WWDC 2014 News

Alright. So, this Monday, Apple kicked off WWDC with a bang when they announced a ton of awesome new software developments. Apple's big Keynote was full of goodies, and I'm gonna talk about a few of my favourites. To start off, iOS 8 was announced with quite a few interesting improvements.

The first thing I want to talk about is the updated Messages app. This is actually one of the biggest things for me. They've packed a lot of features into the app. It's now possible to send quick voice messages within the app, as well as pictures and videos. It's easier to manage a conversation, making it possible to add and remove people from the conversation, or leave it yourself. You can set a conversation to "Do Not Disturb" so you don't get constant notifications. You can also name a conversation, and share your location with the other participants. You can also view all attachments that have been sent and received under the "details" screen so you don't have to scroll back through hours of messages to find a particular picture.

Another really interesting thing is the new Family Sharing feature. You can now share content between family members allowing all members to have access to each other's music, movies, TV shows, books, and apps, as well as shared calendars and photo streams. Find Friends and Find My iPhone have also been worked into it. My favourite part of this is that you can set it so when your kid wants to buy something from the App or iTunes Stores, it pops up with "Ask" instead of buy, and it sends a notification to your device to approve or deny it.

The new Health app provides a central place to find all of your health and fitness data from other apps. It also lets you set up an emergency card with your important medical information, just in case. iCloud Drive improves on previous iCloud functionality, adding a central place where you can manage all of your files, and not just the ones used by iCloud apps, but you can now store any file and access it on all of your devices. And Spotlight continues to evolve into a powerful search engine.

On to OS X, the new version is called Yosemite, and they've made some pretty nice visual improvements to the interface, and updated the app icons. Many of the features added to iOS 8 have been implemented here as well, and that's just a start.

The biggest thing I am excited about in OS X Yosemite is the ability to make and receive phone calls on your Mac. If someone calls and your phone is in the other room, you'll get a caller ID notification on your Mac, and you can answer it right there! You can also select a contact or a number from a website and start a call right from your Mac, through your iPhone. This also applies to regular text messages! You can now answer all of your messages on your Mac, not just your iMessages.

Another bit of new functionality is called Handoff. If you're working on something on your iPhone or iPad and walk up to your Mac, an icon will show up and you can instantly pick up your project without missing a beat! And it works the other way as well.

In Mail, they've added the ability to send large attachments with Mail Drop. Large attachments will be sent to iCloud and then downloaded again on the other end. You can also Markup attachments in Mail before sending them. You can draw on pictures, full out PDF forms, and even sign documents.

There's tons of other new things coming with these updates, but those are the ones I'm most excited for. They're still a ways off though, with a tentative release date of "fall", so the excitement will have to wait for a while.

So Much Nerd Love!

Okay, so it's been an exciting week. My little nerd heart has grown three sizes with all of this tech love announced.

At Apple's WWDC event, they made a bunch of cool announcements. There's a new Mac Pro in the works. There's new functionality with iCloud coming, mainly the ability to use iWork on the web. Mac OS X Mavericks was announced with improvements to Calendars, Safari, and Notifications, and the addition of the Maps and iBooks apps to Mac. There's probably a lot more cool stuff that was announced, but I was really just interested in one thing.

iOS 7 was announced, and I'm very excited about it. As you can tell from the above picture, there's been a major visual update. All of the app icons are updated with a flatter, more simplified look. They've greatly improved the visuals of all of the apps. They've added Control Center, which gives you access to some the important phone settings with a quick up-swipe. There's improvements all over, but it would take me too long to go over it right now, so I'll leave it for a later post.

I really want to talk about some of the cool stuff announced at E3 as well. As usual, my favourite part of E3 was Nintendo, but they didn't even do a press conference this year. Instead, they did a special Nintendo Direct featuring a bunch of new games. And they did not disappoint.

Super Mario 3D World is a new sequel to last year's 3D Land. This time they are throwing back to the old Super Mario Bros. 2 with the inclusion of Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach as playable characters. They've introduced the new Cat Mario suit, giving the characters cat-like abilities. It's also multiplayer, so that's a really cool addition. I'm definitely getting this game.

They also brought news on Pikmin 3, Pokémon X and Y, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. They brought the MAJOR announcement of the new Super Smash Bros games for Wii U and 3DS, including the new characters added: Mega Man, and the Villager from Animal Crossing.Bayonetta 2, Sonic Lost World, Mario Party 8, The Wonderful 101, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. So many awesome games. I'm really gonna have to get a Wii U.

Otherwise, I haven't really been keeping up with all of the E3 news. I watched the Xbox One press conference, but nothing really stood out for me. I skipped the Sony press conference, but I'll probably watch it eventually. There's really only two other games I've followed. One was the re-announcement of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, now called Final Fantasy XV. The previous announcement that it would be PS3 only is now out the window as it's been announced instead for the PS4 AND Xbox One. Also announced, and I'm REALLY excited for this one: Kingdom Hearts 3! It's still early in development, but I can't wait.

So yeah, it's been an exciting week. I've already calculated that I'm gonna be very broke with all of the new games coming out over the next year and a half. At least iOS updates are free. Anyway, it's time for work. Enjoy your Saturday!