The event known as WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2020 was pushed to an online-only event as of this afternoon. The event generally takes place around June, last year it took place on June 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in San Jose, California. This year it'll be in June as well, but dates have not yet been set.
Apple CarPlay will get some huge changes in iOS 13, and while the new iPhone software has a number of improvements, it's the driving software that may be most important. 90-percent of new cars sold in the US now support CarPlay, a dashboard-specific interface that offers a safer, cleaner UI for drivers.
Sculptural. Elegant. Sinuously crisp. Not typically words you'd expect to hear about a monitor stand, but then again the Apple Pro Display XDR is no ordinary monitor. When Apple decides to make the best screen in the industry, it doesn't hold back, and the accessories are equally excessive.
Familiar, and yet new: the new 2019 Mac Pro is about as big a departure, generation to generation, as Apple computers get, but somehow it still feels comfortably familiar. Perhaps it's how it nods back to the old "cheese grater" aesthetic in the days before the trash can, or a more nebulous sense that Apple is finally, again, listening to its most ambitious users.
This afternoon some users will gain access to iOS 13, iPadOS, and the newest desktop operating system for Apple computers, macOS Catalina. Those users will all need to have developer accounts with Apple before they attempt any sort of download whatsoever. Once they're ready to roll, they'll need only to head to the developer portal at Apple to collect their software as such.
WWDC keynotes are, first and foremost, a place to learn about incoming software updates for Apple's various platforms, and macOS is in for a big one with macOS Catalina. As rumored plenty of times in the lead up to WWDC, macOS Catalina will split up iTunes into three different apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV. Gone is the bloated and slow single app that iTunes has become over the years and in its place rises three new apps that will hopefully accomplish their tasks much faster.
In the 2019 Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display we've got the most powerful, massive, and expensive top-end Apple computing hardware ever made. The Mac Pro for 2019 is modular, which means you'll be able to buy a bunch of different configurations, also right out the gate. To make full use of the power coming with this Mac Pro, Apple's delivered the Apple Pro Display XDR, a monitor that's also quite unique.
With a new Mac Pro on the horizon, Apple has decided that a computer as beefy as that needs an equally beefy display. Right after giving us a few demos of the Mac Pro in action at WWDC today, Apple introduced us to the Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch 6K retina display that's meant to go hand-in-hand with Apple's top-of-the-line desktop. That, of course, means that you're going to paying a significant chunk of change to own one.
Apple wants the iPad to replace your PC, and it's taking a big step in that direction by introducing iPadOS today. While the first urge might be to accuse this of being just an iPad-centric re-branding of iOS, iPadOS definitely seems to be more than just that. iPadOS has some big features coming along with it, chief among them being improvements to multitasking.
In what might be the biggest Android user-aimed feature of the year, Apple just added Google Docs support to Safari. Safari is Apple's web browser for iOS, and it's just been delivered a slew of new features. For those users that've never taken the time to download the Google web browser Chrome, these features might seem new and amazing.
iOS 13 has a lot of big features coming along with it, but one area Apple focused on a lot today was privacy. As it turns out, Apple is taking a shot at single sign-on methods from Google and Facebook by introducing "Sign in with Apple." Apple bills this as an SSO method, just like the ones from Google and Facebook, except without all of the tracking.
Apple is previewing iOS 13 at WWDC 2019 today, and if there's one big message this year, it's that the iPhone software is going to get much, much faster. "We know that nothing is more important to our iPhone users than performance," Craig Federigh said of the upcoming iPhone software release, which is expected this fall.