Apple takes jab at Facebook as tech arms race looms

Although there were rumours that new devices would see the light at this year’s Apple mega geekfest, the WorldWide Developer Conference in San Jose, the company stuck to just software announcements.

Apple named the next version of macOS, calling it Mojave because the marketing people want mountain names. In fact, macOS Mojave may even drop the 10.x.x version numbering as we no longer call the desktop and laptop operating system OS X (you remember your Roman numerals, right?).

While there were some amusing new fluff features like more animojis and the personalisable memojis (the latter name doesn’t quite work for me, as I see memo, and not me), the key news was two long-term strategy announcements.

First, macOS and iOS won’t merge, despite rumours to that effect. They will be more interoperable, with iOS apps like the updated Voice Memo, Apple News, Stocks and Home coming to macOS but both will live on, and remain free upgrades.

The Kiwi developers I spoke to were also excited that they’d have less work on their hands when writing apps for both iOS and macOS, as Apple will unify the coding frameworks (which are now quite different) into one. This will roughly halve the effort of writing apps that must work on both operating systems, but we’ll have to wait until the final versions of the frameworks appear next year to see how well that pans out.

Apple also drew a line in the Adobe’s App Store revenues from Office and Lightroom CC buyers, and there won’t be any charges for updates on macOS Mojave? We’re about to find out, but it appears Apple is selectively opening up towards companies that it considered mortal enemies.

It’ll even let Google Maps come and CarPlay in iOS 12, but that was probably just a strategic move to slow car makers from using Android Auto. Apple gave Google a poke about the poor uptake of the latest version of Android on smartphones compared with its iOS 11; just 6 per cent of Android devices run the latest and greatest version of the OS, whereas Apple claimed 81 per cent of active iPhones and iPads run the current iOS 11.

This is no doubt a response to speculation that Apple bloats iOS with each new iteration to force users into buying new, more powerful devices. Apple promised iOS 12 will be much faster than iOS 11, and run on all 64-bit devices back to the 2013 iPhone 5s.

Both macOS Mojave and the next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system, which will be iOS 12, will be out in our spring if the beta software testing programme for the two launched at WWDC goes smoothly.

That means we can fire up the rumour cannons about new Apple hardware arriving to coincide with the new macOS and IOS versions. Three-camera iPhones and a Mac Pro cylinder desktop machine with support for external graphics cards anyone?