Live Coverage of WWDC 2014 Keynote
You can always watch Apple’s WWDC 2014 keynote live, but why do that when you can just read our coverage of all Mac gaming relevant information here, live as it happens, with some wry, observational humour thrown in for good measure.
And we’re done.
Some nice acknowledgement of the Apple engineers.
It’s a bit like JavaScript, tech-heads!
But looks like it’s only available for iOS development.
Much faster apparently. Shot of a developer who looks like he actually wet himself.
“Swift”.
New programming language.
Supposedly a tenfold increase in graphics capability.
EA’s Frostbite engine used on iOS. But not Mac 🙁 🙁
New 3D graphics API, “Metal”, for iOS. Why not new graphics for Mac Apple? WHHHYYYYYYYY???
Control devices in your home with your iPhone, using Siri.
Basically means Apps can add their own Safari actions, photo filters, and widgets in the notification screen.
New features for developers will allow Apps to talk to each other, via “extensions”.
Improvements to the App Store: better searching, app bundles, app previews (videos, not demos), “TestFlight” which allows developers to set up public beta tests for free. (Not sure if this will extend to Mac App Store).
Ha, I think wordpress went a bit nuts there. That’s 99 cents per month.
20GB iCloud storage for $CONTENT.99 / month.
Ok that’s weird. Telepathic predictive text on iOS 8.
Digs at Android, announcement of iOS 8.
So no mention of anything games related 🙁
Now talking about iOS.
Free to everyone else, this fall, public beta for non-developers.
Available today to developers.
Can accept calls from your Mac (iPhone required, obv.)
SMS’s now show up in Messages on Mac.
Can do ad-hoc networks between devices to make life easy.
“Handoff”: instantly switch documents between iOS and Mac. Quite neat.
Airdrop now works between iOS and Mac.
“Continuity”
Tabs can be scrolled. Audience applauds and cheers, because that’s what’s been missing in their lives.
Usual claims that it’s now the fastest browser.
More energy efficient when streaming video.
Private browser windows. Again like Chrome.
“Tabs view”
New Safari. Copies Google Chrome’s Omnibox.
“Markup”. Annotate images and PDFs from within Mail.
“Mail Drop”. Can securely send attachments up to 5 GB.
Improvements to Mail.app (as always)
Access to everything stored on iCloud, including iOS, and whatever else you want to put on there. Can share between Mac, iOS, Windows.
“iCloud Drive”.
Apps can provide widgets to appear in notification center.
Very similar look and feel to iOS 7.
Rehashed notification center
New typeface and icons. Also a dark mode.
“Gorgeous trashcan”
Translucent look. A bit like Windows 7??
“Clarity as well as utility”
New design.
Or “weed”
About to reveal name. Won’t be Oxnard apparently.
Talking about next version of OS X.
Recapping OS X Mavericks. 40 million copies installed. Presumably because they’ve been shoving it down peoples throats.
80 million Macs.
“You’ll see how things have been engineered to work together”. Uh oh.
9 million registered developers.
Youngest developer in the audience is 13.
Talking about the developer attendee demographics. Exactly the same as last year.
Tim Cook takes the stage.
Video praising developers and “apps”. No sign of any Macs, it’s all iPhones and iPads.
Here we go…
It begins in 10 hours.
Ok so somehow I missed all the important stuff!
- New Airport devices
- New Mac Pro (to be fully unveiled tomorrow)
- New MacBook Airs
Well the feed completely crashed. So I’ll have to scour the web for anything I might have missed.
True multitasking on iOS 7. Just like on OS 10.1 (maybe).
Control Center lets you change various things easily. Would make a great feature on OS X.
Games Center completely redesigned visually, but not functionally by the look of it. Don’t expect any improvements to the Mac version then.
“Your friends never looked so attractive”
The game center icon has changed dramatically.
(I’m aware we don’t cover iOS on this site, so I’ll keep this to a minimum).
Demo of iOS 7 “the biggest change to iOS since the iPhone”.
The moment when a developer professed his love to Tim Cook.
Standing ovation.
“Defining an important new direction”.
“Completely new, instantly familiar.”
Looks amazing.
Very cool pseudo-3D effect (like a lenticular) when you move the screen.
Wonder how much of this look will make its way to OS X.
Looks really nice though. Johnny Ive gets a payrise this year.
A logo gets some serious applause.
“73% very satisfied”
“97% iOS satisfaction”. Weird statistic.
iPhone users spend more money.
“iPhone users use their phone more than Android users”. Which is a weird statistic to counter Android’s current popularity, but whatever.
600 million iOS devices sold.
iOS now 🙁
iCloud beta available to developers.
We want hardware!
He’s actually demoing Windows (8). I wonder what Steve Jobs would make of this.
Oh god I’m watching a presentation about someone making a presentation, and people are clapping. “It’s all in a web browser!” But so is this video! This is like the Twilight Zone.
the iWork website is actually down at the moment. So anyone who was hoping to use it to host a meeting at this moment in time is pretty screwed. Kind of like if Steam went offline for a bit during E3.
Spreadsheets and charts. Probably not what you were looking forward to seeing on a gaming website.
I honestly couldn’t care less about this. But people in the audience are cheering and whooping with joy, so what do I know.
Yep according to Macrumors, web-based iWork
I think this a new web-based “Pages”. I have no idea.
For all this talk about everything being really smooth and responsive, the live stream is dropping and skipping an awful lot.
Interesting thing about the new UI is that things like dropdown boxes seem to be hidden until you mouse over them.
Calendar: again with the “super smooth scrolling”.
You can send Maps from your Mac to your iPhone. No word on whether you can send them to an Android.
More demos.
Maps is in 3D (probably not everywhere).
iBooks for Mac.
New Maps App. Same flat look. Developer SDK. Lots of nifty features.
New Calendar (I’m told it looks “like Lotus Notes, but modern”. Skeuomorphisms are gone.
Automatic update of Apps.
Notifications on login screen.
Push notifications on Mac, without Safari.
There are actions you can take directly from the notifications. I think Apple just beat Growl.
New notification features. Also note the flat look again.
Passwords aren’t enough! Give Apple all your credit card and bank details too!
Nice icon though.
Give all your passwords to Apple!
iCloud Keychain.
What about the hardware?
Scrolling again. “Awesome”. Not my quote.
Power usage varies depending upon what’s visible on screen, rather than what’s running.
“Epic scrolling”
Safari demo.
Faster Javascript, less memory usage.
Of course, they all say that.
New Safari.
“More responsive”
OpenGL 4!
Focus on battery life in Mavericks.
Wow the video feed is really struggling.
Apple TV can be used as a display.
I dunno. It’s a very weird feature to feel excited about. Don’t think we’ll hear about anything interesting in OS X now.
Multiple display looks good though. But then I have multiple displays. Not many people do.
But you can use HDMI as a display.
Demo of Finder tabs and tagging.
Multiple displays. Gets a big cheer.
Note the flatter logo.
Finder tabs.
Tagging.
“California themed naming”
Will be called OS X Mavericks.
OS X now.
“Run out of cats”
28 million Mountain Lion users
Now the Mac!
72 million Macs.
“Growth is greater than the PC” (Windows).
Yep. Now the audience is cheering themselves.
Ok that’s over. People are cheering. People at these things cheer at anything.
“With the iPhone or iPod touch”
“A video game in the real world”. Hmf.
I think whatever point was being made got lost in an embarrassing technical hiccup.
He looks really excited.
Introducing a company called “anki”.
Something to do with AI.
App Store stats:
- 5 years old
- 50 billion downloads
- 900k Apps
- 93% of apps are downloaded each month
- 375k iPad apps
- 575 million user accounts
- billion paid out to developers (half in the last year). I suppose that means Apple has earned billion.
I dunno. I think this is a weird part of Apple culture I don’t get.
Video about new Apple store #yawn
Some guff about stores and geniuses. Aww look at them.
6 million developers. I think that means every Mac user is now a developer.
Mr. Cook is up on stage.
Lovely video about design
There’s cheering.
If they stick to tradition, it will be sales figures for the first 20 minutes or so. The most interesting announcement will be in 40 minutes time.
Live feed is only working in Safari. Because that’s the only web browser, am I right?
As many sites have noted, we really don’t know what to expect this time. Apple hasn’t done a Keynote for around 8 months, and scarce few details have leaked out. What rumours have surfaced all seem to contradict each other.
We’ve made our own predictions, of course, which you can read about here.
To recap:
- iConsole – Extremely unlikely
- Mac Pro 6,1 – Very likely
- iGamepad – Likely
- Convergence of iOS and Mac OS – Very unlikely
- Announcement of new games/better game support – Unlikely
- Announcement of new/better graphics support – Likely
But who knows?
Tim Cook, that’s who.
Kick-off starts in just under 2 hours.
“Thanks for coming”
Some artwork will be available, a take on the classic Cyberpunk 2020 artwork.
There’s going to be a blog “dropping a lot of hints and things we didn’t tell you before”.
Sounds like it will be incredible.
Lots of weapons and high-tech stuff.
Mechanics based on pen & paper system “upgraded to 2077 setting”.
It will be a sandbox environment, set in “Night City”
“Looking to extrapolate current trends and fears”
Creator of Cyberpunk (pen & paper) on stage.
Title is Cyberpunk 2077. Assuming there will be a Mac version at this point.
Talking about Cyberpunk. Overwhelmed with positive reception to the news.
General release in 2013, free for all Witcher 2 owners.
Small group have been given access today.
Demonstrating the REDKit UI (it’s a Mac UI by the way)
Talking about the modding tools (REDKit)
The Witcher (1) is 50% off.
You’ll have it automatically if you have the Windows version. Also 25% off on Steam. For 48 hours.
Available now. 25% off.
Disclaimer about having to meet the minimum Mac specs.
Talking about what the game is about (“not for kids”).
Coming to Mac! (applause)
Thanking everyone for buying the game. Showing trailer of the Witcher 2.
2 million units sold.
He’s a big Mac fan.
CD Projekt RED taking the stage.
(It’s going to be Witcher 2 for Mac)
“One more thing”
You can get gift codes for any games you already have.
Get all 32 games if you pay .99 or more, 20 of them if you beat the average.
Interplay games.
Pay what you want for Interplay games. (No idea how many of those will be Mac-compatible)
“Now the big surprise”
(The other non-Mac games are Puddle and Giana Sisters)
You can pre-order Deponia 2 at 30% off. You can also get Deponia (the first one) at 40% off until November 6.
CEO and Founder of Daedalic is talking about the new Deponia game.
The Mac game will be Chaos on Deponia (Deponia 2).
Onto the new games. 3 new games coming today (one of which will be available for the Mac).
Some information about Windows 8.
8 free games with all accounts.
Download from browser or with native Gog downloader.
It’s a DMG that you’ll download, just drag the game into your Applications folder.
Another video, showing how it will work.
You get both Mac and PC versions.
50 games to start.
28 for the first time ever on a Mac!
More recent ones, The Witcher, FTL.
Games like Syndicate, Simcity 2000, Dungeon Keeper
Did a lot of testing.
“Gog is going Mac”!!
There’s a MacBook Pro!
The trailer’s a bit longer than one we’ve seen. Features “Gogbook”
Is going to be Mac, isn’t it?
Which platform? There’s a trailer (the same one at the bottom of the post.
3 new announcements: new games, new OS, Interplay announcement.
Marcin Iwinski is up first.
It’s starting. “Gog is four years old.”
Sounds like it’s the Witcher 2 soundtrack playing.
Nothing but a dramatic Wither 2 image at the moment. There’s going to be announcements by both CD Projekt RED and Gog.com
You can watch the whole thing live (in HD) here.
It’s not due to start for a little while yet, but you can watch the minutes tick with this timer.