“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.”
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