America
Apple attacks Windows, Android with new updates
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By Anirban GhoshalSan Francisco/New Delhi, June 9
Apple's CEO
Tim Cook on Monday morning came on to the stage in San Francisco to
reveal the technology giant's music service, OS X update El Capitan, iOS
9 and its Watch OS 2.
After being greeted by the crowd, Cook
announced the ransom for a Cleveland Indians baseball player whose
teammates are trying to shake him down for Apple products in exchange
for a ball he wants to keep.
Soon after, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, announced the new updates.
After
saying that OS X Yosemite had the fastest adoption rate of any PC
operating system in history, Craig announces that the new OS X 10 will
be called 'El Capitan' and will come with advancements under the hood to
aid smarter ways to do things.
The new features will include
Spotlight, Split View, and window management. Spotlight will now be able
to search for more places and provide more useful results, including
weather and sports scores.
Apple with this move seems to have
prepared for the Windows 10 release and most of its intuitive menus seem
to take a book from Windows' play book and making it better.
He
also introduced Metal, Apple's graphics processing technology which
will improve rendering by 50 percent and will scale up efficiency to 40
percent. Several gaming companies like Unity, 2K games are already
adopting metal which uses Open CL, he added.
This announcement by
Apple assumes significance as Apple has always been a bad platform for
heavy games. This transition will allow the company to expand its sales
in the world market.
The new El Capitan will be available to
developers from Monday. "There will be a public beta in July and it will
be rolled out to everyone in autumn via a free upgrade," Craig added.
As
a part of the conference, Craig also revealed updates to the iOS 9
which will extend battery life, improve security and performance. He
also showed advancements to Siri, Apple's virtual assistant which will
be more proactive after the update.
Apple devices will now be
able to anticipate what a user wants to do next based on location, the
time, apps opened, or content the user is connected to. "It can also
offer suggestions based on upcoming meetings and communication
patterns," Craig said.
The event also saw Jennifer Bailey, a
10-year Apple veteran and vice president of internet services, announce
Apple Pay which will be launched in Britain. Londoners can take
advantage of it and pay for their transit on the bus using the app. With
iOS 9, users will be able to add retail store cards and reward cards to
Apple Pay.
A few updates on apps were also announced. The Notes
app, which has been completely redesigned for iOS9, will allow users to
add a checklist of to-do items and access camera app from Notes to add
photos.
Maps, the app, will also get updated and will get a new
Transit view. Maps will now include directions for public transportation
like buses, trains, subways, and ferries. The service will be launched
in London as well as Berlin, New York, Mecxico City, San Francisco, Hong
Kong and Shanghai.
Apple introduced a new News app. Susan
Prescott, vice president of product marketing, who joined Apple in 2003,
introduced the app and explained its functions. The app looked a lot
like Flipboard and will include news, interactive stories, photo
galleries, animations and video.
Apple, which launched the iWatch
six weeks back, also announced the arrival of the WatchOS 2. Users will
be able to add photos, add photo album and add time-lapse photos for
the watch face. The watch will be capable of showing and aiding usage of
car-battery charge, home-control systems etc.
Interestingly,
the watch will come with a time travel mode which shows the user about
his schedule planned in his calendar. Features like alarms, replying to
email, sketching ability and face time audio will also be present.
The
new OS for the watch will also support voice control for Siri, apple
pay, the wallet app along with the transit view on Maps app. The watch
with the new update will be able to function with standalone Wi-FI and
access microphone on it. Apple will also release watchkit (libraries for
WatchOS) for developers to develop more apps for the watch.
At
the end of the conference, Apple launched its music service. The service
will not only host a library of songs but also connect artists with
fans and will also run a 24/7 global radio station based out of three
cities.
(Anirban Ghoshal can be contacted at [email protected])