WWDC 2016: Conservative

Apple started off with announcing updates to watchOS. Nothing too impressive. I still don't know how much people will scribble on such a tiny screen; maybe Google and Apple know something I don't. A solid wearable smart watch has yet to hit the market in my opinion.

OSX became macOS in order to follow iOS, watchOS, tvOS. Also, OSX may have become confusing with iOS 10.  The next version of macOS is called Sierra, and the main focus seems to be adding features for continuity between desktop and mobile devices. One of the more interesting features will be purchasing something from the desktop computer and having the authentication for payment done on a mobile device through Apple Pay.

The rest of the keynote was about catching up to Google. Apple's Maps/Music/Photos is trying to catch up in AI ability to Google's Maps/Play Music/Photos. While watching the features being presented, I thought about how good those features are in my mobile experience already (facial recognition, AI created albums/videos, OpenTable in Maps, etc). Siri will be able to interact with third-party apps like Android does.

Following the trend of WhatsApp/Allo/Facebook/Snapchat, Apple announced updates to iMessage. It will allow third parties to interact with iMessage (read: Bots). Stuff I personally won't use: Predictive Emoji, changing words to emojis, changing text size.

Then, there was the promise of a better IoTs. HomeKit aims to solve it. There'll probably be many many iterations till we get to a solid product (similarly to TV devices).

It was a very conservative WWDC for Apple. Though, it does seem that Apple is realizing its previous closed platform was hindering growth; so it is opening up parts of their products.