Well well well… 10th to 14th of June marked some of the most exciting four days for any techno-geek out there. And for all those Apple fanatics and fans it couldn’t have gone any better! At its Apple World Wide Developers’ Conference (WWDC XXIII, read: WWDC 13) the company with the bitten off Newtonian symbology as it logo announced a set of products including an all new MacBook Air and Mac Pro and the much awaited two new operating systems OS X Mavericks and the iOS7.
Now why did I take so long to put this on ink? Well pretty simple, it takes some patience and a lot more free time to watch the Key Note Address which lasts some where around two and a half hours. So this article may very well be considered equal to any film review (poor joke! I know!)
Evidently, I am not a crazy Apple-head! But hey! I am fan.
This is one company that has single handedly brought more innovations into the computer world than anyone else. From the way our operating systems looks to extremely tiny things such as adding a private browsing option to or internet browser. HTC may have created touch phones but Apple made touchscreen phones what they are today.
So what are we – the people gonna experience soon?
With the concept of AppNap, Apple has taken energy efficiency of the system to an even greater height.Well to start if off, we have the all-new operating system in the line up of OS X (read: OS 10!!) and this one is called Mavericks. Apple here has broken its tradition of naming its OS-es after cats. So after Leopard, Snow
Leopard, Lion and Mountain lion it is not a Sea Lion or a house cat. It is Mavericks. Mavericks brings with it tons of new features. An extraordinary power saving capability stands at the prime of this OS. Apart from this the performance has been enhanced to a level that does not just make working on your Mac easier, but makes the life easier on a whole.
With the concept of AppNap, Apple has taken energy efficiency of the system to an even greater height. With this concept applications running on the background tabs are now paused which automatically saves battery and provides for more memory. Did not understand this yet? Well let me put it this way. Imagine you are watching a high-resolution video or a heavy-duty flash animation. But you open a window over it. Well, your system understands that you are no longer watching this video and automatically pauses it. It just does not stop at that, the moment you move your open window even slightly to get a sneak peek at the browser, well… the video runs again. Meanwhile, in the background the video just does not lay idle but it buffers. And it is not just with videos. Any program running in the background automatically is put into low power where it receives just enough power to keep its vitals.
Apart from this we will get what Apple states as a 300% faster (mind it not 30%!) Safari. Among many of its new features is a new Reader function where now all one has to do is scroll down without any other clicks The Reader automatically loads a next page from the reading list as you finish the first. So all you need to do is just… Read! With this Apple has clearly marked itself as the successor of Google Reader that dies the next month.
Statistics now place Safari before Chrome or Firefox and Internet Explorer, but let’s be frank. Safari continues to be one of the least popular (mind it, not unpopular) Internet browser ever with its use limited to Mac users. Will it change with these updates? Honestly, I do not think so.
Moving on, we no get the iCloud Keychain feature. Your Mac will now remember not just passwords for sites but even personal details and credit card details and all this will be stored encrypted while still being accessible over any other Apple device of yours that may be on the iCloud.
And then there is all vamped up multi display options with great improvements. Photographers out there will be happy to hear that full screen app support will now be supported on multiple displays. This includes the ability to summon the dock and use the menu bar on both displays.
There is an improved calendar, which also syncs with an all-new map, which provides information about weather along the route and the destination weather too. It takes into account the travel time and syncs it with your appointments. So, if you have an appointment at 11am and it takes half an hour to get there, the calendar clears your schedule from 10.30 am. Now that is intelligent. All I hope for is that maps take us where we want!
And now, my personal favorite… The finder now has multiple tabs just like a net browser. So gone are the days of minimizing and jumping from one minimized window to another to copy files. Also we now can sort out files with tags (like important/work/personal etc. etc.) which makes searching for them very easy if you have forgotten the names.
In another article I will be discussing the iOS 7 and I would like to close this article with a note on the kind of innovation that Apple Inc. is supporting. At the WWDC XIII we were introduced to Anki Drive, an application which uses artificial intelligence in real life scenario allowing cars to completely drive on their own in any environment while receiving commands over an iPhone! And it was remarkable how Anki developed this into a video game where real physical toy cars race with each other on the floor understanding its surroundings and doing all calculations on its own. All we do is sit and watch them race and shout orders like go faster and block the car or shoot it down while they drive themselves perfectly!!
Now, that my friend is innovation.
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