WWDC is Next Week!

ByDon

I have been to a few of the Apple World Wide Developer conferences. I remember well, when Apple was small that I got an invite as part of the reseller advisory council. I still have my VIP badge on my wall here at the office. We haven’t been invited lately and the conference certainly has grown. But back in the days when Apple hadn’t yet introduced the iPhone, the conference was a spotlight for Apple software, hardware and the scene of some very significant announcements.

A good indication of why WWDC has become so popular is that since 2008 when the App Store was introduced at WWDC, Apple has paid developers over $70 Billion in the 10 years. That means Apple has probably seen revenue of about $100 Billion since they take a 30% cut. This is great for developers and it has dramatically stimulated software development.

The App Store was significant also because it marked a change in how software was distributed. It is hard to find any boxed software these days but before the App Store most software was sold in boxes with disks. Even Apple’s operating system software was distributed in that manner. We used to give away Ben & Jerry’s coupons with each upgrade. Now it is all electronic, faster and better for the environment, too.

Even before that 2008 announcements big changes were announced at WWDC. Back in 2005 it was the very dramatic announcement that Apple would be moving to the Intel platform from Power PC. There were about 3800 attendees at that event. These days the event holds 5000 developers and is sold out instantly. There is even a lottery and scholarships to get tickets.

The next year in 2006, the Mac Pro was announced and Mac OS X Leopard was shown with some of the amazing operating system features we take for granted now, like Time Machine, Boot Camp, Spaces and Spotlight.

While concentrating on software and MacOS and iOS there have been a long list of hardware announced at the conference including the Mac Pro (2 times), Apple Cinema Displays, upgrades to MacBook Pros and iPhones.

Last year it was HomeKit, Swift and a slew of updates to MacOS, iOS, WatchOS and tvOS. What are we likely to see this year? Well, as usual I have to say I have absolutely no inside information but my crystal ball says we will again see some amazing enhancements to the operating systems for our devices. I think that Siri may take center stage with HomeKit enhancements and perhaps that Alexa competitor(killer?). I think we may see a significant enhancement or two to tvOS with hopefully more signs if healing between Apple and Amazon with the Amazon app coming to Apple TV.

What hardware might we see? The past several years have all had rumors of significant hardware upgrades coming at WWDC only to see none actually happening. Those hardware upgrades occurred later in the year. This year might be different with new Macs and iPads being rumored as well as other peripherals. On the other hand, Apple has plenty to talk about just talking software so don’t be too disappointed if there are no hardware announcements.

WWDC 2017 will be held on June 5 to June 9, 2017 at the San Jose Convention Center, in San Jose, California, which will be the first time since 2002 that the conference will be held in the city. You can watch the keynote Monday on your Apple TV.

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    **People**

    By default most photos are simply organized by date. This is helpful for a quick search through photos, but it’s not terribly specific. You might find dates associated with some photos are simply the date it was downloaded to Photos, it might not actually be the date it was taken. Photos has a surprisingly accurate system for facial recognition. It’s located under albums and simply called People. Without having to specifically tag individuals within my Photos I had default faces generically categorized. I also found it interesting that as I looked at the pictures of my kids, they were actually separated by age. Both my kids had a few different sets of photos depending on their age, kind of neat! However it’s not efficient to have multiple categories for one person, so I simply renamed each group according to whomever was featured in the photos and merged to a single group per person. You can easily ‘tag’ people in specific photos by selecting the photo by double clicking, then select the ‘i’ with the circle around it to tag a face. The photo will now be easily found under people and the individual’s name.

    **Places**

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    I am surprised at how many customers tell me that they bought their first Mac from us 15 or 20 years ago, some even remembering driving up to Prickly Mountain when Small Dog’s offices were by my home. Thank you to all of our loyal customers, we truly appreciate not only your business but your friendship and loyalty.

    This week’s “**Kibbles & Bytes Special is a Chill Pill 3-pack!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002701/chill-pill-3-pack? I have done 6-packs before but maybe that is too many so this week you can get “3 Chill Pill Speakers”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002701/chill-pill-3-pack? one each of Black, Red and White for only “**$14.99!**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002701/chill-pill-3-pack?

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    Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily & Hadley_