The Apple WWDC 2019 Keynote Live Blog (Starts at 10am PT/17:00 UTC)

12:37PM EDT - We're here in sunny San Jose, California for the annual developer pilgrimage that is Apple's World Wide Developers Conference.

12:37PM EDT - One part promotional event, one part trade show, and two parts developer training, WWDC is Apple's favored backdrop for revealing their plans for their product ecosystems for the next 12 months.

12:38PM EDT - Bundling the company's biggest keynote with a developer conference means that the company can use the high-profile keynote to explain their vision, and then immediately set out and help developers to bring them on-board.

12:38PM EDT - While the focus is first and foremost on developers, WWDC has traditionally offered a mix of hardware and software announcements. On the hardware side of matters we've seen things such as the HomePod and iMac Pro, and farther back items such as MacBooks.

12:38PM EDT - The big question this year, however, is going to be about Apple's Mac Pro. The neglected desktop computer hasn't seen a significant update since it was launched in 2013, after Apple backed themselves into a corner on design.

12:39PM EDT - In 2017 the company admitted as much, announcing that their former flagship machine would be getting a complete design. It's been two years since that announcement, and if Apple finally has their new desktop ready, then WWDC would be the perfect venue to unveil it to the kind of professionals it's aimed at.

12:40PM EDT - When it's configred into a single room, the San Jose Convention Center is huge

12:41PM EDT - Chairs everywhere. The place is quickly filling up

12:43PM EDT - Unfortunately the WiFi situation is almost impossibly congested right now, so it's a small miracle I can upload text

12:48PM EDT - The Apple emloyees are chanting. A high school pep rally would not be an unfair comparison

12:50PM EDT - At any rate, along with the potential for hardware announcements, expect to see plenty of software announcements

12:51PM EDT - On the iOS front, Apple kind of took a breather last year with iOS 12, and focused on technical debt and improving performance over adding flashy new features

12:52PM EDT - As a result, iOS 12 runs rather well. Even on phones as old as the iPhone 5s

12:54PM EDT - It's also given Apple the longest support period of any phone manufactuer. At least 6 years from its release date, if they stopped this fall

12:55PM EDT - Of course, I'm interested in seeing if Apple will continue to push the envelope, and offer iOS updates for the 5s for another year. That would be fantastic, and very pro-customer

12:56PM EDT - Alright, I think they're getting ready to start. Most everyone is seated, and the music has been turned up

12:57PM EDT - Dimming the lights. Here we go

01:00PM EDT - (Apologies for the lack of photos thus far; the Wi-Fi situaton is that bad, and the cellular situation isn't any better. 802.11ax can't come soon enough)

01:00PM EDT - Lights are out. Rolling a video

01:01PM EDT - The theme seems to be frustrated developers

01:02PM EDT - "While the world sleeps, you dream"

01:02PM EDT - Now on stage: Tim Cook

01:03PM EDT - Cook is taking a moment to thank the developers for everything they do

01:03PM EDT - "More first-time attendees than ever"

01:04PM EDT - Recapping Apple's March services event: Apple News Plus, etc

01:05PM EDT - Apple is going to show off a sneak peek of Ron D. Moore's new snow: For All Mankind

01:08PM EDT - The Apple story is increasingly going to be one of content and services, if Apple's efforts go to plan

01:08PM EDT - Now on to software. Starting with tvOS, Apple's iOS fork for Apple TV

01:09PM EDT - New feature: multt-user support for tvOS

01:09PM EDT - (It's been a long time coming)

01:10PM EDT - User switching is done via the Control Center

01:10PM EDT - Multi-user support means per-user suggested content, etc

01:11PM EDT - New feature: tvOS is adding controller support for the Xbox One S and PS4 controllers

01:11PM EDT - (It's about time!)

01:11PM EDT - The crowd is very happy about that one. Those are the de-facto game controllers for this generation

01:12PM EDT - And that's tvOS

01:12PM EDT - On to Apple Watch

01:13PM EDT - Now on stage: Kevin Lynch to talk about watchOS

01:13PM EDT - Starting with watch faces

01:14PM EDT - New feature: taptic chimes

01:14PM EDT - A notification on the hour, with an optional audio chime if that's turned on

01:15PM EDT - Apple is bringing more of their apps to watchOS, including Audiobooks, Voice Memos, and Calculator

01:16PM EDT - Also making it possible to create independent watchOS apps; no iPhone companion app required

01:16PM EDT - watchOS 6 also brings Apple's streaming audio API

01:17PM EDT - The Apple Watch is getting increasingly indepedent, So Apple is bringing the App Store to the Watch as well

01:17PM EDT - Now on stage: Apple's VP of health (apologies, I didn't catcht he name)

01:17PM EDT - Talking about new health features for watchOS

01:18PM EDT - New feature: activity trends

01:18PM EDT - Comparing exercise trends over longer periods of time

01:19PM EDT - Hearing health?

01:19PM EDT - watchOS is getting an app to measure noise levels. The aptly named Noise app

01:20PM EDT - "Apple doesn't record or save your audio"

01:21PM EDT - One more feature: Apple is integrating their own ovulation cycle tracking app

01:21PM EDT - It's also coming to iOS

01:21PM EDT - (Third party app providers are likely not amused, given how popular those apps are)

01:22PM EDT - Back to Kevin

01:23PM EDT - Kevin is reiterating Apple's privacy tech and policy

01:23PM EDT - Now it's demo time

01:24PM EDT - Showing off new complications that come with the new apps

01:25PM EDT - Noise, Audiobook, and Voice Memo complications

01:25PM EDT - Now demoing the integrated App Store

01:27PM EDT - The audio streaming API means support for MLB At Bat, with live audio streaming

01:27PM EDT - Back to Tim to talk about iOS

01:27PM EDT - 85% of iOS customers are on iOS 12

01:28PM EDT - Apple likes to beat Google/Android over the head on their quick adoption rates

01:28PM EDT - Now on stage: Craig

01:28PM EDT - "We've got a lot to talk about this morning"

01:29PM EDT - Yep, it;s iOS 13

01:29PM EDT - "iOS 13 is a huge release packed with a lot of capabilities"

01:29PM EDT - But Craig is starting with performance optimizations/improvements

01:30PM EDT - App updates are now much smaller. Upwards of 60% smaller

01:30PM EDT - 2x faster app launch speeds as a result

01:30PM EDT - Rolling a video

01:31PM EDT - Dark mode is coming to IOS

01:32PM EDT - Craig is demoing it live

01:32PM EDT - Quickly flipping through apps

01:32PM EDT - Everything looks good. As if Apple would aim any lower

01:33PM EDT - Andrei also notes that this would improve display power consumption on OLED-screen iPhones

01:33PM EDT - "A lot"

01:33PM EDT - Time synced lyrics are also coming to iOS

01:34PM EDT - iOS 13 will also bring a Swype-like "quick path" keyboard

01:34PM EDT - Rattling off new app featurs: Safari per-site text sizes, and more

01:36PM EDT - Maps: Apple has been rebuilding their map from the ground up

01:36PM EDT - The new map data set is much more detailed

01:36PM EDT - Rolling out the new map data set to the US this year, and other countries starting next year

01:36PM EDT - Demo time

01:37PM EDT - New features: collections and favorites

01:38PM EDT - A street view-like mode: "Look around"

01:38PM EDT - Smooth transitions/animations from photo spot to photo spot

01:39PM EDT - Craig is once again reiterating privacy and security

01:39PM EDT - (There's a theme here...)

01:40PM EDT - Apple is clamping down on location services, adding finer-grained options to limit app access

01:41PM EDT - Background tracking notifications, one-time access, and protections against Wi-Fi/Bluetooh tracking

01:41PM EDT - Apple is launching their own Single Sign-On Service: "Sign in with Apple"

01:42PM EDT - They are doing this to offer an alternative to SSO services that track the user across sites in turn

01:42PM EDT - Can sign up to sites with a random, unique email address

01:43PM EDT - So individual sites are siloed and can easily be blocked/cut-off as necessary

01:43PM EDT - Apple is launching a new HomeKit feature to improve security camera privacy

01:44PM EDT - Analysis at the edge - at home - instead of in the cloud

01:44PM EDT - Resulting data is encrypted before being uploaded to iCloud for storage

01:45PM EDT - HomeKit is coming to routers

01:45PM EDT - Devices will be siloed to keep a compromised device from being used to access other devices

01:45PM EDT - Starting off with Linksys and other partners

01:46PM EDT - User avatar feature for Messages, using animojis

01:48PM EDT - Tons of customization options

01:48PM EDT - New feature: Memoji Stickers

01:49PM EDT - Supported on the A9 SoC and later

01:49PM EDT - On to photography

01:49PM EDT - New portrait lighting features, settings, and filters

01:50PM EDT - New photo editing interface as well. Can adjust contrast/saturation/etc

01:50PM EDT - All of this is coming to video editing as well

01:50PM EDT - Video rotation has also been added

01:51PM EDT - New machine learning-driven photo organization and culling features

01:52PM EDT - Demo time of the updated Photos app

01:53PM EDT - Organized by days, months, events, etc

01:55PM EDT - Back to Craig

01:56PM EDT - Now on to AirPod/HomePod/Carplay/Siri

01:56PM EDT - Siri can now read messages as they come in

01:56PM EDT - And let the user immediately respond

01:57PM EDT - Audio sharing with another iOS device

01:57PM EDT - Handoff is coming to HomePod

01:58PM EDT - Can hand off audio functions, including phone calls, to HomePods by coming close to it. And can take them out the same way

01:58PM EDT - HomePod is also getting the ability to learn the voices of multiple users, and to treat them distinctly

01:59PM EDT - This year is Apple's biggest update to CarPlay since it launched

01:59PM EDT - Lots of redesigns

01:59PM EDT - Npw works with third party apps like Pandora and Waze

02:01PM EDT - New voice system for Siri. Neural Text to Speech

02:01PM EDT - No longer recorded samples. Now it's all synthesized

02:02PM EDT - Apple wants something that sounds like a human and sounds human. Voice samples delivered the latter better than the former

02:02PM EDT - New feature: sending unknown callers directly to voicemail

02:03PM EDT - iPad gets all of the new iOS 13 features as well

02:03PM EDT - "We have some big changes coming to iPad this year"

02:03PM EDT - Rolling a video

02:04PM EDT - iPad is getting its own iOS fork: iPadOS

02:04PM EDT - Demoing iPadOS

02:05PM EDT - New slideover multitasking features

02:05PM EDT - iPad apps are getting multi-window capabilities

02:06PM EDT - Split view with 2 Notes

02:06PM EDT - iPad gets app Expose

02:06PM EDT - Works for system and third party apps

02:06PM EDT - Two MS Word documents side-by-side

02:08PM EDT - New options for Files app: column view

02:08PM EDT - With file previews and visible metadata

02:08PM EDT - Built-in SMB file share support

02:09PM EDT - Native thumb drive support as well

02:09PM EDT - SD cards and other mass storage show up in Files as well (with the right adapters)

02:09PM EDT - Zip and Unzip support

02:10PM EDT - Safari on the iPad will start fetching desktop sites by default, rather than mobile sites

02:10PM EDT - Also gets a download manager

02:10PM EDT - "Desktop class Safari"

02:12PM EDT - New touch features for selecting text, scrolling, gestures for copy & paste

02:12PM EDT - Lots of 3-finger gestures

02:13PM EDT - Apple Pencil: Apple says they have the latency down to 9ms - less than 1 frame at 60Hz

02:13PM EDT - Demo time for Apple Pencil

02:14PM EDT - Showing off text editing gestures

02:14PM EDT - Smaller, one-sided keyboard mode

02:17PM EDT - Back to Craig

02:17PM EDT - And back to Tim

02:17PM EDT - Oddly, nothing about supported devices

02:17PM EDT - Now on to the Mac

02:18PM EDT - Rolling a video

02:19PM EDT - New Mac Pro

02:19PM EDT - It's a tower agian

02:19PM EDT - It really does look like a cheese grater this time, but it's a tower

02:20PM EDT - Overall it looks a good bit like the old Mac Pro tower. Which is not a bad thing. The tower worked well

02:20PM EDT - Stainless steel frame

02:20PM EDT - With a focus on modularity and flexibility

02:21PM EDT - "360 degree access"

02:21PM EDT - Using Intel Xeon processors. Up to 28 cores

02:21PM EDT - 300W of power and cooling

02:21PM EDT - Fully unconstrained, all the time

02:22PM EDT - 6 DIMM channels, DDR4-2933 w/ECC, up to 1.5TB of RAM

02:22PM EDT - PCIe cards are back

02:22PM EDT - 4 double-wide slots, 3 single-wide slots, and a half-length slot with an I/O card

02:23PM EDT - 2x 10GigE ports

02:23PM EDT - New graphics card design

02:23PM EDT - But based around PCIe x16

02:23PM EDT - Apple has basically done their own extension to the PCIe bus

02:23PM EDT - Up to 500W

02:24PM EDT - MPX module

02:24PM EDT - Once again using AMD GPUs

02:24PM EDT - Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

02:25PM EDT - Vega Duo GPUs are linked via Infinity Fabric

02:25PM EDT - Can have up to two such cards

02:26PM EDT - New Apple PCIe card: Afterburner. FPGA card for ProRes/ProRes RAW video decoding acceleration

02:26PM EDT - Up to 3 streams of 8K ProRes Raw

02:26PM EDT - 1.4 KiloWatt power supply

02:26PM EDT - Cooling: 3 big fans and a blower

02:27PM EDT - As quiet as an iMac Pro (when under your desk)

02:27PM EDT - Optional wheels

02:27PM EDT - I'm very curious if it can be rackmounted easily

02:27PM EDT - Adobe and Blackmagic adding support for the new hardware

02:28PM EDT - Maxon is bringing Redshift to Mac

02:29PM EDT - Demo time

02:29PM EDT - Showing off Logic Pro

02:30PM EDT - (I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a cheese grater...)

02:31PM EDT - Going absolutely nuts with audio tracks. Over a thousand of them

02:32PM EDT - Now demoing Final Cut Pro on the Mac Pro

02:33PM EDT - (Oh man is this thing going to be expensive)

02:33PM EDT - Now shifting gears to talk about the display

02:34PM EDT - Lamenting the current state of monitors

02:35PM EDT - New Apple monitor is 32-inch LCD 6K retina display

02:35PM EDT - P3 color space, 10bpc color

02:36PM EDT - Promissing 25x better off-angle contrast than typical LCDs

02:36PM EDT - Anti-glare by etching the glass itself, rather than using a coating

02:37PM EDT - Factory calibrated display

02:37PM EDT - Basically designed the back of the monitor to be a giant heatsink

02:38PM EDT - 1600 nits peak, 1000 nits sustained indefinately

02:38PM EDT - "Extreme Dynamic Range" XDR

02:38PM EDT - Pro Display XDR

02:39PM EDT - Up to 6 displays connected to a Mac Pro

02:39PM EDT - Now going over the stand

02:40PM EDT - Flexible arm, rotation for portrait mode

02:40PM EDT - Display can be detached

02:40PM EDT - Thunderbolt-based

02:41PM EDT - Starting config: 8 core CPU, 32GB memory, Radeon Pro 580X, 256GB SSD

02:41PM EDT - Starting at $5999

02:41PM EDT - Available this fall

02:42PM EDT - Apple will also be making a version specifically for rack deployment

02:42PM EDT - Pro Display XDR will be $4999 for the display itself

02:42PM EDT - Pro stand is extra - $199 $1000

02:42PM EDT - And the anti-glare version is $5999

02:43PM EDT - On to macOS

02:43PM EDT - And Craig again

02:44PM EDT - macOS Catalina (this should be 10.15)

02:44PM EDT - Starting with iTunes

02:45PM EDT - Craig is poking fun at the perception of iTunes being bloated with features

02:46PM EDT - So iTunes is getting a separation

02:46PM EDT - Starting with a dediated Apple Music app

02:46PM EDT - iOS Syncing on MacOS is now built in to Finder

02:47PM EDT - Machine learning for Podcasts: using ML to index podcasts

02:48PM EDT - 4K HDR video playback support for recent Macs

02:48PM EDT - Dolby Atmos support as well

02:48PM EDT - New feature: sidecar

02:48PM EDT - iPads can now be used as a secondary display

02:49PM EDT - Can also use the Apple Pencil with iPads in this mode

02:49PM EDT - New accessibility feature: voice control

02:49PM EDT - Control a Mac (or iOS device) entirely with your voice

02:50PM EDT - Rolling a demo video

02:51PM EDT - Comprehensive navigation and rich dictation. Processed locally

02:51PM EDT - New feature: Find My

02:52PM EDT - The successor to Find My Mac and Find My Friends?

02:52PM EDT - Can now find a Mac even when it's offline

02:52PM EDT - Macs will send out a Bluetooth beacon

02:52PM EDT - Which can be picked up by iPhones

02:53PM EDT - "Encrypted and anonymous"

02:53PM EDT - iOS-like activation lock for Macs with the T2 chip

02:53PM EDT - New Photos app and Screentime coming to macOS

02:54PM EDT - New project: Project Catalyst

02:54PM EDT - Create apps for the Mac based on existing iPad apps

02:55PM EDT - Apple used an early version of this tech for their unevenly received Marizpan apps on macOS Mojave

02:55PM EDT - Xcode tries to remove some of the pain by integrating more Mac-like features like cursor control

02:56PM EDT - (They still look like iOS apps)

02:59PM EDT - Apple is smart to leverage their larger and better organized iOS developer legion

02:59PM EDT - But it's hard not to look at this with some skepticism

02:59PM EDT - Moving on to Augmented Reality development

03:01PM EDT - ARKit 3

03:01PM EDT - Real-time occlusion: People Occlusion

03:01PM EDT - New motion capture abilities as well

03:02PM EDT - Demo time with Minecraft

03:03PM EDT - Demoing the recently announced Minecraft Earth on an iPhone

03:04PM EDT - Using new occlusion features to put player "in" the game

03:04PM EDT - It looks cool. Though there is some artifacting around the legs

03:06PM EDT - "it's always a Creeper" AIn't that the truth?

03:06PM EDT - ARKit, Reality Kit, and Reality Composer

03:07PM EDT - Now on to Swift

03:08PM EDT - Announcing SwiftUI framework

03:08PM EDT - Built in Swift for Swift

03:09PM EDT - Intended to simplify UI development

03:09PM EDT - A lot more automation, a lot less code

03:09PM EDT - Demo time

03:11PM EDT - (The developers in the house sound rather pleased)

03:11PM EDT - Significant drag and drop UI building functionality

03:12PM EDT - Dark mode support

03:14PM EDT - Native framework for building Apple Watch apps as well

03:14PM EDT - SwiftUI is also available on iPadOS and macOS

03:14PM EDT - Apple has another, more dev-focused session in the afternoon that will undoubtedly go more into new dev features

03:15PM EDT - Back to Tim

03:15PM EDT - All of the new platforms are available in dev betas today

03:15PM EDT - Public betas in July, final releases in the fall

03:16PM EDT - Tim is thanking the Apple employees

03:17PM EDT - And that's a wrap for the WWDC 2019 keynote