Today's WWDC event was the biggest since the original iPhone. Not only did Apple play an incredible round of catch up with the announcement of iOS 8, but their execution, from what I could tell from the presentation, is superb. On top of the elements added to iOS that have been years overdue, the new features/functionality slingshots iOS into the lead. Now, let the real mobile wars begin.
The massive undertaking (that was evidently rushed) when redesigning iOS from scratch with version 7, now reveals to everyone how deep its roots actually go. The design language of iOS 7 was not only enhanced and improved on in itself, but it now encompasses the "platform" aspect through things like extensibility, and large amount of "kits" they have available, haha. So many kits.... (this is a dev thing, btw).
The other thing that most people don't seem to realize is how dependent the iOS and OS X integration has become to the cloud. Several years ago, Apple invested billions of dollars to construct its multi-million square foot datacenter. With iOS 6 through iOS 7, we saw it utilized decently, but only today was its true power and reach revealed. No more guessing games as to what purpose a multi-billion dollar datacenter serves.
Ideally, and up until now, generally, I would go through every major feature covered in WWDC, but it's too much for a Facebook post. Perhaps a longer blog post that would be an extension to this.
Here's a list of the things that I'm excited about in iOS 8, in no particular order:
- New programming language called Swift. This is huge.
- iCloud Drive, finally.
- Continuity (this sealed the deal for me very early on), very handy.
- Inter-app communication, finally.
- Interactive notifications (perform actions inline), finally.
- Widgets (this one's very personal to me, for those in the know).
- iOS keyboard enhancements, finally.
- Healthkit (huge global potential), ambitious and has potential.
- Family sharing, to finally appease those sharing logins.
- AirDrop between OS X and iOS, finally.
There are a bunch of other things announced that I didn't mention in my list as these specifically are what pertain to me today.
With the new Swift programming language Apple just announced, they've hit the proverbial reset button. This gives existing and potential devs an opportunity to get their hands dirty with working with Apple platforms [OS X and iOS]. This is bigger than most people will understand, or even care.
Apple, thank you for finally moving forward and ahead, the way it should've been years ago.
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