Wiser Web Wednesday – a weekly link to posts of interest from around the web:
Photo courtesy Apple
Another Wednesday rolls around, and for WWW this week, we’ll keep with the flavour of the moment in the Apple technology world, WWDC 2014, and the announcements which came out very early yesterday morning (Australian time). I think I’ll also avoid doing a ‘W’ character count on this post.
A reasonably large number of articles on this event have been doing the rounds, and judging by these and the rain of positivity (with perhaps the exception of the free tier of iCloud storage remaining at 5GB) in my Twitter stream, most of the announcements have been well received by both developers and those who far more capably and professionally than I, cover such news (all with nice images to boot, providing a good indication of what these things will actually look like to the end-user).
Firstly, a couple of great Aussie sites, whose authors took one for the team and attacked Tuesday’s 3am start with vigour, then had the composure to write a couple of great pieces on what they saw and heard:
Reckoner
James Croft on the improved integration planned by Apple, in a post with a great overview of OS X 10.10, Yosemite:
As I watched the keynote this morning at a cheery 3am, I was struck by how much Apple are pushing seamless integration between their platforms now. Yosemite weaves a slew of new features –passive and active, cloud and local– into its design. Most of them have a central tenant; to drastically simplify life for a user with both a Mac, iPad and iPhone.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the guys have also recorded a special edition of the Reckoner podcast to discuss all things WWDC 2014:
Appletalk
Benny Ling gives an idea on the magnitude of some of the forthcoming developments across the platforms:
Apple kicked things off by saying it was an even with three main focuses — OS X, iOS, and developers — and then they went on to deliver one of the biggest Apple events in recent history.
WWDC 2014 Wrap Up, Sherlock All The Things Edition
And from some of my other favourite sites:
Macstories
While Federico loaded up on espresso for the days ahead, Graham Spencer’s roundup of OS X – Yosemite:
Introduced by Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, Yosemite brings a big new redesign to the Mac that is reminiscent of last year’s iOS 7 redesign. Continuity between OS X and iOS is also a huge aspect to the Yosemite release, including a so-called ‘Handoff’ feature, instant hotspots, and support for making phone calls and sending text messages from a Mac.
Further, there are at least a half-dozen more articles relating to WWDC 2014 announcements under the Macstories WWDC tag – espresso really does work:
Macstories WWDC 2014 Tagged Posts
512 Pixels
Stephen Hackett on the possibilities created with improved iCloud services, platform integration, continuity and Apple’s long term game plan for platform “lock in”, given the current state of affairs:
While the company’s hardware continues to be the best in the industry, Apple’s software and services have slipped in recent years. OS X and iOS are still the best two operating systems on the planet, but there are cracks in the hull.
Apple
Of course there is always the primary source on these matters. Although I enjoy reading the opinions of those outside the mothership, clearly Apple itself provides a polished summary of the key features, and as usual, some beautiful images:
OS X Yosemite: Coming this fall
iOS 8 Preview
No doubt further, more in-depth analysis and opinion will emerge over the next few days and weeks, and if you are at all interested, checking back on the above sites for reliable information and balanced opinion (without endless rumour and speculation) would be a worthwhile endeavour.
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Pete Denison 