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Sitting down to watch the live stream of an Apple event is a common occurrence for many in the Mapway team (we’ve even been along to a few!). The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2016) in San Francisco on Monday evening was a great opportunity to watch first hand the biggest announcements from Apple in their latest update and what they could mean for Mapway apps and our future development. However this year the event was a little more exciting than usual.
Tube Map features in the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2016)
Close to the end of the event, during CEO Tim Cook’s talk about Swift, we spotted a familiar icon. That’s right, the
Tube Map app, made a big appearance and was featured alongside other note-worthy apps on the big screen. What’s more they’d even bought our Pro version with all of the added features! It was a proud moment for Mapway HQ and a little bit like spotting yourself on TV!
Once we calmed down a little from the excitement of our cameo we put our thoughts together on some of the other fantastic things that came from watching the Apple WWDC 2016.
Messages That Can Do It All
Changes are coming to iMessage that could turn it into a real challenger for Facebook messenger and WhatsApp. The popularity of emojis and stickers have exploded over the last year or two. But what Apple plans isn’t just a case of taking these a step further but opening the platform to give the user total control. There are animations and you can place stickers wherever you want on photos. You can doodle pictures or hand-write messages. There’s even an option to write in invisible ink, which keeps messages hidden until swiped over. But the really special edition is the ability to share music directly from Apple Music.
OS X Becomes macOS
That’s right, it will no longer be OS X, the Mac operating system will be called macOS and the next particular update will be called Sierra. The big thing to happen in the new macOS will be the idea of continuity across devices. With the use of iCloud drive you can save your Mac desktop and then access it from a different computer. Siri is also coming to desktop, allowing people to use voice commands just as they would on an iPhone. And with Siri opening up to developers, we can expect to see a wider breadth of uses for Siri in the future.
The Biggest iOS Release Yet
Lots of updates and changes will come with iOS 10. Music is getting a big redesign and the new “raise and wake” feature will wake the phone just by lifting it, no touch required. We will also see even more innovation with 3D touch including new ways to interact with notifications.
A Faster Apple Watch
The Apple Watch is getting some updates of its own, including a very impressive update to app loading times. Through the use of background refreshing and stored memory, the Apple Watch will be able to load apps seven times faster! Navigating to apps should also be a lot easier. Pressing the side menu will open the Dock which offers a customisable view of your apps to scroll through. There will also be another option for replying to messages on the Apple Watch. With the Scribble keyboard you can draw individual letters to write a message.
Looking for apps to try on the Apple Watch?
Tube Map,
Bus Times London and
New York Subway can all be used on the Apple Watch.
The Apple WWDC 2016 event can be watched in full on the
Apple website and to view all of the apps Mapway develop for Apple devices visit our page on the
App Store.
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