7 things we learned from WWDC 2018: Apple's Keynote

With the WWDC over for another year, there's definitely a few things to be taken away from Apple's latest Keynote.

While it didn't focus much on the mobile gaming-side of things as much as last year's (mainly because iOS 11 saw the re-launch of the App Store and the surprise release of Monument Valley 2), it wasn't a total bust by far.

Some impressive statistics

Yesterday's WWDC event say developers attending from 77 countries with 6,000 attendees in the conference hall itself.

Coming up to the App Store's 10th birthday, it was noted that there are over 20 million Apple developers, with 500 million visitors per week, and a collective earning of $100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion dollars). I mean, I think I've only ever heard that sum of money spoken of by Dr. Evil.

iOS 12

Having officially unveiled it yesterday, Apple will shortly be bringing out iOS 12. Before it got into the nitty gritty, however, it pointed out that seven weeks after iOS 11 went live over half of Apple-users had upgraded and 81% of users are rocking the most current version.

Considering iOS 11 is incompatible with 32-bit games, that's not particularly surprising. A lot of users have a library of classic games that haven't yet been updated to support the latest OS.

One of the main points made is that iOS 12 will double down on performance, especially on older devices. It'll also be supported on all devices that can currently run iOS 11, making it the largest support range yet. Apps are supposed to launch up to 40% faster on the iPhone 6S with a much faster CPU.

iOS 12 will also be bringing improvements to the likes of search refinements in Photos, Siri's new 'Shortcuts' feature, big updates to some of Apple's more popular apps, and will also be actively helping you to manage how much time you spend on your phone.

Augmented Reality

Apple's really keen to keep moving into the AR game, especially since it's introduced its newest file format (in collaboration with Pixar) - USDZ.

Adobe announced that it'd be widely supporting USDZ in all of its Creative Cloud applications. As well as merely supporting it, it'll be releasing a brand new iOS application for designing AR bits.

Back to Apple, there's a new app coming out called Measure. This allows you to get precise measurements on objects by using your camera. How accurate this'll be on launch remains to be seen.

Craig Federighi also showed off how Measure works to bring digital items into real life, such as sizing up how a new guitar may fit in your room. This'll be a game-changer for shopping for furniture online.

ARKit 2 will improve on its current design by giving us improved face tracking, realistic rendering, 3D object detection, and persistent and shared experiences. This means people in the same room can see the same situation from different angles. A big example of this including--

LEGO AR

Martin Sanders, Director of Innovation at LEGO, revealed the company's latest project. We know LEGO is one of the most successful toy companies, from its physical models to its branded video games, but this time it's looking to combine the two.

In a quick demonstration Sanders and a friend showed off this new game world with all its interesting and curious features. But, you can read more on that right here.

Animojis/Memojis

One of the weirder parts of the conference was definitely when looking at the improved set of Animojis. Not only is Apple adding a ghost, tiger, koala, and dinosaur, it's added 'Tongue Detection' so you can - er - poke or waggle your tongue at people in animal form. That's not so much nightmare fuel though.

No, the nightmare fuel comes in the new Memojis. Rather than picking from a set of predetermined figures, you can make up your own, reflecting yourself as an individual. I mean, it's VERY Miitomo, but we'll skip over that.

When Kelsey Peterson stepped up on stage, that was when we saw how accurate face recognition technology has gotten. From the matching movement of her mouth (in Memoji form) to every eye movement. It's both impressive and terrifying, especially when you're sending pictures like this to people --

Apple Watch/Apple TV

Though this year's WWDC was focussed specifically on software, there were still a couple of tweaks to Apple Watch. Aside from sharing a very personal user story, the main focus has again been on personal fitness and well-being, this time with a competitive edge.

WatchOS 5 introduces 'Walkie Talkie' letting you talk to people using your Apple Watch just like, well, a Walkie Talkie. Siri's new Shortcuts feature has made it onto the watch face, making it easier to keep on top of everything you've got going on. You'll soon be able to listen to Apple Podcasts, too.

Since it's Pride month, Apple's brought out a rainbow striped, Pride-themed band and Watch display.

Sadly, there was nothing on the gaming side of things, but film and TV-lovers are in for a treat later this year. As well as more 4K films and TV shows, Apple TV will support Dolby Atmos to bring you deep, room-filling sound.

MacOS

Again, focussed more on developers than consumers, the next update will be macOS Mojave. It may not be totally relevant to you guys, but it'll be introducing a long-awaited feature: Dark Mode. Yes, Xcode works in Dark Mode, too. Our eyes are certainly going to be happy.

A couple more apps and features were run through, including Desktop Stacks (to clean up your messy Desktop), new gallery view, video capture screenshots, and a heavier lock down on data harvesters and stored information online.

Finally, Apple gave us a sneak peek at a super secret project they've been working on for a couple of years for developers. By implementing some of iOS frameworks in macOS, hopefully it'll be easier for iOS apps to be brought over to the Mac App Store.