Tim Cook, Apple, Inc. CEO, kicked off the annual Worldwide Developer Conference with a showcase of Apple’s achievements in the developer community. With 13 million registered developers, WWDC is now in its 27th year and boasts attendees from 74 countries, two million apps in the App Store, paying more than $50 billion to developers.

Here is a brief recap of the announcements Cook and his team made for platform updates to Apple’s most popular products including the Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and the the Apple Watch.

watchOS

Kevin Lynch, the vice president for Technology at Apple, took the stage to introduce watchOS 3.0. He acknowledged one of the major flaws of the Apple Watch: sluggishness in launching apps, which he says has been addressed with this latest version of watchOS. The updated platform introduces new features such as Instant Launch, Dock, Scribble and new watchfaces, to name a few.

The update for Apple Watch also includes emergency call features, background refreshes, medical ID profiles, activity sharing, support for wheelchair-bound users who ar, a new app called Breathe, and more.

Developers enrolled with Apple’s program can now access watchOS 3.0 today, and the rest of the world will get the update for free by Fall 2016.

tvOS

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, was next on stage to discuss Apple TV and tvOS. According to Cue, there are now 1,300 video channels on tvOS and around 6,000 apps. He also announced new apps such as Fox Sports and Sling.

Some of the new features arriving for the Apple TV include a new app for the remote, Siri’s ability to search movies by topic, search for specific videos on YouTube, Live Tune In, Single Sign-On, a dark theme and more tool kits for developers such as HomeKit, ReplayKit, and PhotoKit.

tvOS is available today for developers and will available for Apple TV users by Fall 2016.

OS X macOS

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, then took the stage to talk about OS X, remarking on how it stands out from all of the other Apple platforms, leading to the official announcement for the name change. OS X is now macOS.

To be clear, the latest version is called macOS Sierra, with  a focus on continuity, explained Federighi. macOS Sierra features Auto Unlock, Universal Clipboard, the ability to access macOS on any Apple device thanks to iCloud, easier file management, Apple Pay on the web, picture-in-picture support, Siri search for specific files and web searches.  

macOS Sierra is available in public beta today and for the rest of macOS users, as a free update, by Fall 2016.

iOS 10

Federighi is back on stage to enumerate what makes iOS 10 better. First is a redesigned lock screen for third party app notifications, and the option to clear all notifications from the Control Center. Other lock screen updates include the ability to swipe right for access to the device camera, and swipe left for widgets. 

Siri is now open to developers, which means we can expect to see apps integrated with the virtual assistant in the coming months. Siri can be used to book rides, search photos taken using a certain app, send payments, delivers better keyboard suggestions — this is just some of what we can expect from Siri’s pending integration with third party apps.

Federighi also discussed a new feature called Advanced Computer Vision that will bring facial, object and scene recognition to devices such as the iPhone. A new Memories tab has been introduced in the Photos app to organize photos based on location and related memories, and can be played like a slideshow.

The Maps app is now more proactive in giving suggestions such as restaurants and estimated arrival time for the office, and is now open to developers. Apple Music has also been redesigned. When you open the app the default screen is the user’s Library, and there is now a tab for downloaded music. 

For the News app, more publications have been added, along with an option for subscriptions. Articles are now more magazine-like in appearance, along with notifications for breaking news, to name a few of the additions.

A new Home app was also introduced,  which will feature all HomeKit devices, meaning users can control all their connected devices in one app. Cool capabilities include seeing a live feed video from your IP camera right from the Control Center, and geofencing options. The Home app is also available in the Apple Watch.

iOS 10 is getting voice call transcriptions as well as spam alerts for incoming calls. New messaging features were also introduced, including new and bigger emojis, bubbles effects that lets users decide whether a message warrants a big or small bubble, handwriting effects, and full-screen effects to deliver messages loud and clear. Messages is now also open to developers.

As for its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, Apple says it uses on-device intelligence, banking on “differential privacy” which is described as “crowd-sourced learning while keeping data from different users private.

A developer preview for iOS 10 is now available, with a public beta release in July, and will be officially launched by Fall 2016.

Swift

Before the event ended, Cook was back on stage to talk about Swift, Apple’s programming language. Apple is releasing a new app called Swift Playgrounds to help younger generations – kids – learn how to code. The apps is clearly meant for kids, or even those who are just starting to learn to code at it features colorful and big images, games to make coding fun and easy, a drag and drop approach, and other approaches not usually used in coding. Great news is, Swift Playgrounds is free.

Sadly, no “One more thing,” was heard from Cook before he left the stage.

Photo by SiliconANGLE