Apple's WWDC 2017 has concluded, and the tech giant, as usual, has announced a plethora of new stuff ranging from upgrades to operating systems to new hardware. Apple has made six big announcements at the event. Having said that, the developer conference is a treat for the developers as Apple had announced a lot of new stuff and released new SDKs for developers.
Alongside this, the company has announced upgrades to all its operating systems- watchOS, TvOS, macOS, and iOS. There's a new iPad Pro announced as well, along with new iMacs and upgraded MacBook Pros. Lastly, Apple is foraying to the home speaker department and announced a new speaker. Here are the top announcements at the WWDC 2017 event.
1) Apple's announces the HomePod Speaker to compete with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
The last announcement from Apple's event yesterday, but it deserves the first place in this list though. The new HomePod speaker costs $349 in the US and will start shipping from December. With this Siri-enabled speaker, Apple is aiming to take on the Google Home and Amazon Alexa speaker. And yes, you can control the speaker by saying 'Hey Siri'!
Apple says that the HomePod speaker will fill a room with its sound technology. You can also ask the speaker various questions including what's the weather, etc. The speaker will be available in white and black colour options.
2) iOS 11 is out with focus on Augmented Reality
This has become a trend for Apple as it shows off some of the features coming with its forthcoming iOS update. The next version would be iOS 11, which does not feature significant user interface changes but comes with nifty features. The first one in this list would be the Siri. Apple's digital assistant will be more interactive in the iOS 11, and it also shows cards, same as Google Assistant.
Also, Siri has got a new translator engine, which translates sentences into different languages. For now, Siri can handle translation to only three languages, but more languages will be added by the time when iOS 11 goes public.
Apple is finally enabling iMessages to synchronise to the iCloud. All your iMessages will be stored to a new device from the iCloud. The Apple Pay has got a new and much-needed feature- users can now make P2P payments with Apple Pay.
And, there's the new and weird looking iOS Control Center. The Control Center is more 3D touch friendly, and all the settings are integrated into one screen. Apple has also redesigned the App Store with the 'App of the Day' making a comeback.
3) New iPad Pro 10.5 announced
As rumoured before the event, Apple has announced new iPad Pro with a screen size of 10.5-inch. Apple claims that they have introduced the display of the device and it now has 500 nits more brightness levels.
However, the highlight of the new iPad Pro is its camera. It uses the same 12MP rear camera as the iPhone 7, along with a 7MP front-facing shooter. Apple touts the iPad 10.5 to offer 10 hours of battery life with a single charge.
The iPad Pro 10.5 also has support for Apple Pencil and the company has added a new feature called 'ProMotion' to increase the latency of the pencil.
4) All new iMac Pro starting at $4999
Besides the new iPad Pro, Apple also introduced updated iMac desktops with the same design and improved internals. The new iMacs come with Retina display, latest Intel Kaby Lake processors, and advanced graphics processors.
Furthermore, the company introduced a new iMac Pro that starts at a whopping price tag of $4999. The iMac Pro has a 5K display, 8-core, 10-core, and 18-core Xeon processor, supports up to 4TB of SSD, and 128GB of ECC memory. It also comes with USB Type-C ports, Thunderbolt 3 ports, and 10GB Ethernet port.
The Cupertino giant also announced MacBook Pros with Intel KabyLake processors and the MacBook Air also been upgraded with more clock speed.
5) macOS High Sierra, watchOS 4, and Apple TvOS upgrades
Lastly, Apple announced upgrades to all its operating systems. The macOS Sierra's upgraded version will be called as macOS High Sierra. Apple states that Safari in the macOS High Sierra is the fastest browser ever. Apple's also adding new photo-editing tools to the Photos App, and there's machine learning technology to detect a person's faces.
Apple has also announced that the file system of macOS will now be called as Apple File System, which offers better data transfer rates than the previous file system. There are various improvements in the graphics department as well.
The company also introduced the watchOS 4, which comes with a new Siri watch face that displays all the relevant information right on the home screen of the watch. That said, the Siri watch face works on machine learning technology. There are many changes to the core OS of the Apple Watch.
Let's close the article by discussing the first announcement made by Tim Cook at the event- Amazon's arrival to Apple TvOS. It's been ages since users of Apple TV are waiting for the Amazon services. The wait has been now over as users can watch the Amazon Prime Video exclusive TV shows in Apple TV.
