So WWDC happened today and I did the thing I always do, which is tell myself I'll just "check the highlights later" and then end up watching the entire keynote live anyway, at my desk, missing an actual meeting invite that I definitely saw pop up and definitely ignored. Worth it? Mostly.
The Swift stuff is the part that actually matters to me as someone who writes code for a living. Craig Federighi got up there and said Swift is going open source later this year, and that it's coming to Linux. I did an actual fist pump at my desk, alone, like an idiot. If you've been putting up with Objective-C's bracket soup for the last decade the way I have, you understand. This isn't a small thing — it means Swift stops being an Apple-platform-only toy and starts being a language people can actually run on a server, in a Docker container, wherever. I don't know how long "later this year" means in Apple time, but I'll take it.
iOS 9 got the bigger stage time, obviously. Proactive Siri, Spotlight doing natural-language search, a redesigned Notes app that finally does checklists and sketches, a News app that's replacing Newsstand (RIP Newsstand, nobody will miss you, that folder was where apps went to die on everyone's home screen). Maps is getting transit directions too, which is embarrassing that it's taken this long, but fine, better late: SF, NYC, DC, Chicago, Toronto, London and Baltimore get it first.
Here's my actual complaint, the one I've been typing and deleting for ten minutes because it sounds petty: the new multitasking stuff, Split View specifically, where you can run two apps side by side on the iPad, is Air 2 only. I have the first-gen iPad Air. It's not even that old, I bought it like eighteen months ago for something like $500, and now it's getting the "lesser" experience (Slide Over instead of true split screen) because apparently it doesn't have the horsepower. I get why, the Air 2 has more RAM and a beefier chip, but it still stings a little to buy an expensive device and watch it get quietly demoted a year and a half later. This happens every single year with something and I still fall for it every single year.
Apple Music was the other headline thing, and honestly I'm skeptical in the specific way I get skeptical about subscription pricing. $9.99 a month for an individual, $14.99 for a family plan covering up to six people, three months free to start, launching June 30th in over a hundred countries. There's a Beats 1 radio station too, this global live thing hosted by Zane Lowe, which is a weirdly old-school idea (a single broadcast radio station, in 2015) wrapped inside a very new streaming product. I've been on Spotify for something like four years at this point and my playlists are a mess of history I don't want to rebuild from scratch, so I'll probably just watch this one from the sidelines rather than switch. Inertia is a hell of a drug when it comes to music libraries.
El Capitan is the new OS X name, which, fine, it's a rock formation in Yosemite, they're just working through California landmarks now I guess. Mostly it sounds like a "we polished the corners" release rather than a big leap — Metal coming to the Mac for better graphics performance, Mission Control cleanup, Spotlight getting smarter. Nothing that made me sit up.
watchOS 2 also got announced, native apps for the Watch instead of everything running through the phone, which should help with the lag that everyone's been complaining about since April. I don't own an Apple Watch yet. I keep telling myself I'm waiting to see if it's actually useful past the novelty phase, but really I think I'm just cheap and the $349 starting price feels steep for something I'd mostly use to see who's calling.
Anyway. My meeting is definitely still going, I should go pretend I have a reason for missing it.