Everything Apple announced at WWDC 2020: Apple Silicon, Mac OS 14, native apps and more

Apple presented the keynote of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference - WWDC 2020 - late on Monday night IST, making a number of key software announcements pertaining to its flagship iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and other products. With Tim Cook kicking things off, here’s a low-down of everything Apple announced at the WWDC which was held fully virtually for the first time from the Apple campus owing to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Everything Apple announced at WWDC 2020

On Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter

Tim Cook spoke about the two overwhelmingly important ongoing phenomena in the US and in other parts of the world. On the Black Lives Matter protests and the killing of George Floyd, he put forth that ‘we must all aim far higher to live up to our ideals.’

And on the Coronavirus pandemic, he highlighted, empowered as his company is, that ‘throughout history, great challenges have been met with great breakthroughs.’

Apple iOS 14 - All the new features

iOS 14 will come with a set of key incremental and visual improvements, including:

• App Library, which will enable one to more easily categorise their apps and find them.

• Widgets on home screen: Everyone will be able to customise these in their own way and like never before.

• Picture-in-Picture mode: This will allow you to multitask, using various apps while continuing to watch your video in a small movable block, and even listen to the audio only by parking the little floating player outside the screen.
• Siri: Siri gets a visual update with a compact design that’ll enable the user to more easily open an app. Siri also gets new text-to-speech smarts, allowing her to send voice messages and take notes via her dictation feature.

• Translate App: With the text-to-speech advancements, Apple has launched the Translate App, which will enable you to speak, translate into another language, and have it spoken out loud, among other features. 

• Messages: Apple’s Messages have got a few new WhatsApp-like features, including new and more customisable Memoji, in-line replies, and private group replies and advanced group handling.
• Apple Maps: Apple’s Maps app has got new guides, and the company has made Cycling its new go-to with advanced features, as also for electric cars, with charging stations listed.
• Apple CarPlay: CarPlay will not have new backgrounds, and the big advancement here is that Apple has piloted making car-keys effectively available on your phone, starting with one particular BMW car, and expanding it further in times to come.

• App Store: An app findability and snippet feature called App Clips has been launched, which will make it easier to try out new apps, while a QR-code type App search feature has been added as well.

For Apple iPad - iPadOS 14

Apple clearly thinks that the iPad is one hell of a device, but with the iPadOS, it’s only really emboldening people who believe that it is no more than a big iPhone, without the phone. The new features include the Widget that the iOS 14 also gets, and a new search feature that will help you search within apps as well. Anything else? Oh yes, an update that makes receiving calls more ergonomic and less pesky on the iPad.

Apple Pencil 

On a related note, however, the Apple Pencil has got a new Scribble feature which turns your doodles into real shapes - like a blob into a pentagon (as per the demonstration.) and boasts advanced handwriting recognition, including on apps like Safari.

Apple AirPods

AirPods - the earphones - have got smarter. They can now automatically switch between devices as you switch between devices, and have new Spatial surround sound, which Apple says has taken some effort to create, for that theatre experience. 

Apple Watch OS7

There are a few new features on the Apple Watch OS7, including a baby-monitor and tracker, as well as new customisable watch faces that you can even share on social media. 

There are updates for the Apple Watch versions of Maps and for workouts, and there is an advanced Sleep feature that Apple is really touting.

Apple Home

Apple is playing fair with its competition in the race to smart homes, tying up with Google, Amazon and many others to enable its devices to work with all manner of smart devices, including smart lights and security camera systems as part of the Apple Home kit.

Apple TV gets TV OS14

Apple is keen to ensure that Apple TV is not just about watching things, there’s a lot more including workouts, music and gaming for the subscription. 

The Apple TV+ streaming service has also announced a brand new upcoming webseries - Foundation - based on the sci-fi series of the same name by Isaac Asimov.

The Mac and Mac OS Big Sur

This is perhaps the second-biggest announcement of WWDC and there are a number of key updates in what Apple says is the biggest release since OSX or Mac OS 10.

• A redesign and refresh that extends from its menus to icons - from the company that pays an almost legendary attention to detail to such things. The focus here is consistency between the handheld Apple devices and its flagship computer Mac. Numerous apps have got a refresh as well, including Photos and Podcasts, and there’s a bigger force at play there, which we’ll come to.
• The Control Centre that is on the iPhone and iPad is also now on the Mac, and so is a revamped notification center, the same Widgets as the iOS 14, the ability to make Memoji on the Mac Messages app, a new Apple Maps app for the Mac and more.

• And here comes the interoperability kicker: Apple has announced Mac Catalyst, which will enable developers to convert iOS apps for iPhone and iPad for use on the Mac. Apple says that the new Mac Maps and Messages apps were made this way.

• Safari: Apple says its browser is the fastest and most power-efficient, and now also the most secure. In terms of Privacy, Apple is touting its security certificate and vetos on extensions. 

• Working with tabs on Siri has also been updated, and a preview of each tab and more efficient use of space has been added. 

Apple Silicon: The biggest announcement, for Macs

• Apple has confirmed its shift away from Intel processors for its Macs to its own ARM processors which it has developed to such great effect for its iPhone and iPad, though the entire line for the Mac has been branded as Apple Silicon.

• Apple calls this a huge leap, and claims that Apple Silicon will deliver the highest performance with low energy usage. One way that this will happen is that apps will be converted to native apps that are optimised for Apple Silicon. 

• Apple says that it has already converted some of its most important apps, and that a number of other software makers have done so as well, including Microsoft for its Office suite, and Adobe Photoshop. 

• This leads to the biggest revelation of them all - iPhone and iPad apps will now work on the Mac! Using a developers suite comprising of XCode, Universal, Rosetta and Virtualisation, developers can convert their apps to Mac apps within weeks, while most native apps will run on Mac OS Big Sur and Apple Silicon anyway. Apple is also launching a training programme, and is selling a Developers Transition Kit hardware. 

• The new Apple Silicon Macs will debut by the end of 2020. The full transition, however, will take about two years, Tim Cook said, adding that Apple will continue to provide full support for its current Intel Macs and even has some more of the latter in the pipeline.