WWDC 2014 Opening Keynote Thoughts
Overall a packed keynote with lots to say, here are my highlights.
- iCloud Drive is looking to take on Dropbox and SkyDrive, with Windows clients too.
- CloudKit looks to be something similar to Microsoft’s Windows Azure Mobile Services, but free. Will it support non-iOS clients, though?
- HealthKit and HomeKit look interesting, as long as they don’t go the same way as Game Center.
- Finally, we have unified communications between all your devices. Receive SMS on your PC, make phone calls from an iPad. Great stuff.
- With widgets in the sidebar and lots of translucency, I couldn’t help but think of Windows Vista when I saw Mac OS X 10.10. I joke of course, though I will miss the 3D dock.
- The new Spotlight service looks like it will be extremely useful, and could reduce iOS/Mac OS users’ reliance on Google.
- The new photos in the cloud service should really help me with my measly 16GB device. Can’t wait for the Mac version to be released.
- Objective-C replaced! I was not expecting that. Great to see a more modern language being introduced.