“Apple’s 2014 Worldwide Developer Conference started much the same way as previous years’ events have, with a long line of attendees wrapped around the block waiting to hear what the company had available to show during its opening Keynote address. There were lots of surprises,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider. “In fact, most of what Apple showed to its developers and the media came as a series of unexpected surprises, while most of the rumored ’roundup’ of speculation turned out to be wrong, from ‘Healthbook’ screenshots to the rumored ‘iOS TextEdit and Preview’ to the ‘removal’ of Game Center and the addition of a ‘Control Center for OS X,’ an iPad ‘split screen UI’ and a secondary iPad display feature.”
“The rumor mill also offered no inkling of the majority of Apple’s big news items, ranging from Apple’s entirely new ‘Swift’ programming language to OS X Yosemite’s new focus on Spotlight search; a new Widget store for Notification Center; new privacy and performance features in Safari; new Messages features; new Mail markup features; the new iCloud Drive; any hint of the new Handoff, Instant Hotspot, SMS/Phone integration between iOS and OS X that Apple collectively referred to as “Continuity”; the new iCloud Photo Library and revamped Photo apps for iOS and Mac; new Keyboard features and third party flexibility; new Family Sharing; and new enterprise features, including connectivity with third party cloud storage services,” Dilger reports. “Virtually every significant new iOS and OS X feature that Apple unveiled and subsequently detailed on its website was a real surprise, while nearly every WWDC rumor ended up being wrong or significantly off the mark. Clearly, Apple’s ‘doubling down’ on secrecy has paid off.”
Read more in the full article here.
How about that, the analysts were wrong!
Secrets are easier to keep when China and a parade of suppliers are not involved.
This, exactly. It will be very difficult for Apple to keep hardware secret while they contract out the manufacturing, especially to China, but software is developed in Cupertino and that is much easier to control.
I was just about to make a joke about the new iPhone when I realised yes a big difference between software and hardware secrecy. thats probably a very good reason for evicting hardware announcements (as a rule) from this conference it would only further camouflage the great software developments which may not be as glamorous but will be perhaps more significant as time passes and they develop.
I’d say what was announced was way more interesting than the rumors.
Oh hell yeah!
Wouldn’t it be nice if every Apple story foisted on the net had metadata? Then we could filter out the crap from the treasure. Enact a news filter to block out ‘rumor’ and to block out proven tech illiterate authors by way of a public rating scale. It could happen!
…as most predictions were wrong
NO surprise there. These days, it’s apparently de rigueur for every barely relevant news source and barely tech savvy blog to write profound tomes about the future of Apple. That’s part of the price of Apple growing from favorite underdog to Master Of The World. Now every dog and cat is an expert, with predictable results. 😉
So there are two types of expert. One uses a litter box. The other craps all over everything. ?
Um, uh…
Has anyone asked Walter Isaacson what he thought about it, yet?
/s
One surprise that must really strike fear into the hearts of not only analysts and jouranalysts but also of a terroristic wannabe government is that Apple maintained their privacy. Must be tough for organizations like the NSA to have to endure this flagrant behavior.
Depends I guess if Apple and their ilk are paying secretly for their pension funds. Individuals on the other hand…
…are paying for their pension fund?
…are suckered into paying for their pension fund?
…are easily duped?
Oh I do love multiple choice.
I hope you enjoyed the conference spyintheskyuk.
Where is Siri for the Mac? I’m very surprised by the lack of that.