At its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Apple made its usual series of product unveils. We take a look at the 8 biggest announcements, for better and worse.

iOS

iOS 11, now in developer beta with a public beta to follow and a gold release forecasted for sometime this fall, largely seems to be another snoozer. The App Store has been revamped (woo hoo!) and an integrated file manager is finally now offered. More notable, albeit not necessarily in a good way, is that v11 completely drops support for 32-bit applications, along with all legacy hardware based on 32-bit CPUs – a move that is going to put a lot of otherwise just-fine iPhones and iPads into landfills sooner or later. After all, why would developers continue to generate 32-bit versions of applications for devices that Apple has abandoned? Can you say “obsolescence by design”? I can.

I read the fascinating Wired Magazine cover story by Steven Levy, covering Apple’s new campus. I commend it to your inspection if you haven’t already seen it; one particular set of sentences stuck with me:

Apple has also taken some knocks for the scale and scope of the thing. Investors urging Apple to kick back more of its bounty to shareholders have questioned whether the reported $5 billion in construction costs should have gone into their own pockets instead of a workplace striving for history. And the campus’s opening comes at a point when, despite stellar earnings results, Apple has not launched a breakout product since Jobs’ death.

Even more recently, I was set back on my heels when I read that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak no longer believed that his “baby” was capable of creating fundamental technology breakthroughs, due to its age, size, and bureaucracy. Apple’s moonshot heir apparent? Tesla.

Admittedly, these two recent data points may have colored my perspective on the products and plans that Steve Cook and his lieutenants just rolled out, but I don’t think so. Look at my Apple coverage over the years, notably from someone who’s not just an observer but has plenty of company-branded hardware and software under his roof, and I think you’ll sense a consistent (if anything, increasing with time) vibe of pessimism.

This year’s WWDC did nothing to reverse or even slow that trend. If anything, in fact, it further accelerated.

Read through the categories below and then, as always, I welcome your perspectives in the comments.

iOS and MacOS
Computers
Mobile Devices
Wearables
Siri and HomePod

Embedded

At Apple’s WWDC Developer Meeting, a single reform was announced with a low voice, which many of the district’s designers have enjoyed. From iOS 11, Apple devices can read data from NFC tags. This increases significantly the utilization of NFC technology and the ecosystem

So far, Apple has allowed NFC technology to be used only in its own ApplePay technology. According to NXP, the expansion of the ecosystem will result in the price tag falling and its use is rapidly expanding.

IoT, and in particular intelligent logistics and traffic tracking, is a fast-growing NFC area. In the future, iPhones can read, for example, NFC tags attached to transport containers or boxes.

According to Apple, the iOS platform will start from the 11th edition to support NFC tags 1-5. This will also boost the motivation of some 16 million registered NFC designers.

Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6456-apple-tuo-kasvupyrahdyksen-nfc-lukemisen

WWDC is usually a key event for Apple. This is the company’s developer conference. While Apple has mostly focused on software news in recent years, this one was a bit different. We got a bit of everything — major software updates, new devices as well as a sneak peek at Apple’s roadmap for the coming months.
In case you missed it, here’s everything Apple announced

Source: http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4458486/WWDC-2017–Apple-still-short-on-breakthroughs?utm_content=buffer81316&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

At its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Apple made its usual series of product unveils. We take a look at the 8 biggest announcements, for better and worse.

In conjunction with the commencement of its Worldwide Developer Conference and the release of developer builds of planned operating system updates, Apple has revised its Developer Program license agreement, for better or worse.

It could be either, given that Apple itself decides when its rules get applied and how they get enforced. And Apple does not provide guidance to clarify the extent of its rules, at least publicly.

However, several software makers who spoke with The Register believe the changes are for the better and will allow a broader range of apps to be created.

The portion of the agreement at issue, Section 3.3.2, outlines the circumstances under which applications can download and run executable code and interpreted code.

Executable code refers to code that can be run directly – compiled binary files – and interpreted code refers to code that must be processed by an interpreter to generate an executable form. Code written in JavaScript, Lua, and Python, for example, is interpreted.

Borum, in an email to The Register, explained that Apple for years has prohibited apps from downloading new behavior as binary code or an interpreted script, presumably as a security precaution.

“For programming environment apps that allow editing and executing programs in some language (Pythonista for Python, Codea for Lua) this is a serious restriction,” Borum said. “These apps are allowed to include example programs and they can let the user type in arbitrarily complex programs, but such an app could not make it easy to import source code.”

“But even more than hurting the existing development apps, these rules have deterred any larger efforts to make development tools on iOS,” said Borum. “It is very risky to invest lots of money on a project that might not even be allowed on the App Store. The Swift Playgrounds apps would not be allowed by a third-party developer.”

Rusovsky observed that Section 3.3.2 of the Developer Program license agreement previously said apps may not download or install executable code, except through Apple’s WebKit or JavaScriptCore, which the disallowed version of Rollout used.

“The change does seem to loosen the requirement on downloaded code, specifically around the framework and language of the downloaded interpreted code, which means that other scripting languages not using Javascript language are allowed for injection, such as Lua, RubyMotion, and the like.”

Rusovsky said such frameworks have been in use for a while, but were technically in violation of guidelines. The rules change, he said, legitimizes them.

As of June 5, 2017, Apple now explicitly allows executable code to be downloaded and run by “a programming environment intended for use in learning how to program,” subject to four conditions:

No more than 80 per cent of the app’s viewing area can be taken over by executable code, except as allowed by other Apple rules.
The app must make it clear that the user is in a programming environment.
The app cannot create a store for selling or distributing code or other apps.
All source code must be viewable and editable (no pre-compiled libraries).

Borum said that several years ago, Apple relaxed this section of its developer agreement to allow dynamically downloaded JavaScript to be run.

But Apple’s revised wording makes no mention of Javascript at all.

“As far as I can tell the Javascript exception has been removed, which could spell trouble for things like React Native, but on the other hand every app with a browser-view showing external websites would be in violation,” Borum observed.

With React Native, a framework that combines native code with Javascript interface components, developers can alter their apps aesthetically and functionally without revisiting the app review queue. That could run afoul of Apple’s rules if the primary purpose of the application changed. But it can also be used in accordance with Apple’s conditions.

“[The revised developer agreement] provides no restrictions as to how apps are built,” he said. “It now enables apps to download interpreted code (like JavaScript or Lua) as long as it doesn’t completely change the app.”

Charlie Cheever, CEO of Expo.io, a framework for React Native apps, sees the rule revision the same way.

“Lua in particular is popular as a scripting language for games, and there are a number of game engines that could now be extended to allow over-the-air updates for some stuff in ways they couldn’t before.”

Cheever said Apple appears to be moving away from specific technical requirements to policy-driven requirements.

Apple’s Strengths and Weaknesses
https://stratechery.com/2017/apples-strengths-and-weaknesses/

when the announcements that matter are grounded on the realities of a company’s core competencies and position in the market, vision can feel extraneous.

Strength: Defaults

Controlling one of the two dominant mobile operating systems grants Apple the power of defaults. That means Messages are both an iPhone lock-in and a channel to introduce new services like person-to-person Apple Pay. Siri can be accessed both via voice and the home button, and, just similar to the WatchOS update, is increasingly integrated throughout the operating system.

Weakness: Limited Reach

At the same time, Messages will never reach the dominance of a service like WeChat because it is limited to Apple’s own platforms — as it should be!

Strength: Hardware Integration

Weakness: Services

While Apple bragged about Siri’s natural language capabilities and alluded to a limited number of new “intents” that can be leveraged by apps, it is not an accident that there were no slides about accuracy, speed, or developer support: Siri is well behind the competition in all three.

Strength: Privacy

Apple makes money on its hardware, while companies like Google, Facebook, and other online businesses rely on advertising and the collection of data.

Weakness: Data

Collecting data is useful for more than advertising, though. Here Google is the obvious counter: certainly the search company wants to better target advertisements, but the benefits gained from data go far beyond overt monetization.

Strength: The App Store

Weakness: Developer Economics

The success of free-to-play games and the associated in-app purchases has come at a cost, specifically, management blindness to the fact that the rest of the developer ecosystem isn’t nearly as healthy, and that the App Store is no longer a differentiator from Android.

Strength and Weakness: Business Model

This point is part and parcel with all of the above: Apple’s strengths derive from the fact it sells software-differentiated hardware for a significant margin, which allows for exclusive apps and services set as defaults, deep integration from chipset to API, a focus on privacy, and total control of the developer ecosystem. And, on the flipside, Apple only reaches a segment of the market, is less incentivized to and capable of delivering superior services, has less data, and can afford to take developers for granted.