This year’s Apple developer conference keynote was long and included several important announcements. Here is a list of the major points:
Prime Video – The announcement that Amazon Prime Video support for the Apple TV was the only tvOS announcement. It is however a notable boost to the platform. Now Android, Android TV and Chromecast remain the only platforms with out Prime Video.
Apple Watch – The Apple Watch update includes mostly backend improvements. The most important addition is the Siri watch face, providing Google Now like context aware announcements. On a side note, the Apple Watch has all-new Toy Story inspired watch faces.
macOS High Sierra – The latest version of macOS comes with support for VR, Steam VR , HEVC and other changes under the hood. For the end-user the only real change is in Safari, with autoplay-blocking and an anti-tracking feature.
iMac – The iMac is getting a much needed update with better specs and faster drives. In addition, the entire Mac platform will move to Kaby Lake, the latest chipset architecture from Intel. Apple also announced the iMac Pro, a prosumer focused desktop with as many as 18 processor cores and 128GB of RAM, coming in Space grey.
iOS 11 – The biggest set of announcements came with the iOS segment. Some notable improvements to iOS are: iMessage apps, improved Siri, Apple Pay for iMessage, new control center, Apple Maps improvements, and AR support.
There were so many new things to announce that some of the above points were only given a minute or two. It was one of the more prolific WWDC keynotes and shows that Apple is getting some direction after putting too much focus only on the iPhone.