OS X and iOS 6: Incremental Improvements, But Tighter Integration

The updates to Apple's core operating systems—OS X for the Macintosh and iOS for mobile devices—announced today were mostly incremental, but they include a number of creative new features that both users and developers should appreciate very much. Just as importantly, the changes serve to bring the Mac and iPhone environments closer together.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Mac, introduced the new version of OS X, known as Mountain Lion, which is slated to be released next month. This has 200 new features, many of which are familiar to iOS users, including belter iCloud support, a new Notifications Center, Game Center, and sharing features.

Above: Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Mac

Perhaps the most important new feature is integrated iCloud support directly in the operating system. This means when you start the OS, you sign into iCloud, which can then synchronize information across both your Mac and your iOS devices. As part of this, OS X now supports Messages (which brings Apple's iMessage platform to the Mac), along with Reminders and Notes. Most notable is probably Documents in the Cloud, which syncs your documents across all your Macs and iOS devices, including the iWork applications, and system level functions such as Preview. There is also an API for third party developers. Federighi showed a demonstration, updating a Pages document on an iPhone and having it automatically update on the Mac.

The Notification Center pulls together all the notifications from all of your applications, much like on the current iOS device. Users have the ability to turn off the notifications when they don't want to see them or to disable automatically when they connect to a projector.

Dictation is now built into the OS and it works with any application from Facebook to Microsoft Word. The OS now adds a Share button that occurs in all applications, so you can send information by Twitter or iMessage. (Facebook was markedly absent from this part of the talk, through in the later talk about iOS, Facebook integration into share was mentioned as a major new feature.)

You can sweep in from the side of the screen to pull up notifications, or immediately enter an iMessage or Tweet.

OS X has a new version of Safari, which Federighi said is the fastest browser. (Others will contest this.) It has a new unified search feature, and a particularly useful button called iCloud tabs, which gives you a list of all the tabs you have open on all your devices, including iPhones and iPad. It also supports new gestures, with faster scrolling and the ability to zoom in so you can see a live view of multiple tabs. (This is quite cool, though I've seen similar looks in mobile OSes for a while now, going back to WebOS and the Playbook.)

He showed a new technology called "PowerNap," which keeps your Mac up to date while it sleeps by refreshing reminders, mail, and other applications, performing backups, and downloading and installing updates automatically. Again, this seems quite useful, though very similar to the "connected standby" concept Intel and Microsoft have been talking about for a while, though it will ship earlier and perhaps with more features.

OS X now offers AirPlay Mirroring, which instantly mirrors your content onto an Apple TV device in up to 1080p; and Game Center, which now will work with both iOS and OS X games, letting you play your friends across platforms. He showed a demo of CSR Racing from Natural Motion, in which one player on an iPad raced another on a Mac.

In total, Federighi said OS X has more than 200 new features, including a VIP list for Mail, Launchpad search, Gatekeeper (designed to keep malware off), Reading List. There are a number of additional features for China, like improved Chinese input, a new Chinese dictionary, better fonts, Baidu as an optional search provider, and sharing and email connectivity with the largest Chinese services. In total, he said, it has more than 1,700 new APIs.

OS X Mountain Lion is slated to be delivered next month via the Mac App Store for just $19.99. That upgrade works for OS X Lion and Snow Leopard, with a single upgrade covering all your personal Macs. WWDC developers received a near-final version at the show.

iOS6 adds new Maps, Passbook, Siri Enhancements, Facebook integration

Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS, gave the overview of iOS 6, which adds improvements to Siri (like long-awaited iPad support), Facebook integration, a new Maps application, and a new way of handling "passes" to events and other places.

Apple has introduced a new version every year since 2007, and Forstall noted that both developers and users now expected it. iOS 5, introduced just nine months ago, added new features including the Notifications Center, which has thus far sent 1.5 trillion push notifications; iMessage, which has sent more than 150 billion messages—more than one billion a day; Twitter integration, which has resulted in threefold growth in iOS Twitter users with 10 billion tweets from iOS 5; and Game Center, which now has 130 million accounts, with five billion scores submitted per week.

He demonstrated the Siri enhancements for sports, restaurants, movies, and launching apps. It now supports sports scores, standings, schedules and player statistics and looks pretty cool. It also has more restaurant information, including a partnership with Yelp for reviews and OpenTable for reservations. For movies, there is now integration with Rotten Tomatoes' reviews, more information on performers, and trailers.  

A new feature called "Eyes Free" allows users to push a designated button to talk with Siri.  Forstall showed a slide with many top car makers including GM, Chrysler, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota and Honda. Their cars with this feature will start appearing next year. Siri now will be available in more languages, including Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese, all tuned for specific markets, including versions of English and French tuned for Canada and a Spanish version tuned for the U.S. market. Perhaps most important, Apple will be bringing Siri to the new iPad.

iOS finally has Facebook integration, including the ability to post photos, info from Safari, locations from Maps all directly onto your Facebook page. You can also "like" apps from the App Store, and media from the iTunes. Facebook contacts and events are all integrated into iOS and the Mac, as well. Perhaps most impressively, you can now post to Facebook and Twitter from the Notifications Center or from Siri.

Perhaps the most highly awaited feature is a new Maps application, which includes turn-by-turn navigation. This is a completely new app, with 3D Maps and a building view, a satellite view, and a "Flyover," so you can view major landmarks from the air. Maps includes local search with over 100 million locations, and integration with Yelp. It looked quite impressive.

Above: Scott Forstall displaying Maps

Within the navigation feature, you can choose from multiple possible routes and use traffic information derived from anonymous, real-time, crowd-sourced data from iOS users to keep traffic information up to date. This works with the lock screen and with Siri, which adds the ability to ask things such as "Where is the nearest gas station?" or "Are we there yet?"

Another neat feature is Passbook, which Forstall described as, "the simplest way to get all your passes in one place." This integrates things like airline boarding passes, cards, and movie tickets, and works with the lock screen. This way, for instance, when you get to the movie theater, the pass automatically shows up on your lock screen, so you can just unlock and enter. The passes are live, so that things such as boarding gates can change. 

Above: Passbook

For the phone app, you have two new options: to reply with a message (such as "I'll call you later") or to receive a reminder later (including a new "remind me when I leave" based on your location). There's also a new "Do Not Disturb" feature, including the ability to allow an exception for a group of callers or for repeated calls (in case of an emergency). These may not be technically all that exciting, but they looked incredibly practical and useful.

FaceTime will now work over cellular networks, instead of just Wi-Fi. It also unifies the phone number with your Apple ID, so if someone calls your iPhone, you can receive it on an iPad or a Mac.

Safari has added an iCloud Tabs button (similar to that just announced for OS X), as well as support for an offline reading list and photo uploads from directly within Safari. It also adds "smart app banners," which let you know if a website you visit has a native Web app and if so, it switches to it if already installed. What's neat about this is that where you were in the browser—say, in a particular story—gets relayed directly to the app as well.

Another new feature is Shared PhotoStreams, so you can share an album with friends, including comments. These are viewable on a PC via a browser, or Apple TV.

Mail adds VIPs, which allows those important people to show up as notifications and also to be sorted separately. You can now open password-protected Office documents from within mail (something I've long wanted), and you can just pull down on the screen to refresh the mail list.

Guided access is designed to provide improved accessibility, letting you disable certain controls. This can also allow for a "single-app mode," so that an iPad can be locked into a single app (such as a school locking to a test, so students don't look up the answers, or for kiosk-style applications for museums).

Other things include game center challenges, improved privacy controls, support for made-for-iPhone hearing aids, per-account signatures in mail, lost mode (so you can send a phone number directly to the lost device), plus the Chinese features also offered for OS X.

For developers, there are new APIs to support the new features, including building apps on top of the transit and Passbook features, as well as options for in-app content purchases.

A beta of iOS 6 will be delivered at the show and it is slated to ship this fall for iPhone 3G S, followed by iPad 2 and recent iPod Touches.

Overall, the changes in OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6 won't seem to change any paradigms, but they will bring a lot of little improvements. Perhaps most importantly, they bring the two environments closer together, making things like iCloud support, reading mode, FaceTime, and Game Center cross-platform. That should both help users and help Apple keep its ecosystem strong.