Bloomberg WWDC Leak Highlights: Updated Maps, Health, Apple Watch Audio Books, Reminders, More

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman got the goods on Apple’s WWDC software plans. Highlights include several improvements to Maps that I’m looking forward to. Apple is also improving the Health app, Reminders, adding audio book support to Apple Watch, a standalone app for the Apple Watch App Store on the watch itself, new Watch complications and faces, improved share sheet in iOS, combined Find my Friends and Find My iPhone, improved iMessage, an updated Books app with a reward system, and much more. There’s a ton of information in this piece, and it’s a good read.

WWDC 2019: June 3-7 in San Jose, California

I still count this as a rumor until Apple officially provides the dates, but MacRumors found something they believe confirms the dates.

While we were already confident the WWDC 2019 dates would fall on June 3-7, we confirmed with a source that a large annual event of some kind will be taking place during that week at McEnery. Meanwhile, the second and fourth weeks of June are ruled out due to the already-announced O’Reilly Velocity conference on June 10-13 and the Sensors Expo on June 25-27 at McEnery.

TMO Background Mode Interview with Former Apple Software Engineer James Dempsey

James Dempsey worked at Apple for fifteen years before setting out on his own in August 2011. As a software engineer at Apple, he worked on iOS, Aperture, and macOS releases Leopard through Lion, including half a decade on the Cocoa frameworks team. He’s the founder of Tapas Software, developer of iOS and Mac software. We talked abut his “aha” moments in life starting with his college roommate’s Mac Plus in 1986. His dream to work for Apple was eventually fulfilled in 1996, and James described what it was like to be an Apple evangelist in those days. But James is also an accomplished comedian, vocalist, ukulele player and has a published album. He’s also routinely written special songs for WWDC each year. If you ever wanted to work for Apple, this show is must listening.

The Future Was Posted to Twitter Last Friday

Check out this amazing demo video from developer Harley Turan. He posted it to Twitter on Friday, just a few days after Apple’s WWDC keynote. In it, he attached live data to a real-world object using ARKit 2 and iOS 12, and then moves them around. It’s like an ordinary commercial using thousands of dollars in post-production software, only it’s life. Put another way, it’s the future, posted to Twitter a few days ago. When people doubt the real-world value of augmented reality, this is the sort of thing I think about. Not games, as great I expect Harry Potter: Wizards Unite to be, but rather information attached to real world locations and objects. Especially once we get past this stone-age era of holding our iPhones in front of our faces to get our augmented reality. Oh, and remember that this was after just a couple of days with hands-on iOS 12 and ARKit 2.