One of the interesting things this year is the ticketing system. Apple Wallet appears to be using NFC (You authenticate via Touch or Face ID and a proximity tap can open doors or grant access (or get you a badge).
There are really large screens, and they're displaying app icons. "I'll Do Whatever It Takes" is playing, for those of you compiling your keynote soundtrack playlists.
The hall has a really elaborate 802.11ac setup with base stations everywhere. No ideas why it's not working, unless there's just too many people for it. We'll keep trying for images.
Now playing "High Hopes" by Panic! At The Disco.
The lights are beginning to dim!
Some shots used in this video were shot today as people were entering the hall. It's well done. "One may look at, but not touch, the mane" describing Craig Federighi.
"The many languages of the developer are a mystery to modern science. Only these enlightened shamans can decode the symbols."
"Welcome home developers"
Tim Cook is on stage. "It is great to be back in San Jose with everyone. We have developers from all over the world, from 77 countries. That's more than ever before. And I couldn't be happier to announce that we now have more than 20 million apple developers from around the world. We have 6000 folks in the hall this morning."
"The way that developers get to share your amazing work is through the App Store." Next month, the App Store turns 10
"In these 10 years, the App Store has fundamentally changed the way we all live. It's spawned new industries, new companies and changed lives. It's the world's largest app marketplace."
Over 500 Million visitors per week. "This week, we're going to achieve a huge milestone. The money that developers have earned through the app store will top 100 Billion dollars. This is beyond remarkable. The App Store is clearly the best place for you to be rewarded for your hard work and creativity."
"We want more people to learn the power of code, and it all starts with Swift and Swift Playgrounds."
"We created Swift Playgrounds to make it as easy to learn to code as it is to use our products." Over 350,000 apps have been written in Swift on the App Store.
"We believe coding is an essential skill that should be taught in every school in the world. That's why we created Everyone Can Learn to Code. It's been so successful it's now availble to tens of millions of students around the world. We're sure it's going to change the world."
"Today it's all about software." No hardware, then?
"We put the customer at the center of everything we design. Every year we put out an iOS update with awesome new features." Craig Federighi is out.
"Our next big release of iOS is, you guessed it, iOS 12. Our customers are going to receive it as a free software update. People forget this now, but iOS pioneered the idea of the free software update. " Craig is covering some of the features over the years - App Store, Find my iPhone, slide over, AR. "iOS supports devices introduced as far back as 2013. Half our customers updated to iOS 11 in just seven weeks. It's incredible."
"as we stand here today, 81% of over a billion iOS devices are running the latest release. Our competition? It's kind of hard to say they have a software update model."
"What's more important to us is customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is at 95%."
"Delivering these features while maintaining performance is a high priority. So for iOS 11 (did he mean 12?) we're doubling down on performance. All features for iOS12 will be available on all devices. We're focusing our efforts especially on the oldest devices."
On a 6+, Craig shows apps launching 40% faster, keyboard coming up 50% faster, and sliding to take a picture 70% faster.
iOS 12 will shine on performance under load. Share sheets come up 2x as fast, and apps launch 2x as fast. The tight collaboration with the chip team allows them to optimize like this. Instead of chips needing to slowly ramp up clock speed, they ramp up in a burst instantly and then ramp down to preserve battery life. These improvements come to not just the older devices, but to the full range of devices.
"If this is all we had done in iOS 12, it would be a great release. But we've done more. and it starts with Augmented Reality."
AR enables experiences they way we have fun and the way we work. Working with Pixar, we created a new file format. USDZ is optimised for sharing, animations, and letting you place 3D objecs in the real world. Imagine getting an object shared via a text message and being able to QuickLook it in the real world. Adobe has been all in on USDZ.
Abhay Parasnis is up from Adobe to talk about AR and USDZ. "Apple is by far the most powerful platform for AR" With USDZ there's a way to deliver consistent AR experiences across all Apple devices. They're bringing USDZ to all of Creative Cloud. Photoshop, Dimension, and others let you create AR content and bring it easily via USDZ.
They have a a brand new iOS app to help you bring in images, text, videos from CC into a native AR environment. WYSIWYG in AR.
At the State of the Union, they're going to show off the tools. We'll have coverage from that later.
"A critical part of AR is measurement. We do this really well, and we want to enable everyone to take advantage of this." Craig introduces Apple Measure to detect objects, lines on surfaces, and rectangles. DEMO!
It automatically detects rectangles. He pulls out a baby photo, and it clearly is a joke - the baby has craig's current hair. It measures the height and width of the photo.
USDZ is in News as well. There's a 3D fish in the news article. He taps on a USDZ icon, and it becomes animated and interactive (zoom, pan, etc.)
Now at the Fender guitars website. Craig configures a Stratocaster, and taps, the guitar is now life size in the camera, in AR on the table.
They brought in a select few developers to work with them in the past few months. LEGO comes up to speak.
"Creating and playing with physical LEGO sets brings joy to millions of fans around the world. With ARKit2 we get to expand those possibilities and take things beyond the physical." combining the physical and augmented to really take it to the next level.
There's a LEGO kit, creator's square on the table. 3D detection recognises the model, builds out other sets alongside it, combinging physical and digital for creative play. There are icons above the minifigs, so you can explore the stories of the characters.
We have the badge! We're in!
