Macworld UK Summer 2015

I’m writing this page the day after Apple took to the stage at WWDC to announce its plans for OS X, iOS and WatchOS. The Macworld team had a busy evening writing all about the announcements over on Macworld.co.uk and now that the dust has settled on the news, the implications of what we heard are starting to sink in. Based on what we learned from the WWDC keynote, Apple has some fantastic new features coming for OS X, iOS and the Watch. To summarise the highlights: Apple Music will let you stream your entire iTunes library (that’s 30 million songs) for $9.99 a month (we’re still waiting for the UK price). You will be able to tune into Beats 1, Apple’s answer to Radio One, headed up by DJ…

Apple has brought Yosemite to the mountain: El Capitan, specifically, which is the name of OS X 10.11 as well as a peak in Yosemite National Park. Revealed on 8 June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the release is intended to reach a higher point, but not dig new ground. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, emphasised that the release is about an improvement in experience and performance. El Capitan’s announcement focused on small points of irritation and big bumps in efficiency. Safari adds pinning, letting users keep particular pages readily available. The sites will be regularly updated in the background to keep them up to date. In a feature that received plenty of applause from the audience, Safari will now make it easy to reveal which…

Siri is about to get much, much smarter. On 8 June during WWDC’s keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed new enhancements to iOS 9, calling it “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.” Among the key features are a major Siri update, deep-dive transit Maps, and a ton of useful user-experience improvements. Siri will now be able to pull up photos and videos stored on your device. It becomes a smarter assistant by looking at how you use your iPhone at any given moment and recommending ways for you to use it next, interpreting a natural language into commands. For example, when you’re looking at a web page on Safari, you can create a Siri reminder by saying “Siri, remind me about this later,” and Siri will then refer back…

Apple’s long-awaited new streaming-music service, Apple Music, isn’t just a shot at Spotify, which has 60 million active users. The new app challenges the way people get songs from Apple itself, which has long placed a high premium on its iTunes digital download storefront and emphasised how that platform revolutionised the music industry. The service, unveiled during WWDC 2015’s opening keynote, takes iTunes to the next level by making 30 million of the expansive catalogue’s songs streamable. That’s millions of songs on demand, right alongside the music you already own. Then there’s ‘For You’, a recommendation tool that serves up songs and artists based on the genres of music you tell Apple Music you like. You can use Siri to call up a song or playlist and immediately launch it…

Apple is removing the training wheels for Apple Watch app makers, letting them take full advantage of the device’s hardware. Currently, apps can’t function without a paired iPhone, which handles not just internet connectivity but core functions such as the app’s logic. These apps also can’t tap into key hardware features such as the microphone, motion sensors, the heart monitor and the Digital Crown. All of that is going to change now that Apple is allowing native app development on the Watch. The new apps should start to arrive this autumn, alongside the release of WatchOS 2 and iOS 9. The Apple Watch is an exquisite piece of hardware, but one that can be extremely frustrating to use. Users are frequently confronted with loading screens, as third-party apps struggle to…

Extensions Preferences There are four different types of extensions available on the Mac – some of which are more widely used than others. You can see which extensions are installed on your Mac by taking a look at the Extensions preferences panel that was introduced as part of Yosemite. The extensions shown in the preferences panel are organised into four categories – Actions, Finder, Share Menu and Today. Extensions – also known as ‘widgets’ – are perhaps the most popular form of extension at the moment, as they can be used to display messages and updates in the Notifications Centre on your Mac desktop. The weather reports, stock prices and other notifications that are automatically shown in the Notifications Centre are all controlled by extensions that are built into Yosemite.…