Posts tagged with "WWDC 2023"

From Conference to Festival: The Evolution of WWDC

WWDC never gets old. There’s the excitement surrounding Apple’s announcements, but it’s far more than that. At its heart, the value of WWDC is in the people you see.

Ten years ago, I attended my first WWDC ever as the parent of what is now called the Swift Student Challenge. At the time, I’d already begun dipping my toe into iOS development and arrived knowing nobody. By the end of the week, I’d met long-time indie developers like Daniel Jalkut, Craig Hockenberry, and Paul Kafasis, plus a couple of baby podcasters named Myke and Stephen.

WWDC 2013.

WWDC 2013.

WWDC was in San Francisco in those days, which had its pluses and minuses. There were great restaurants and a vibrant nightlife, but the city was also crowded and expensive. I’m glad Federico got to experience that version of WWDC in 2016, but I was happy about the switch to San Jose. The city is sleepier than San Francisco, but the big courtyard outside the convention center and the handful of hotels people stayed at made it easier to bump into people than you could in San Francisco.

When WWDC kicked off this year, I could have comfortably sat at home at my desk in my home office, taking in the keynote. If I’d done that, I certainly would have written more and gotten podcast episodes out faster. Still, I would have lost something far more valuable: the chance meetings with MacStories readers, podcast listeners, developers of the apps we cover, and the Apple engineers and other Apple folks who work hard to make WWDC something special every year.

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AppStories, Episode 337 – WWDC 2023: Swift Student Challenge Winners, The MacStories Interviews

Federico and John also had the opportunity to sit down with three winners of the Swift Student Challenge in the Apple Podcasts Studio at Apple Park. It was fun and inspiring to chat with Damian Perez, Henri Bredt, and Maria Eduarda Cabral de Lucena.

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AppStories, Episode 336 – WWDC 2023: Apple Design Awards: The AppStories Interviews

Today on AppStories, Federico and John interview the creators of five apps that were finalists or winners of the 2023 Apple Design Awards: Zach Gage, the creator of Knotwords, Swupnil Sahai, the developer of SwingVision, Philipp Nägelsbach, the publisher of Engling, Leon Sasson of Rise: Energy and Sleep, and Jakob Lykkegaard of Lykke Studios the maker of stitch.

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  • Setapp – An efficient way to get and distribute apps on macOS, iOS, and web.

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WWDC 2023: Notes and Reminders to Gain Significant Productivity Features This Fall

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Every WWDC, I look forward to what Apple’s Notes and Reminders teams have in store for the next version of the company’s OSes. Notes debuted with the iPhone itself, and Reminders wasn’t too far behind. All these years later, both apps remain actively developed, and in recent years have significantly extended their capabilities, adding new features that remain approachable for all users but also extend further to meet the needs of people who want something more.

Let’s take a look at the highlights of what both apps have in store for users in the fall.

Notes

Notes will add several new features this fall, including PDF tools, linking, new formatting, and Pages integration.

Probably the most extensive set of new features coming to Notes is related to PDF documents. With the update, you’ll be able to read and annotate PDFs and collaborate on documents with others. When you drop a PDF into Notes, it can be navigated by swiping from page to page or by displaying a strip of thumbnails above the current page. All of the markup tools available in Notes can be used to draw and type on a PDF, add shapes to it, or sign it. Notes will be able to detect fields in a PDF, so you can fill out forms with an enhanced version of AutoFill using data from the Contacts app too.

Users will also be able to collaborate in real-time when editing PDFs by sharing a note with others. As you draw, annotate, type on, or add stickers to a shared PDF, Apple says the changes will appear immediately on your collaborator’s device.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Also coming to Notes are a couple of new ways to add links. You can select text and add a hyperlink to a website, but you can also link to existing notes. I love this feature. It doesn’t automatically add backlinks to the source note the way an app like Obsidian does, but you can do that manually if you’d like, and I expect one-way linking is plenty for most users. With the new internal linking, users will be able to create tables of contents for related notes and split what might otherwise be a long note into linked sections, making the content easier to navigate and read.

Finally, Notes will add Pages compatibility in the fall. If you begin a document in Notes, you’ll be able to open it in Pages to take advantage of Pages’ more extensive set of styling tools. That will allow you to do things like use more fonts, resize graphics incorporate video, and more.

I’m excited about the updates coming to Notes. PDFs are at the heart of a lot of workflows. I don’t use them as frequently as I used to, but students, teachers, lawyers, and many others who depend on PDFs as a core part of their work, should get a much more robust solution for adding them to their note-taking setup with Notes this fall.

I’m also impressed by Notes’ addition of internal linking to other notes. The update should allow for vastly better organization of information in Notes. I’m envisioning it as a solution for our internal documentation needs at MacStories, along with project management and a lot more. I’ve used Notes for that sort of thing before, but once a note reached a certain length, it became hard to manage, especially on smaller devices. With internal linking, I expect that will be a thing of the past.

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AppStories, Episode 335 – Federico’s Experience with Apple Vision Pro

In today’s WWDC episode of AppStories, Federico shares his experience with Apple Vision Pro answering questions from John, Alex, and Club MacStories members.

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WWDC 2023: Mac Hardware Roundup

The Apple Vision Pro wasn’t the only new hardware announced at Apple’s WWDC keynote event this Monday. The company also introduced a few new Mac models: a new 15” MacBook Air, an upgraded Mac Studio, and the long-awaited Apple silicon Mac Pro. Powering the freshly minted top of Apple’s Mac line is a brand-new chip: the M2 Ultra.

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AppStories, Episode 334 – WWDC 2023: A Stage Manager in iPadOS 17 Deep Dive, Plus Notes, Reminders, Standby, and More

In the latest WWDC episode of AppStories, Federico, John, and Alex are joined by MacPaw developer Serhii Popov for a developer’s perspective on WWDC before covering iPadOS 17’s Stage Manager changes in depth, along with Notes, Reminders, and StandBy.

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  • Setapp – An efficient way to get and distribute apps on macOS, iOS, and web.

On AppStories+, Federico, John, and Alex take questions from Club MacStories members about the announcements at WWDC.

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With iPadOS 17, Stage Manager Is (Finally) Moving in the Right Direction

Stage Manager on iPadOS 17 beta 1.

Stage Manager on iPadOS 17 beta 1.

I’m in Cupertino for WWDC this week, and after yesterday’s whirlwind of announcements and surprises, I had some time to sit down with my 12.9” iPad Pro, install iPadOS 17 beta 1 on it, and try the improved version of Stage Manager. As you know, I have a…complicated history with the iPad’s latest multitasking system. Before coming here, I was worried Stage Manager would be left untouched without any updates for at least another year.

I’ll cut to the chase: Apple listened to feedback about Stage Manager and – at least so far – implemented the key improvements I wanted to see. I’ve been using Stage Manager on my iPad Pro since yesterday afternoon, and I even tested it on a portable external display that I brought with me for this trip. If this early, limited experience is of any indication, I think I’m going to be happy with Apple’s revised version of Stage Manager for iPad by the end of the summer. But then again, caution is necessary given how last year’s beta evolved over time.

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AppStories, Episode 333 – WWDC 2023: Keynote First Impressions

For this special episode of AppStories, John and Federico were joined by Alex live in the Club MacStories+ Discord community to share their first impressions of the WWDC 2023 Keynote.

Sponsored by:

  • Setapp – An efficient way to get and distribute apps on macOS, iOS, and web.

On AppStories+, Federico, John, and Alex take questions from Club MacStories members.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

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