With iOS 12, Apple focuses on performance

Apple’s Craig Federighi announced that Apple was doubling down on performance with the upcoming release of iOS 12 at the WWDC event in San Jose, CA today.

What’s more, he said, the company would be making these changes to the full range of iOS devices going back to 2013. “And so for iOS 12, we are doubling down on performance from top to bottom making improvements to make.your device faster and more responsive. And because we want these changes to be available the full range of our customers, iOS 12 will be available on all the same devices as iOS 11,” Federighi told the WWDC audience.

Perhaps because customers were unhappy to learn about the battery issues with older iOS devices Federighi stressed that Apple has focussed these performance increases on older devices, giving people with older iPhones, the maximum lift. Using the iPhone 6 as an example, he gave some figures about performance increase, stressing that it was still early days. (As an iPhone 6 user, I was listening carefully.)

“Now on that device, iOS delivers a number of improvements. Across common operations you’ll see that apps launch up to 40% faster, the keyboard can come up to 50% faster and you can slide to take a photo at up to 70% faster,” he said.

But he said, the biggest focus, and one all iPhone users can appreciate, is that they are working to optimize performance when it’s under load. As Federighi said that’s when you need performance the most and where iOS 12 really shines.

“We put iOS 12 through our stress tests and we saw in those conditions share sheet coming up twice as fast, and apps launching twice as fast. These are big, big improvements,” he stressed.

Lastly, Apple also optimized iOS 12 at the chip level working with the chip team to optimize performance, while taking battery life into account. If you keep the power pedal to the medal for too long, you suck battery, but Apple is trying to find that perfect balance of power and battery life in iOS 12.

“CPUs traditionally respond to an increased demand for performance by slowly ramping up their clock speed. Well, now in iOS 12, we’re much smarter. When we detect that you need a performance lift when you’re scrolling and launching an app, we ramped up processor performance instantly to its highest state delivering high performance and a ramp it down just as fast to preserve battery life,” he said.

All of this will be available when iOS 12 is released later this year.

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Apple delivers big updates to its augmented reality platform

Apple began WWDC talking all about the update it’s delivering to its augmented reality platform, introducing ARKit 2 with iOS 12 which brings several big tech upgrades.

The company didn’t get a chance to showcase all of the things it’s adding to ARKit, but did touch on the big additions, which include improved face tracking, realistic rendering, 3D object detection, persistent experiences and shared experiences.

Multiplayer is a big update for AR at Apple, the multiplayer addition will be big for gaming and Apple will certainly try to bring the functionality to other categories moving forward.

Apple’s AR bet still has a lot to prove

At Google I/O, we saw a new technology called Cloud Anchors which matches up what a pair of smartphone users are seeing in the cloud to allow for multiplayer, it’s not clear how Apple is doing this, but  what’s interesting about Google’s approach is that Cloud Anchors allows for multiplayer across platforms so Android and iOS users can pair up easily as well.

Apple released ARKit one year ago. The developer platform is based on technology which synthesized the relationship between the inertial sensors of Apple devices and their cameras to track their position in space. This positional tracking allows users to not only move around digital objects but fix those objects to physical places in an environment.

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Apple introduces iOS 12

Apple announced the next version of iOS at its WWDC developer conference. While iOS 12 won’t be available before the fall, it’s always interesting to get a sneak peek at the next version of iOS.

Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi first talked about some numbers. 81 percent of iOS users are currently running iOS 11. 6 percent of Android users are currently on the last version.

“For iOS 12, we’re doubling down on performance,” Federighi said. iOS 12 is going to be available on all devices that currently support iOS 11.

It’s interesting the Federighi talked about iOS 12 on the iPhone 6 Plus. Apps launch 40 percent faster, the keyboard comes up 50 percent faster and opening the camera is 70 percent faster.

You get the idea, the big new feature of iOS 12 is performance and optimization.

But it doesn’t mean that Apple didn’t think about new features. Apple has created a new file format for augmented reality called USDZ. Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis talked for a couple of minutes to announce that Adobe apps are going to support USDZ.

Apple is launching a new app to educate people about augmented reality. This app is called Measure and works pretty much like popular third-party app MeasureKit. While Apple says USDZ is a file format for augmented reality, Federighi also showed a USDZ 3D file in the middle of an Apple News article.

And the company is also updating ARKit with multiplayer augmented reality. You can get the same augmented reality experience with multiple devices.

This is a developing post, please refresh for updates.

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How to watch the live stream for today’s Apple WWDC keynote

Apple is holding a keynote today at the San Jose Convention Center, and the company is expected to unveil new updates for iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and maybe also some new hardware. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch the event as the company is streaming it live.

Apple is likely to talk about some new features for all its software platforms — WWDC is a developer conference after all. Rumor has it that Apple could also unveil some MacBook Pro update with new Intel processors.

If you have the most recent Apple TV, you can download the Apple Events app in the App Store. It lets you stream today’s event and rewatch old events. Users with old Apple TVs can simply turn on their devices. Apple is pushing out the “Apple Events” channel so that you can watch the event.

And if you don’t have an Apple TV, the company also lets you live-stream the event from the Apple Events section on its website. This video feed works in Safari and Microsoft Edge. And for the first time, Apple says that the video should also work in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

So to recap, here’s how you can watch today’s Apple event:

• Safari on the Mac or iOS.
• Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
• Maybe Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
• An Apple TV gen 4 with the Apple Events app in the App Store.
• An Apple TV gen 2 or 3, with the Apple Events channel that arrives automatically right before the event.

Of course, you also can read TechCrunch’s live blog if you’re stuck at work and really need our entertaining commentary track to help you get through your day. We have a big team in the room this year.

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Live from Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote

It’s that time again. This morning kicks off Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference. It’s a week of programming focused on developers, but this morning’s big event has a little something for everyone. Here’s a quick break down of what we can likely expect when Tim Cook takes the stage this morning.

The keynote will most likely be focused on announcements surrounding iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 — in fact, we got a bit of a preview of the latter over the weekend. WatchOS and HomeKit will probably get some love, as well, along with ARKit, which took center stage at the event, this time last year.

As for hardware — expect Apple to throw us a couple of bones on that front, as well — though the really big announcements around iPhone, iPad and the like, are probably being saved for another day. Beyond that, the sky — or the San Jose Convention Center ceiling, at least — is the limit.

We’ll see you right here at 10AM PT/1PM ET/5PM GMT

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How to watch the live stream for today’s Apple WWDC keynote

Apple is holding a keynote today at the San Jose Convention Center, and the company is expected to unveil new updates for iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and maybe also some new hardware. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch the event as the company is streaming it live.

Apple is likely to talk about some new features for all its software platforms — WWDC is a developer conference after all. Rumor has it that Apple could also unveil some MacBook Pro update with new Intel processors.

If you have the most recent Apple TV, you can download the Apple Events app in the App Store. It lets you stream today’s event and rewatch old events. Users with old Apple TVs can simply turn on their devices. Apple is pushing out the “Apple Events” channel so that you can watch the event.

And if you don’t have an Apple TV, the company also lets you live-stream the event from the Apple Events section on its website. This video feed works in Safari and Microsoft Edge. And for the first time, Apple says that the video should also work in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

So to recap, here’s how you can watch today’s Apple event:

• Safari on the Mac or iOS.
• Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
• Maybe Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
• An Apple TV gen 4 with the Apple Events app in the App Store.
• An Apple TV gen 2 or 3, with the Apple Events channel that arrives automatically right before the event.

Of course, you also can read TechCrunch’s live blog if you’re stuck at work and really need our entertaining commentary track to help you get through your day. We have a big team in the room this year.

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Student developers arrive in full force for Apple’s WWDC

As the developer community prepares for Apple to unveil its latest software efforts at the company’s WWDC keynote later this morning, there are a younger subset of student developers feverishly roaming about excited to see what they can build next too.

WWDC is a pretty pricey affair at $1,599 per ticket. Like some other tech companies, Apple has opted to make it a bit easier for students to attend their conference. They’ve done so through a scholarship where younger developers can submit applications and, if selected, get into the event for free with their lodging paid for as well.

The more than 350 scholarship recipients this year represented 42 different countries and 34 languages. This year, those students got another added perk as their regular agenda was interrupted by a trip to Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus and a meet-and-greet with CEO Tim Cook. Later, Cook tweeted a video of what some of the students were working on, saying, “Nothing inspires us more than fresh ideas.”

Photo: Apple

I had the chance to sit down with a few of these young attendees, the youngest of whom was 16 years old (though students as young as 13 could apply), and chat about some of the things that they were building.

“This is my third year at WWDC,” Nathan Flurry, 19, told TechCrunch.”I grew up in a very rural community and I rarely ever left the town, so WWDC was like the first time I got to meet people who cared about the same thing I did.”

As part of the application, students had to build and submit an interactive Swift playground that could be experienced in a few minutes. Flurry built a visual programming language powered by Apple Pencil interactions.

So… I built a rudimentary visual programming language that assembles to Swift and lets you create everything entirely with an Apple Pencil using #OCR + #CoreML. I highly suggest you check out the playground and then the standalone app! https://t.co/gaphvyNIWp pic.twitter.com/uzm4cIF5t8

— Nathan Flurry @ WWDC (@NathanFlurry) April 1, 2018

Another student I chatted with, Joseph Lou, 16, submitted a project for the scholarship that was aiming to recreate the system which the late Stephen Hawking used to communicate. “The app that I built for this scholarship was actually my first app and it was also my first time working with Swift,” Lou said.

It was clear that all of these exceedingly bright teens were also working on some pretty big projects of their own. Gabrielle Ecanow, 18, is working on an app called Study Buddy that allows students to coordinate tutoring and studying. Roland Horváth, 17, has built several apps, the latest of which is Try Not to Smile, which plays a bunch of funny videos for users and utilizes the iPhone’s front camera to see how long they can make it without cracking a smile.

See you soon dubdub! VIE FRA SCJ #WWDC #WWDCScholars pic.twitter.com/aSlPnhqSxE

— Roland @ WWDC18 (@hroland_) June 2, 2018

Harish Yerra, 16, built an app called Greeta that allows users to turn hand-written notes into greeting cards.

“I started programming when I was 12, and I just thought it would be super cool to build an iOS app,” Yerra told TechCrunch. “I’d say WWDC 2016 was a major breaking point because that’s when I actually met a couple of my best friends and we went on to build an app…”

Waiting in line with the squad at #WWDC18 #WWDCScholars pic.twitter.com/lt6gX9QOUM

— Omar Al-Ejel @ WWDC (@oalejel) June 3, 2018

As the group heads into the conference starting Monday, many of them are focused on using the opportunity to connect with other developers and see what they can build next.

“I come back for the connections,” Flurry said. “The keynote is great, I love being here and it’s cool to see it, but I really love being around all of the engineers and meeting other developers who share a passion.”

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