WWDC 2013 Post Mortem

2013-06-14

I’ve been having a rough couple of days, which is why I haven’t followed up on my WWDC predictions until now. All in all I think I did alright. I was surprised that the MacBook Pro line didn’t even get a speed bump, but the Air got a nice upgrade at least.

What else? Let’s take this in bullet form.

[caption id=“attachment_19180” align=“alignright” width=“350”] The upcoming Mac Pro[/caption]

I think the iOS 7 design looks promising. It’s a bit unpolished, but this is a developer preview and hopefully that means that icons will get tweaked and whatnot. I don’t agree with all the harsh words spoken by everyone and their moms, but that doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect. It’s too early to tell, personally I’m optimistic. The depth angle is brilliant design.
I’m thrilled about official gamepad API for iOS (more on that in a later post), cross-app communication opening up, and the activation lock feature for stolen phones. Auto-updating apps, which is true for OS X Mavericks too, is neat. The Control Center might look funky, but I go for the bluetooth toggle so often that this is huge for me. Notification sync across devices will benefit mankind.
OS X Mavericks looks good. It’s a nice little upgrade, much like the last few OS X upgrades have been. The name sounds silly to me, but that doesn’t matter much. The Maps app looked nice, Safari just keeps getting better, tabs and tags in Finder, and I want to be thrilled about iBooks but I’m not. I guess I prefer to read away from my Mac.
The Mac Pro looks like something Tony Stark would use, not sure if that’s good or bad. As a former Mac Pro user I’m glad Apple are doing something with the line, but a lot of people won’t like the external expansion approach. I’ll most likely pass this one, I don’t have the need for that kind of horsepower in a workstation anymore. The new Mac Pro might be what makes Thunderbolt (2) kick off by the way. But really, Apple doing hardware sneak peeks, has hell frozen?
Who cares about iWork in the browser? Small enterprise perhaps. It did look good, but it’s an added extra and not an actual alternative to using the native software, and should be treated as such. The documents folder for iCloud in OS X Mavericks is way more interesting, but details seem scarce at the moment.
1Password sales will probably take a hit due to iCloud Keychain. About time, password sync is crucial. Too bad for Agilebits though, 1Password is great.
The new ad have sparked theories that Apple are defending themselves. I’m not so sure, they’re in a new position as market leaders and although they have to remember how they got there, they can’t sit still either. I don’t think the ad tells us anything. Inside Apple HQ it might be some sort of manifest though.

All in all, WWDC was exactly what it should be: An event for developers. Whining about the lack of product launches on such an occasion is just silly. Don’t miss the videos, folks.