A "barrage" of presentations took place Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), yesterday's annual software developer conference, WWDC 2014 (World Wide Developers Conference), bringing a sense of technology.
In particular, the US company seems to seek to compete on equal terms with popular applications of rival companies such as Dropbox and WhatsApp through a number of software upgrades, while presenting new versions of its operating systems and desktop and portable systems.
Also, the light of publicity also saw HealthKit, software that works with "third" wearable devices, with emphasis on health. A parallel application, called Health, takes measurements that have to do with the state of the user's health and informs the hospital if it "perceives" large deviations.
Additionally, Apple has introduced new features to Apple iMessage, which indicate the company's intention to compete with Facebook's recently purchased WhatsApp. The user can easily create and modify group messages, send audio tracks in one go and create and exchange short video clips. Also, the ability to send and λήψηtext messages for all Apple devices.
The iCloud Drive - which "looks" in the direction of Dropbox - allows files of all kinds to be stored on remote servers and then accessed via an iOS device, Mac or PC. The service is free up to five GB.
Apple also introduced the next generation of its desktop and laptop operating system, OS X Yosemite 10.10. Το σύστημα διαθέτει νέο design και συνεργάζεται καλύτερα με άλλες συσκευές της εταιρείας, επιτρέποντας στους χρήστες να κάνουν και να λαμβάνουν κλήσεις και μηνύματα από και προς το iPhone τους στα desktop και laptop τους. Όπως και ο προκάτοχος, Mavericks, will be available as a free update for Mac users.
Head of the company, Tim Cook, also introduced new features of its upcoming portable device, iOS 8 (expected in autumn), emphasizing collaboration between different devices. Among these is the Handoff, which allows a user to start a work on one device and move it to another. Also, Craig Fendrigi, vice president of software engineering, has unveiled the HomeKit, which is Apple's smart home design, allowing the user to control their home environment via smartphone, unlocking and opening doors, lowering thermostats, closing lights etc.
Also, a new programming language, named Swift, which is replacing Objective C as the company's primary language for building applications. WWDC 2014 also introduced the predictive text feature QuickType, for assistance when writing texts, which "learns" from the user's habits, as well as a tool called Metal, which enables developers to write programs for iPhone and iPad which are characterized by greater speed and increased detail in terms of graphics.
Among the newcomers to the conference is the "opening" of Touch ID recognition technology to "third" developers, as well as the service Family Sharing, which allows up to six members of the same family to share content from iTunes on their devices. At the same time, a number of improvements for iOS were presented App Store, which includes the ability to offer multiple applications under a single, "bundle price", and the ability to publish videos on the application's description page.
Also, each developer will be able to offer its application as a public beta download via Test Flight, enabling users to test the original versions of applications before their official release (as in the case of "early access" seen in Steam).
Source: naftemporiki.gr
