WWDC/Layers Conference Day 1
It’s show time!
The first day of conference action is here and after a brisk wake up call we made our way to the Twitter HQ to watch the WWDC keynote live stream.
Once there, we made our way to the prepared lounge on the top floor where a nice breakfast awaited. Somewhere between 200 to 300 of us were in attendance and the beautiful day made for a nice view out the window.
Soon enough there were only 15 mins left to the keynote start time of 10 am and so after a short presentation on the fabric dev platform, the lights went down and the show got underway. If you haven’t seen the keynote, you can do so here: http://www.apple.com/live/2015-june-event/
The room was alive but we knew things were going to be interesting when Tim Cook spent no time with formalities and gave the stage to Craig Federighi under big applause.
Some of the highlights include a bunch of software (no new hardware this time) announcements: Apple Music, Open Source Swift 2, Apple Pay in the UK, OSX El Capitan, watchOS 2 and iOS9
The keynote had a very interesting intro movie and after some quick words by Tim Cook, we jumped straight into the announcement of “El Capitan” with it’s new San Francisco font, Metal performance (faster Sketch / Photoshop anyone?) and natural language search.
We jumped into the iOS 9 updates with it’s News app, new Siri UI and support for more natural language queries as well as a focus on context with proactive features. Siri got a lot of love receiving app deep linking allowing you to make a search and jump straight into an app and back. There is also a new transit app that might compete with popular 3rd party solutions like city mapper.
A new wallet app was announced with Apple Pay support for the UK. It was good to see a few of our clients, like Transport for London, on the list of partners for the launch. Square got featured showing off it’s new reader for small businesses.
The notes app is also getting more powerfull with support for new attachments like smart links and images as well as to-do lists.
It felt like Apple was making a push to show you why you need to buy an iPad with it’s new multitasking capabilities, Flipboard like app and smart keyboard that you can now use like a trackpad using two fingers.
To close the trifecta, the new watchOS 2 was shown off giving way to native watch apps that can now access sensors and the digital crown as well as being displayed front and center in the complications.
One more thing…Apple Music. Even with Jimmy Lovine, Drake and The Weekend, Apple did a terrible job at presenting their new “Spotify Killer” but the truth is that most people seem quite excited for when it launches at the end of the month, with it’s massive iTunes library and Beats 1 radio service. Everyone will get a 3 month trial for free.
With the keynote behind us, it was time for some more San Francisco exploration before heading out to the Layers Conference badge pick up!
It was 4:30 when we made or way from the hotel to Sugarfina, our first stop for Layers Conference. The sun was definetly out and so it was with very happy faces that, once inside, we received a cold glass of champagne and high quality candy.
After attending to all our sweet needs and meeting a lot of designers, we made our way to the second stop: Jins. This second stop was a japanese eyewear company so with my prescription and a 10% discount in hand I managed to buy new glasses for only $72…unbelievable! The best part? Barely no wait as their robot prepared the selected frame with new lens adapted for my perscription in under 30 mins. Now that’s service!
We wrapped up the day with drinks and dinner. Bring on Day 2 with a full schedule of amazing talks.
