Thoughts on the WWDC Keynote

The Internet is full of people evaluating, scoring, and critiquing Apple’s WWDC presentation today. At this point anything I’d say has already been said somewhere else. Well, that’s never stopped me before. Here are a few of my random thoughts:

  • Apple’s advantage has always been the way your Apple devices work together. The new sharing features between iOS and the Mac is a big deal. Having a half finished email jump between your iPad and Mac or answering an iPhone call on your Mac is going to be a great advantage for Apple users. I’m really pleased to see them leveraging this with iOS 8/Yosemite. The more of this, the better.
  • The photo management and storage problem has been reaching critical mass lately. I’ve always felt that Apple needs to solve this problem. I watched the WWDC section on photos in iCloud twice and it’s still not absolutely clear what’s going on but it appears they’ll store all your photos (or at least all the photos you take with iOS devices) in the cloud and use/edit/view them from any device. Maybe this will solve the photo problem. My fingers are crossed. I wish I didn’t have to wait until next year to see the Mac software though.
  • Extensibility is the most often requested feature in my home screen features. Everyone wants it. Apple’s finally done it. This is another one where we don’t have all the details yet but looks to be really useful. I wonder how deep this will run. I’m sure I’ll be able to do things like send a web page to Pocket or Instapaper but will I be able to send an email to OmniFocus?
  • Touch ID + 1Password login = win.
  • The Siri updates look interesting. You can now activate it without holding down the button by saying “Hey, Siri”. That will be nice if you use it while driving. It also will display words as you dictate them in Siri. I don’t believe it works that way with plain dictation yet. I still have hope that the next iPhone/iPad chip will make on-device dictation possible.
  • Did you notice how whenever they showed third party storage services they showed Microsoft OneDrive, Box, and no Dropbox. Dropbox didn’t get mentioned once. The iCloud drive seems aimed right at Dropbox. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill. I’m looking forward to seeing this play out.
  • HomeKit is a great idea. I’ll be a great beta tester for HomeKit since I seem to have bought one devices from every home automation vendor and now have an entire folder full of controller apps.
  • I wonder how many people have tried to call that number they posted for Dr. Dre.
  • Craig Federighi is really turning into a polished presenter. I never would have believed it when he first started talking at these events and his hands shook like a nervous groom.
  • Every time Tim says “Customer Sat”, an angel gets its wings.
  • I’m pretty sure that is black carpet on the stage. I’ve spoken at Moscone in the past and I never got carpet. Apple is classy.