ten seconds, it runs 48+ continuous (backlight off) hours on a set of two AA, it laughs at multiple 20 foot falls onto rocks, the transreflective LCD is easier to read in sunlight than in the dark, the software has never crashed not even once, the UI is incredibly simple and almost self training compared to a phone... but you just can't get some folks past the "but don't you just want to use your phone?" Uh, no, I don't. About the only thing I don't like is the "we decided to F you over by charging $50 for new maps because we can and you can't do anything about it" aspect.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:07PM
I'm not the least bit worried about the world, really. It's more that I want to use it and it's dead. Generally for time or maps. It's important to know when to turn back on your hike or how long you have before the outfitter's pickup bus packs it in and you're walking home. If you know what time it is and can't gauge 15 minutes while you're deliberately waiting, there's neat tricks to using a stick as a compass and stuff like that too. My most frequent stomping ground, Southern Missouri, generally has nothing for cell service once you're there anyway, so it's airplane mode for me once I turn off the interstate.
That sounds like a pretty impressive GPS. I should look into getting one of those to solve most of my edge cases. You use a Garmin?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:59PM
You use a Garmin?
LOL it floats, its indestructible, its easy to use and runs forever on a set of batteries, obviously its a Garmin.
Yeah a 76CS from like 15 years ago, or maybe only 10. It just does its thing, really well.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:14PM
So there's no possibility to reverse engineer the map format and use OpenStreetMap [wikipedia.org] or something similar?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:30PM
I guess OS X 10.11 will make any device not invented recently obsoleted by not being installable on older devices and EOL updates to the OS that can be installed there..
* Metal for Mac will fragment OpenCL and OpenGL.
* Swift will fragment developer focus from Java or Python.
* Apple Music will.. who knows. But there's still iTunes and Spotiy. Or trusty "sharing".
* iOS 9 will make old devices people already have slow and drive sales.
* WatchOS 2 will do what other operating systems for watches will do, only more expensively?
* Apple Pay to compete with PayPal and banks?
I think you are right. It's very much a NIH deal?
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:49PM
Swift is a somewhat-successor or complement to Objective-C, not Java or Python
If they extend support for older devices by another year, one camp will cry about making them too slow. If they *didn't* release a new iOS that supported older devices, the other camp would whine about abandonment.
The earliest iPhone that iOS9 supports is the 4s, from 2011. That's 4 years ago, literally half the time iPhones have even been in existence, and twice the usual 2-year cell phone contract.
And I don't see why slowing down older devices is seen as an Apple-only problem...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-lollipop-users-warn-of-unusable-devices-after-upgrading/ [zdnet.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:46AM
The problem is that the operating system gets bloated. And it's a industry wide problem.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:16PM
OS X 10.11 works on Macs that are 8 years old.
The main reason for having Metal on OSX is to make it easy to port iOS games. It also happens to be faster than using OpenGL and OpenCL, but that's a fringe benefit.
Swift isn't a Python replacement. Python's is for scripting. And if it takes developers from Java, that's a good thing. Java is awful.
Your complaint about iOS9 amounts to: What do we need software updates for? Laughable.
Apple Pay hasn't much to do with PayPal. It's mainly for physical stores where as PayPal is for online. But if it does replace PayPal, that can only be a good thing. No one likes PayPal. Banks, no. All these services work with the banks.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:06PM
If you think Scala is the solution, you don't understand the problem. Requirement number 1 is that it is interoperable with existing Obj-C code. Feature number 1 is that it's fast because it's design goal is to create intermediate code that his highly optimisable.
And it's not the slightest bit vapourous, having been available for a year, and risen to #14 on the Tiobe index. (Scala is #30).
Likewise Metal has been out for 2 years already, as opposed to the open standard flavour of the month Vulkan which doesn't exist yet.
Other than that, none of your ranting related to development. It being a development conference.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:33PM
What is hilarious is that said essay came in the middle of a legal wrangle between Norwegian market regulators and Apple over itms music being locked to Apple devices.
It may well have been Jobs way of putting the blame on the labels by claiming Apple never wanted the DRM in the first place, when Apple has always been about expensive hardware dongles (OSX and Macintosh computers for instance).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:29PM
Jobs would say one thing and have Apple do something else the very next day.
For instance he responded to questions about Apple getting into the ebook business with "people don't read", only to have Apple open up a ebook section in itms within the year.
the guy was a manipulative asshole. Just look at the story about how he got a deal with Atari, then got Woz in the back door to do all the work, and even stiffed Woz by claiming Atari paid him less then they did.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nerdfest on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:55PM
They also said they were making iMessage (or was it FaceTime) an open standard.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:48PM
If was the FaceTime protocol, and they didn't because there were licensed patents needed that prevented them from doing so.
No such issues with Swift.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:40PM
Why will Apple open source the Swift programming language? It's not like there aren't a million and one general-purpose languages now. What does it do that Java or Python won't do? Swift is the glue language for Apple's Cocoa, iOS, etc frameworks, but take those away, and ... ? What's left?
The larger issue is that if they're just going to open source the language (when did "open source" become a verb?) why didn't they just pick an open language like Java or Python in the first place instead of inflict yet another programming language on the development world? There were no existing languages that people already used which could be adapted? What makes Swift unique, anyway?
The development world needs standards, not more fragmentation.
Anyhow, I've seen people mention GNUStep, but ... I looked at GNUStep one time to see if I could learn a little about the Apple world without buying Apple gear. The first simple program I tried to build didn't work because I found GNUStep lagged Apple by so much that it will probably never catch up. And that was years ago and there have been many framework/API iterations since then.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Informative) by BasilBrush on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:31PM
The language standards people are mostly still using are C/C++ and Java. Which are old and tired. We certainly need a new language to replace those.
Swift has optionals, a better error model, values and structs as full UDTs, interactive experimentation with playgrounds, tuples, no need for header files, native fully unicode strings (not just UTF16), no implicit fall throughs on switches, optionally named parameters, associated values on enums, guard statement for preconditions, optimisation as a design goal of the language.
Not all of these are unique to Swift but some are. And the collection of all of them is compelling, even for use outside of Apple platforms.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Disagree) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:39PM
Why do we need to replace C, C++, or Java and throw away the decades of accumulated experience and knowledge of them that have been built up? That seems self-defeating as an industry. Along this same line of thought, we'll also throw away Swift in a few years, so why invest anything at all in it or any other new language, since it's an exercise in futility?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:53PM
Why do we need to replace C, C++, or Java and throw away the decades of accumulated experience and knowledge of them that have been built up?
Because they are outdated, and you can only get so far by updating the languages. Most of those things I listed cannot just be tacked on to those old languages.
Programmers are voting with their feet. And already it's at number 14 on the Tiobe index.
No doubt Swift will be outdated too eventually. But that's no reason to work with a programming language from the 1970s/80s or 90s for the next 30 years.
Swift makes for more secure, less buggy and probably faster software. 30 years of that is worth it. But if you want to keep using the old stuff, no one is stopping you.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:19PM
If the summary is correct, it would seem they're making it open source in the same way that Objective-C is open source, and my guess is that their intent is to draw broader support for the language. Poor support outside of Apple is one major problem with Objective-C, which despite looking butt-ugly at first glance, is in many ways a much more well-thought-out extension to C than C++. However, if you're not writing for an Apple platform, all you get is the core libraries that allow you to manipulate numbers and strings and such. A language without good libraries isn't much use, and so despite Objective-C being open source, the vast majority of people using it were the people who needed to write native apps for Apple's platforms. For some reason, it would seem they want to repeat the experiment for Swift, but maybe this one has a better chance because it looks more elegant. I think it would take some open source devs with a serious use case deciding to write or wrap a bunch of libraries to really make it popular though.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:43PM
I do agree completely that Obj-C is "a much more well-thought-out extension to C than C++" but that would be true of anything, even brain**** because C++ is so totally awful that any normal kind of crud-o-rama like Obj-C looks sane in comparison :) I did try to use Obj-C once, just to see what it was like, and a lot of the message passing stuff and dynamic binding is elegant once you wrap your mind around it. It's an interesting road not taken, but very very very difficult to keep in your mind when you're used to the "object.property" and "object.method()" syntax in every other OO language.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:50PM
How are any of these things that were announced on the world wide DEVELOPER conference relevant to developers? It's just more of "Here's a bunch of stock apps we'll provide to our customers which will then no longer have any incentive to seek out yours"
BAH, humbug!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:14PM
There's always a keynote at WWDC. It typically includes some product announcements. It also includes developer announcements (you know, the next OS X, the next iOS, etc. - like - the stuff that was in there). And then the rest of the conference is developer related stuff. But yeah, the first couple of hours of the week had some product related stuff in it. Oh. The humanity. Are you going to ask for your money back or will you continue to attend the developer sessions throughout the rest of the week?
(Score: 1) by mTor on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:56AM
Apple has two keynotes on the same day. First one is more general and involves a general overview of what they're doing with products and OS space(s) in general. Second keynote, that's few hours after, is the "Platforms State of The Union" keynote and it's usually under 2 hrs and contains the most important new APIs and changes to tools etc. It sets the stage for the rest of the sessions that week.
You can view this year's platforms keynote here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=102 [apple.com] It's quite intriguing because Apple's now requiring bitcodes on some of their platforms.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:21PM
How slow will this make less than new devices? when will they initiate the killer move and force every device owner onto iOS 9 to make anything to old slow enough to force upgrades (sales) ?
(Score: 1) by josh64 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:54PM
iOS 9 will probably be a lot better for older devices, at least from a storage space point of view thanks to app thinning.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/app-thinning-will-be-a-major-boon-for-8gb-and-16gb-iphones-and-ipads/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:49AM
The problem is usually CPU and RAM requirement (to do things no one really needs). Storing it isn't such a great problem.
(Score: 1) by cyberthanasis on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:28PM
How can anyone open source a language? Will Apple open source the manual or the definition/syntax/standard of Swift?
If they mean the compiler, well thanks but no thanks. I am not going to add value to yet another proprietary language. Look what happened with Java and Oracle. I will stick to languages which have open standards and I am free to write my compiler if I care.