Apple hosted their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) overnight, their yearly ‘heads up’ to developers on the new hardware and software coming down the pipe. The event has become a preview for yearly iterations of the iPhone operating system, offering clues about the next iPhone handset, which is usually announced in September – October with its own event.
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Last night’s event in San Francisco announced plenty of new hardware. The prize pig of today’s fair was the new MacBook Pro, which has received an uncharacteristically large spec boost and was somehow slimmed down to almost Air-like proportions. But even though the hotly anticipated new iPhone was never going to be on the table, the next version of the iOS mobile operating system was previewed. And as updates go, it’s a doozy.
New Features
It’s fun to say that Apple will soon be offering features that Android has had for a while. But there is a difference in quality when Apple applies its design and integration philosophies to a task, and there’s no exception here. There’s also the issue that Apple makes updating software a simple, unified approach; at any one time, 80%+ of iOS users are running the most recent version, while less than 2% of Android users are doing the same.
Mapples and Androranges 
And so, the Great Decoupling gets underway. Apple will replace Google Maps with its own Maps solution in iOS 6, bringing turn –by-turn navigation, 3D Maps, Vector based mapping (no more waiting for tiles to load), supped-up data on business locations and Traffic information, along with a host of other goodies. It wasn’t made clear that Google Maps will be eliminated altogether – in fact, Google announced its own Maps update last week, and has mumbled that yes, they will be developing an iOS version. But by eliminating one of Google’s major points of presence on the Springboard (the iOS home screen), Apple has begun unraveling their relationship with Google. When you pair this up with murmurings that Apple will look beyond Samsung to provide chips and screens for their next gen devices, it seems clear that Apple’s approach for its ‘thermonuclear war’ with Android will be complete independence from its component pieces and then…well, probably more lawsuits. Sigh.
Siri 
Apple’s ‘digital assistant’ has had a somewhat herky-jerky start. The voice recognition software was released as a beta on only one device, worked poorly with foreign accents and over time, actually became worse at finding what you needed. Many have turned it off. With iOS 6, it’s clear that Apple have polished it up and are ready for a wider release.
The previewed update showed Siri pulling review data for restaurants, ordering tickets to movies and events, and even pulling screen ratings. The killer app for Siri seems to be pulling sports scores, which is great- for baseball, which was the sport previewed. Baseball is played over a 162 game season, and MLB has a feature-rich iOS app of its own (and a deep relationship with Apple), so that’s that covered- how useful this will be for AFL and Cricket here in Australia will probably be up to Australia’s very capable developer community. Still, the possibilities for this are encouraging – a one-stop shop for results, standings and info opens the possibility for sports like Australian soccer, baseball, hockey and local league footy to get more exposure than they currently do.
iFace 
Facebook has been integrated system-wide into iOS 6, the way Twitter was (to middling effect) in iOS 5. This should cool rumours of a Facebook phone, but may very well ignite discussion that Apple has an eye on acquiring or strategically partnering with Facebook. That’s an idea- and one that would leave Google relying on its own limping Google + platform for social networking.
The Facebook integration will be an extension of a lot of stuff you can already do – syncing calendars and contacts, birthdays, etc – but with a system-wide ability to post any picture or video or whatevs to Facebook. I foresee a lot of private iMessage discussions accidentally synced to Facebook, resulting in broken marriages or war or something.
Phone update 
Those of us who stayed up into the wee hours of the AM to see the original iPhone introduction back in 2007 will remember El Jobs complaining that amongst other things, previous handsets did calls very badly. One of the things the iPhone did was make the actual ‘phone’ part more manageable, if only by incorporating a big screen, big buttons and a clearly delineated backspace key. It’s not the sexiest upgrade, but the overhaul of the phone app is probably the most fundamental change in iOS 6. There will be the option to hang up and reply with a text (“I’m busy, call later”, etc) or to switch to a ‘Do Not Disturb’ profile quickly and easily, to retire the phone for the night. This is one spot where Android users can properly boast that iOS is playing catch up, as the phone function in Android has been able to do this for over a year, and it works pretty darn well. Score 1 for fandroids; doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a solid update from Apple.
Facetime Over Mobile Data 
Telstra execs take note: if you want to push your 4G network, this is a good thing to latch on to. It’s currently billed as Facetime over 3G, because no iteration of the iPhone yet connects to 4G; but no doubt it’s going to be available in this year’s update.
Facetime is pretty good on a strong Wi-Fi connection; on most people’s 3G connection, it’ll probably be awful. On 4G, it should be great- which should provide a good ‘killer app’ to demonstrate the power of 4G over 3G. After all, most people don’t notice if a tram timetable or website opens in 1.2 seconds or 2.4 seconds. But commercials of crystal clear video calls made by smiling miners to their young children back home should help sell some subscriptions. Unless of course the next iPhone doesn’t support Telstra’s particular brand of 4G…
Passbook 
Here we go. I’ve been saying that Near-Field-Communications (NFC) will be included in the next iPhone’s hardware, and that Apple will become a massive payments provider overnight. Passbook, a new native app with iOS 6, seems to be the overture- the app will collect tickets, coupons, loyalty cards, gift certificates et al, and display them in a nice, searchable database. It will feature a built in QR code reader, which are those funky alien language squares you see on billboards and next to cash registers. The next step is to incorporate NFC for Wave – and – pay functionality on the iPhone, which will bill back to your iTunes account, which is linked to your credit card. With over 200 million iTunes accounts (which get used on a vastly more regular basis than Google Play accounts, BlackBerry Store accounts and might even get used more than PayPal), Apple might become the biggest internet finance gateway overnight. The end result of this is: you buy groceries. You wave your iPhone past a sensor. You get asked for your iTunes password. Green tick, ready to go. You get a fully itemized receipt in your inbox (or stored in iCloud) a few minutes or hours later. No paper receipts, no pin numbers, no signatures – everything is stored and easily accessible in the cloud.
Apple will be moving into new and exciting territory with this one. Many might yelp and scream that Apple will have too much access to personal information with all of this – but it’s not like the companies that do right now (Visa, Mastercard, etc) are any more or less reliable than Apple, who have a wider variety of money making business models. And frankly, Anything Apple have laid their hands on in recent years outside of their wheelhouse – from retail shopping to case design – has been either as good as the market or significantly better. Even their unpopular products, like iTunes Ping, suffer more from redundancy than bad design. I for one welcome our new fruit inspired overlords.
New app store, new bookstore, increased functionality for the hearing and visually impaired, updates to Mail and Safari…one suspects that the full feature list will unpack over the next few weeks, as developers get underway. Expect a bunch of ninjas to uncover functions that will provide further clues as to what will be included with the next iPhone, including screen resolution tweaks that will further cement the rumour that the next iPhone will ship with a bigger display, and other such pieces of fluff. Apple has shown that they’re not sitting on their hands, and that the current pace of the competition hasn’t gone unnoticed, as they prepare for the next battle in the smartphone wars.
Apple has so far announced that iOS 6 will be available in the Australian ‘Spring’, so around September. Compatible devices include the iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S, iPod Touch 3rd Gen, iPad 2 and the new iPad. Original iPad users are left out for now, but there’s a chance it might get some updates.