Every year, Apple addresses a specialist audience at its “Worldwide Developers Conference”. This year, too, it presents him with how the Apple universe should look in the future. In addition to a new processor and the interaction of devices, it is also about a potential revolution in cars.
In the competition with Android smartphones and Windows PCs, Apple relies on more performance and better interaction between its devices. At the start of the WWDC developer conference, the group announced, among other things, a new processor for its new Mac computers. However, data glasses from Apple, which have been speculated about for years, were not presented this time either.
The presented next generations of laptops Macbook Air and Macbook Pro will be the first to get the new M2 processor. The chip system should offer more power than Apple’s first M1 chip, even with the same power consumption. Among other things, the M2 has a quarter more transistors, as the responsible Apple manager Johny Srouji emphasized. With the M1, Apple turned its back on processors from the industry giant Intel and brought all of its devices from the iPhone to the Mac onto a technological basis.
Apple is preparing a potential revolution with its CarPlay software. So far it has been there to bring content from an iPhone to the infotainment screen. The upcoming version should now also offer access to car functions such as controlling the air conditioning – and also be able to operate the entire instrument cluster, for example with the speed display.
The first vehicles that use it should be presented at the end of next year, it said. Among the manufacturers that Apple says are participating in the project are Mercedes, Audi and Porsche, as well as Ford, Renault, Nissan and Volvo, among others. Google has been working for years to offer manufacturers an Android version for vehicle functions in addition to its CarPlay competitor Android Auto.
On the iPhone, the new operating system iOS 16 brings, among other things, more options for personalizing the lock screen with so-called widgets for functions such as displaying the weather forecast. Smartphones with the Google Android operating system have long been able to display widgets on the lock screen. Apple will also offer developers a live interface, which can be used to display the arrival time of a car service or the score of a game in real time on the lock screen, for example.
In Apple’s SMS alternative messages, messages will be corrected and withdrawn later. In the future, routes with up to 15 stops will be able to be planned in the map app. In the future, apps will be able to integrate images from Apple’s “Look Around” street views – which will benefit real estate applications, for example. In the future, the Apple Watch will also be able to record sleep phases and remind users to take their medication.
With the Passkeys function, users of Apple devices should be able to do without passwords. Instead of passwords, a crypto key is created for biometric registration with FaceID facial recognition or a fingerprint. These crypto keys can be shared across different Apple devices and, thanks to cooperation with other companies, also across platforms. The advantage of the procedure is that no passwords are created that are repeated from service to service or that can be captured by hackers with the help of phishing emails.
With the new “Freeform” app, Apple wants to offer a kind of digital whiteboard on which several users can share and edit not only text, but also drawings, photos and videos.