Developers core of conference
Apple served several thousand developers some hardware and software catnip Monday.
At the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple dolloped equal parts music service, iOS 9 and mobile-payment system in what added up to a glorified pitch meeting. It also managed a sneak peek at the next version of Apple Watch.
Together, Apple thinks the new technology will deepen bonds with developers who increasingly are tempted to write code first for Android, the dominant operating system.
“The opportunities for (our OS X, iOS 9 and watchOS operating systems) is limitless,” energetic Apple CEO Tim Cook told about 3,000 people.
Think of developers as digital foot soldiers in what is turning into a five-horse race between Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Facebook and Microsoft to make inroads in five key battlefields: autos, Internet of Things, mobile payments, wearables and virtual reality.
What Apple delivered Monday was a modest mix of updates to OS X, which has lagged in features to Android; a look at iOS 9, which will greatly shape the functionality of a new iPhone expected later this year; and new functions coming to Apple Watch. Those include new watch faces (time lapse, photo and photo album), an improved Siri voice system and the ability to read email on the timepiece.
Additionally, Apple announced a news-reading app sure to make the folks at Flipboard paranoid and said its mobile-payment service, Apple Pay, is expanding to the United Kingdom and adding Discover credit cards, held by 50 million consumers, retail outlets Trader Joe’s, JCPenney, BaskinRobbins and Dunkin’ Donuts.
The big moment, punctuating the nearly 21⁄ 2- hour marathon, was the unveiling of Apple Music, the fruits of its $3 billion acquisition of Beats last year.
As with many developers, the new operating system overshadows all other announcements for Isaac Charney, a software engineer at Localytics, a marketing and analytics platform for mobile and Web apps. WWDC is his first conference because of “my level of comfort (developing software for it) on the mobile platform and because it is a more predictable” technology, Charney says.
Conspicuously absent: Apple TV, the star-crossed digitalmedia player introduced in September 2006. As recently as mid-May, Apple planned to spotlight new hardware, an improved remote control and a tool kit for developers to make apps. But those plans were scrapped when the product was deemed not ready for prime time, according to reports.