The Apple WWDC 2017 Live Blog

12:33PM EDT - We're here in sunny San Jose, California for Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference. A show of both hardware and software, it's Apple's keynote event of the year.

12:34PM EDT - This is the first year in recent times that Apple has held WWDC in San Jose. Normally it's out at the Moscone Center in San Francisco

12:34PM EDT - The advantage of San Jose? It's closer to Apple. It's also easier to get in and out of

12:36PM EDT - However it's also a packed house. Apple can and has filled the convention center

12:37PM EDT - The principle purpose of WWDC is to talk software. Future updates for iOS and macOS are a given

12:40PM EDT - Hardware is also a strong possibility on any given year, and I would be surprised if we didn't see something this year

12:41PM EDT - The bigger question: will WiFi hold up? We're about to find out

12:42PM EDT - So I just received word that AMD is here

12:42PM EDT - As Apple is not one to have their announcements spoiled, I imagine this is as exhibitors, but we'll see

12:43PM EDT - AMD provides the dGPUS for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, so any refresh would likely also use an AMD dGPU

12:45PM EDT - In usual Apple fashion, the names of the individual sessions have not been published. Those will be announced after the keynote, as they would otherwise be spoilers

12:48PM EDT - For those of you who prefer to watch this live, Apple is also live streaming this starting at 1pm ET: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2017/

12:49PM EDT - I am curious to see what all Apple announces. The company nasn't been stagnant, but I think they know they need to avoid WWDC 2017 being more of the same

12:52PM EDT - People are still getting seated, so we may not start exactly at 1

12:55PM EDT - I can't help but think of SkiFree with Apple's idle animation here. A top-down very of people that is slowly scrolling

12:58PM EDT - Getting closer. The Apple logo is now up

12:59PM EDT - On a related note, there was a good article in the New York Times the other day on Apple's discoverability problem: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/technology/apple-iphone-developer-conference.html

01:00PM EDT - Apple hsa to be careful adding yet more features, as users are having a hard time digesting and integrating what they already have

01:01PM EDT - If we're really lucky, Apple will say something about the Mac Pro today, addressing its power users directly. But that seems doubtful

01:03PM EDT - Attendees are still getting seated. Just a few more minutes

01:06PM EDT - Still waiting at this point

01:07PM EDT - Alright, here we go

01:07PM EDT - Everyone is standing and holding up phones. I'm not sure if WWDC is a press conference, a concert, or both

01:07PM EDT - Starting things off with a video

01:09PM EDT - Humorous video about what would happen if all of Apple's iOS services went down

01:10PM EDT - Keep making apps. The world is depending on you

01:10PM EDT - Now on stage: Tim Cook

01:10PM EDT - "I'm so glad that can't really happen"

01:11PM EDT - "This is going to be the best and biggest WWDC ever"

01:11PM EDT - Stats update: 16 million registered Apple developers. 3mil gain over last year

01:13PM EDT - Tim is warming up the crowd talking about Apple's youngest and oldest developers

01:13PM EDT - Four incredible platforms: tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and iOS

01:14PM EDT - "We have a lot to talk about today"

01:14PM EDT - 6 important announcements for this morning

01:14PM EDT - Announcement #1: tvOS

01:14PM EDT - Amazon is finally coming to the Apple TV

01:15PM EDT - "We are so pleased to welcome Amazon to Apple TV"

01:15PM EDT - We'll be hearing more about tvOS later this year

01:15PM EDT - Announcement #2: Apple Watch

01:16PM EDT - Now a presentation on watchOS

01:16PM EDT - Introducing watchOS 4

01:17PM EDT - Starting with watch faces

01:17PM EDT - New Siri watch face

01:18PM EDT - Reminders and other contextually relevant notifications

01:19PM EDT - Also discusisng other artistic faces

01:19PM EDT - (We seem to be about 9 minutes behind schedule, going by Apple's not-quite-live timestamps)

01:20PM EDT - New UI for the workout watch app

01:21PM EDT - New module for high intensity interval training

01:22PM EDT - Enabling 2-way data exchange with gym equipment via NFC

01:22PM EDT - Watch-enabled equipment will be rolling out this fall from the major gym equipment manufacturers

01:23PM EDT - Moving on, new watch music app

01:23PM EDT - Demo time

01:24PM EDT - New dock for scrolling through already open watch apps

01:24PM EDT - Also a new news app for the watch

01:25PM EDT - New feature: auto-play a music playlist when starting a workout

01:27PM EDT - New dev features: new UI capabilities, more background apps, more Bluetooth capabilities

01:27PM EDT - Dev preview is out today, release version this fall

01:27PM EDT - Back to Tim

01:27PM EDT - Announcement #3: the Mac

01:28PM EDT - Now discussing what's new with macOS

01:29PM EDT - Joking around about what to call the next macOS

01:29PM EDT - Next macOS: High Sierra

01:29PM EDT - High Sierra is all about deep technologies. But also some refinements

01:31PM EDT - High Sierra is all about deep technologies. But also some refinements

01:31PM EDT - Safari is now going to block auto-playing videos

01:31PM EDT - Intelligent Tracking Prevention

01:31PM EDT - ID trackers and segregrate cross-site tracking

01:32PM EDT - Mail: search is now using Spotlight

01:32PM EDT - Full-screen split view support for Mail as well

01:32PM EDT - Apple has also cut down on Mail disk space usage by 35%

01:33PM EDT - Photos: face detection is improved. Using a better neural network for identification

01:33PM EDT - New photo editing tools as well

01:34PM EDT - Apple is opening up their photo printing service to third parties

01:34PM EDT - Getting back to technology: data, video, and graphics

01:34PM EDT - (Viva la HFS!)

01:35PM EDT - The Apple File System will be the new default in High Sierra

01:35PM EDT - (iOS has been using it since 10.3)

01:36PM EDT - Showing instant duplication (presumably using copy-on-write)

01:36PM EDT - On to video: HEVC (H.265) support on macOS

01:36PM EDT - Hardware acceleration for the format on the recent Macs

01:36PM EDT - And encoders in Apple's various tools

01:37PM EDT - (I guess Apple has sorted out a reasonable solution to the many patent pools for HEVC)

01:37PM EDT - Metal 2 being introduced today

01:37PM EDT - Apple is talking about a further 10x improvement in draw call throughput

01:38PM EDT - The Mac window server is now running on Metal

01:38PM EDT - Also discussing using Metal shaders for machine learning

01:38PM EDT - "Metal for external graphics"

01:38PM EDT - Metal 2 will support this

01:39PM EDT - Apple is selling an eGFX developer kit using TB3 and a Radeon RX 580

01:39PM EDT - Metal for VR

01:39PM EDT - VR-optimized display pipeline with the usual bells and whistles (multi-projection, etc)

01:40PM EDT - The SteamVR SDK will be coming to the Mac, as will Unity and Unreal Engine VR support

01:40PM EDT - Developer beta today. Public beta later this month. Release this Fall. Works on all systems that support Sierra

01:41PM EDT - Now for some Mac hardware announcements

01:41PM EDT - iMac update

01:41PM EDT - Updated display panels. 500 nits (43% brighter) and 10-bit dithering support

01:42PM EDT - Moving to Intels Kaby Lake and 10-bit HEVC decode

01:42PM EDT - Up to 32GB on the 21" system and 64GB on the 27" system; 2x the previous systems

01:42PM EDT - Fusion Drive now standard on 27" config and the high-end 21" config

01:42PM EDT - 50% faster SSD and up to 2TV

01:43PM EDT - Also getting 2x TB3 connectors

01:43PM EDT - iMac Graphics: entry level 21" gets Irus Plus 640 (64MB eDRAM)

01:44PM EDT - Retina 4K 21" gets dGPU, Radeon Pro 555 and 560, up to 4GB VRAM

01:44PM EDT - (Radeon 555 is not a current model number, 560 is Polaris 11)

01:44PM EDT - Retina 5K 27": Radeon Pro 570, 575, and 580

01:44PM EDT - (575 is also not an existing model number)

01:45PM EDT - Industrial Light & Magic's John Knoll is now on stage to offer a testimonial about the new iMacs

01:46PM EDT - Showcasing VR contente creation (in VR) with a Mac

01:47PM EDT - (This seems to be less intensive content creation, and more adding pre-built asset packages)

01:47PM EDT - (Think Garry's Mod)

01:47PM EDT - Running on Metal 2

01:49PM EDT - 90fps

01:49PM EDT - That's the iMac update

01:50PM EDT - $1099, $1499, and $1799 for 21", 21" 4K, and 27" 5K respectively

01:50PM EDT - Notebook refresh as well

01:50PM EDT - Kaby Lake for everyone!

01:51PM EDT - Faster SSD to the MacBook and faster standard graphics to the 15" MBP

01:51PM EDT - Still offering the same Touch Bar configurations

01:51PM EDT - The MacBook Air is also getting a frequency update

01:51PM EDT - No details, but that should be interesting

01:52PM EDT - The MacBook Air renains Apple's cheap laptop, and is quite popular despite its tepid specifications

01:52PM EDT - iMac Pro announced

01:53PM EDT - Not shipping until later this year

01:53PM EDT - Uses the same body design as the 27" iMac

01:53PM EDT - "The most powerful Mac ever"

01:54PM EDT - Talking about cooling. The iMac doesn't cool very well; it's closer to a laptop

01:54PM EDT - Shipping with up to an 18 core Xeon processor

01:54PM EDT - So Skylake-X LCC and HCC

01:54PM EDT - (With a Xeon premium)

01:54PM EDT - Graphics: Radeon Vega with up to 16GB VRAM

01:55PM EDT - Up to 11 TFLOPS FP32 performance

01:55PM EDT - Up to 128GB of ECC RAM

01:55PM EDT - I'm very curious to see how well Apple can cool this

01:55PM EDT - 4x TB3 ports

01:56PM EDT - Built-in 10Gb Ethernet

01:56PM EDT - (Coincidentlally, we have an article on cheaper 10GigE swtiches today: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11487/lower-cost-10gbase-t-switches-coming )

01:56PM EDT - UHS-II SD card slot

01:57PM EDT - Available in December

01:57PM EDT - So this is Apple's apology to pros let down by the Mac Pro

01:58PM EDT - (Though it's arguable whether Apple "gets" why developers might want a seperate tower)

01:58PM EDT - Announcement #4: iOS

01:59PM EDT - Tim is poking fun at Android's slow upgrade rate

01:59PM EDT - iOS 11

01:59PM EDT - (Insert Spinal Tap joke here)

01:59PM EDT - (Ed: actually, let's skip the spinal tap, thanks!)

01:59PM EDT - New features: Messages

02:00PM EDT - Messages in iCloud: auto syncing conversations among devices, including grabbing old messages on a newly synced device

02:00PM EDT - iOS and macOS

02:01PM EDT - Sounds like Apple is going to store a much smaller amount of messages on local devices

02:01PM EDT - Still end-to-end encrypted

02:01PM EDT - Apple Pay for person-to-person payments

02:01PM EDT - (P2PP?)

02:01PM EDT - Built-in to Messages

02:02PM EDT - If you receive money, it goes to your Apple Pay cash card

02:02PM EDT - Can transfer to a bank from there, if you'd like

02:02PM EDT - Siri update: new Siri voice

02:03PM EDT - Going for a more nautral voice

02:03PM EDT - New GUI for Siri as well

02:03PM EDT - New capabilities: translation

02:04PM EDT - Starting with English to 5 other languages

02:04PM EDT - SiriKit updates as well

02:05PM EDT - Siri is now synced across devices. Does on-device learning to better understand the user

02:06PM EDT - HEVC recording is finally enabled

02:06PM EDT - JPEG is being replaced with HEIF: High Efficiency Image Format

02:06PM EDT - Half the size of JPEG

02:07PM EDT - Image quality improvements for the cameras. Better handling of low-light, etc

02:08PM EDT - Live photos editing: trim, etc

02:08PM EDT - One other iOS big feature: control center

02:08PM EDT - Demo time

02:08PM EDT - Control center is now a single page

02:09PM EDT - Designed to make heavy use of 3D Touch

02:09PM EDT - Lock screen and notification screen are being integrated

02:10PM EDT - Seleting a "key photo" from a live photo recording

02:10PM EDT - Effect: using CV to compute a seemless loop of a live photo

02:11PM EDT - Camera: long exposure mode

02:13PM EDT - Now talking about Siri integration

02:14PM EDT - Contextual identificaiton of a request for money, triggering Apple Pay

02:14PM EDT - Detailed mall floor plans

02:15PM EDT - Also doing detailed airport maps

02:15PM EDT - Navigation: speed limit and lane guidance

02:16PM EDT - New feature: Do not Disturb While Driving

02:16PM EDT - Going to use WiFi and Bluetooth to figure out if you're driving, suggest enabling DnDWD

02:16PM EDT - New UI for DnDWD: a black screen

02:17PM EDT - Can be turned off if you're not driving

02:17PM EDT - (or if you want to be a hazard to others)

02:17PM EDT - (Cell phone makers have been taking a lot of flak for distracted driving. So this looks to be Apple's first stab at a solution)

02:18PM EDT - HomeKit Airplay 2 protocol

02:18PM EDT - Apple Music: Shared up Next (group playlists)

02:19PM EDT - Apple TV source and sink support is being added as well

02:19PM EDT - 27M Apple Music paid subscribers

02:20PM EDT - New API: MusicKit for Apple Music. So apps can interface with Apple Music

02:20PM EDT - Moving on: App Store news

02:23PM EDT - Discussing improvements over the last year for developers, such as faster app review times

02:23PM EDT - Phased releases. Choose to slowly roll it out to customers

02:24PM EDT - Apple is going to completely design the app store

02:24PM EDT - Starting tab: Today

02:24PM EDT - Games tab

02:25PM EDT - Apps (everything besides games) gets its own tab

02:25PM EDT - New product pages as well

02:25PM EDT - (Information density seems noticably lower)

02:26PM EDT - Demo time

02:27PM EDT - Very "pretty design, similar to Apple;s on web pages in some ways

02:28PM EDT - Games-only charts

02:28PM EDT - Game categories

02:30PM EDT - That's a wrap on the App Store

02:30PM EDT - Core tech updates: Metal 2 and HEVC

02:30PM EDT - Getting back to machine learning

02:31PM EDT - New machine learning APIs: Vision & natural language

02:31PM EDT - Built on CoreML

02:31PM EDT - Neural network based model

02:32PM EDT - On device processing (Apple's putting those fast GPUs to good use)

02:32PM EDT - AR: ARKit for letting devs do more with augmented reality

02:34PM EDT - Demoing a sample app with lighting interaction

02:34PM EDT - ARKit provides motion tracking, plane estimation, & more

02:36PM EDT - Better AR in Pokemon Go

02:36PM EDT - Demo time: Wingnut AR

02:37PM EDT - (AR with the iPad looks kind of awkward)

02:38PM EDT - Though a polished demo to be sure

02:39PM EDT - QR code support in the Camera app

02:39PM EDT - And that's iOS 11

02:40PM EDT - Announcement #5: iPad

02:41PM EDT - Talking about iPad Pro

02:41PM EDT - (iPad Pro is a bit of an odd product; the original large model came too early for things like DCI-P3)

02:42PM EDT - Introducing a new iPad Pro, a replacement to the 9.7-inch

02:42PM EDT - 10.5-inch display

02:42PM EDT - Thinner bezzels, weight of 1 pound

02:42PM EDT - Full size smart keyboard

02:43PM EDT - New displays for both size Pros

02:43PM EDT - DCI-P3, 600nits

02:44PM EDT - "HDR Video" (note that HDR is typically defined as 1000 Nits)

02:44PM EDT - 120Hz refresh rate

02:44PM EDT - A new arms race in refresh rates incoming?

02:45PM EDT - Higher refresh rate should improve the Apple Pencil's performance (latency down to 20ms)

02:45PM EDT - Higher refresh rate should improve the Apple Pencil's performance (latency down to 20ms)

02:46PM EDT - Adjustable reffresh rate (24hz for video, etc)

02:46PM EDT - A10X SoC

02:46PM EDT - 6 CPU cores, 12 GPU cores

02:46PM EDT - 40% faster graphics performance

02:47PM EDT - Demo time: 3rd party app, Affinity Photo

02:47PM EDT - (I'm very curious what the power hit is to 120Hz, both for the panel and the SoC)

02:50PM EDT - Demoing how fast Affinity Photo is on the new iPad

02:50PM EDT - 10 hour battery

02:50PM EDT - Using the 12MP camera module from the iPhone 8

02:51PM EDT - Excuse me, iPhone 7

02:51PM EDT - USB 3 support

02:51PM EDT - Fast charging with Apple's USB-C chargers

02:52PM EDT - So both sizes get the same SoC and cameras

02:53PM EDT - 64GB starting NAND size

02:53PM EDT - $649 for 10.5-inch, $799 for 12.9-inch

02:53PM EDT - Now on to new iOS 11 features for iPad

02:54PM EDT - New app switcher

02:54PM EDT - Drag & drop support being added as well

02:55PM EDT - Keyboard flicking to access punctuation

02:55PM EDT - New app: Files

02:55PM EDT - File manager for iPad. Can interface with 3rd party cloud providers as well

02:56PM EDT - Demoing the new macOS-style dock

02:57PM EDT - Demoing drag & drop into Mail as well

02:58PM EDT - (the iPad is looking increasingly like a Mac at times)

02:59PM EDT - Next up: Apple Pencil

03:00PM EDT - Instant Markup

03:00PM EDT - Better Notes integration as well

03:00PM EDT - Search handwritten text

03:01PM EDT - Built-in document scanner for Notes

03:01PM EDT - Demlo time

03:02PM EDT - Notes can read even bad handwriting

03:06PM EDT - iOS 11 iPad Dev preview today, public beta later this month, iOS 11 will support the iPad Air and later

03:06PM EDT - Video time

03:08PM EDT - Announcement #6: One last thing

03:08PM EDT - It's Music

03:08PM EDT - (Overheard a distinct, disappointed "oh" in the crowd)

03:09PM EDT - Tim Cook: "But what about our homes?"

03:09PM EDT - (That got some "woos" from the crowd)

03:09PM EDT - "Reinvent home music"

03:10PM EDT - "Breakthrough home speaker"

03:11PM EDT - Working on the project for later this year

03:11PM EDT - Offering a sneak peak for now. Rolling a video

03:12PM EDT - Product name: HomePod

03:13PM EDT - 7 inch tall device with 7 beam-forming tweetar array, Apple-designed upward-facing woofer, controlled by the Apple A8 SoC

03:14PM EDT - Uses beam-forming to adjust the audio to the shape of a room

03:16PM EDT - Can also use two speakers together

03:16PM EDT - Intelligent helper function works with Apple Music

03:17PM EDT - 6 microphone array

03:17PM EDT - Responds to "Hey Siri"

03:18PM EDT - Contextually-aware music questions

03:18PM EDT - Also has other home assistant functions via Siri

03:19PM EDT - So Apple's take on Amazon's Alexa, then

03:20PM EDT - (Hey Siri, play "Getting to know you")

03:20PM EDT - Can integrate with other iOS devices and tVOS devices

03:20PM EDT - Now talking about privacy

03:20PM EDT - Nothing is sent to Apple unless "hey siri" is used to activate it

03:21PM EDT - $349

03:21PM EDT - Available in Deceber, first in the US, UK, and Australia (Sorry, Canada)

03:22PM EDT - Tim's back on stage for a recap

03:25PM EDT - That's a wrap. Time for a hands-on.