Apple Announces macOS Big Sur, iOS 14 and the Switch To ARM Processors At WWDC 2020

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at some of the new announcements that came out of today's Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote Event. 

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So this morning started the first virtual Worldwide Developer Conference. The Keynote event this morning told us all about the new operating systems that are coming. So we heard all about the new features of the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac, and other devices that we'll be getting later this year. 

So let's start with the iPhone and iOS 14. The Home screens get a  whole revamp now. In addition to be able to view them as you do now you'll also be able to view the apps by category and do a Search on them including a full alphabetical list of all your apps. So even if you can't remember where you put an app icon there will be a way to get to it. Also widgets aren't just going to be locked to the Today View now. You'll be able to actually put them in with your app icons on Home screens. There are some updates to Siri where it won't take over the entire screen every time you use it. 

Also, dictation is going to take place on the iPhone itself. It won't be sending it out to a server and then coming back to you. So it will probably be faster and hopefully more accurate. There's going to be a new app called Translate which will allow you to translate between eleven different languages. The idea is that it's not just going to look at each word and translate it but will try to actually translate the meaning of the phrase or sentence that you're speaking.

In Messages there are going to be new group features and the ability to reply to somebody inline. In other words you don't have to throw your reply at the very end of the list. You can reply to the exact message that you are referring to. The Maps app is going to get cycling directions, finally. Also new iPhones will get the ability to unlock cars that support the CarKey feature. So instead of carrying around a separate little key for your car you can use your iPhone for that now. A cool thing that you can do is you can actually send somebody access to your car so they can open your car up using their iPhone.

Another new feature will be App Clips. This is kind of like a little mini app. You don't have to get the actual full app for a store or restaurant or something. You can use an App Clip to quickly access a function or payment or something at a specific location or with a specific item.

So some of that is coming to iPad OS as well. Of course iPad OS has its own features. It's definitely getting even closer to macOS now. A lot of apps now are going to have sidebars and toolbars so they look even more like the Mac apps. Here you can see the Photos app, the Files app, and the Music app all have these sidebars. The Search feature is being updated and it really just looks like Spotlight now. It allows you to search for things across various different apps like Files, Websites, even launch apps from it. 

A big new feature will be for Apple Pencil. The ability to translate handwriting into text. So you can just write in an input field with your Apple pencil and it will translate it to text. Or while you're taking notes it will keep it as handwriting but you can actually Copy and Paste it as text into another app.

There are a lot of new features for some of the other devices as well. For instance, AirPods Pro you're going to be able to listen to spatial audio. So you're going to be able to listen to sound from behind you, somehow, while you're watching movies with surround sound. 

The Apple Watch is going to get Sleep Tracking so you can wear it while you're sleeping. It will track your movements and it will even try to detect your breathing patterns and record all of that. 

Apple TV is going to get picture-in-picture and multiuser support which is very important for games.

Okay, so on to macOS. So if course one of the big questions everybody has is, what's the name of the new macOS. We went from Mojave to Catalina and now the next one is going to be called Mac OS Big Sur. It looks like there's going to be some pretty big design changes here. Things actually look like they're moving closer to iPad OS. So iPad OS and macOS seem to be getting closer, at least in design. The corners are definitely more rounded. If you look at the Dock the Dock actually floats up above the bottom of the screen, it's not attached to the bottom. The Toolbars definitely look a lot more like the iPad. 

The big new feature is going to be Control Center. It looks like Control Center on the iPad and Control Center and the Menu Bar icons at the top right part of the Mac screen are very similar. It looks like basically Control Center allows you to combine a lot of those Menu Bar icons into this single interface. You can even drag and drop from the Menu Bar icons on the right into or out of Control Center.

The Messages and Maps apps are getting updates. They're actually going to be made with Catalyst now. So it's the same app on the iPad as it is on the Mac. That means we're going to get features on the Mac like Memoji on Messages and Look Around, or Street View, in Maps.   

A big new update to Safari is going to be support for universal API for building extensions. So developers who create extensions, say on Chrome, can also easily have those available on Safari. They'll be a whole new extensions' gallery in the Mac App Store. So expect to see a lot more extensions for Safari once Big Sur launches.  Another feature will be customizing the Start page in Safari, choosing what features you want there and even setting a background.  

So perhaps the biggest news, and one that is not completely unexpected, is Apple is going to be transitioning Macs away from Intel processors to their own ARM processors. So first developers, of course, are going to be encouraged to update their apps. It looks like Apple has made this pretty easy. Most apps that have been well maintained should be able to quickly convert and create a universal app. So one app would run on both an Intel Mac and an ARM Mac. As a matter of fact Apple already showed off Microsoft and Adobe apps that are doing this.

The next part is going to be emulation. So this is when you take an older app that hasn't been updated yet and you want to run it on a new Mac that has an ARM processor. So Apple is doing it a little differently than how they did it from the power PC to the Intel chips. This time when you install an Intel app in an ARM Mac you're going to get a conversion of the app to the ARM processor. So every time you run the app you're actually running an ARM app. This should make things a little smoother. They showed off some apps running under this too including a 3D game and it looked like it ran pretty well. So you should be able to get an ARM Mac and continue to use your existing apps just fine even if the developer hasn't updated them yet.

Now as far virtualization is concerned Apple mentioned emulating Linux but specifically did not mention emulating Windows. So we could pretty much assume that it won't be easy to emulate Windows on one of these new Macs. But on the other hand it will be easy to run iPhone and iPad apps. As a matter of fact Apple is planning on having that as a core part of this. So you'll be able to install iPhone and iPad apps and run them in a window on one of these new ARM Macs. This greatly expands the number of apps that will be available on the Mac especially games. So developers will be able to get started on this soon. They're having a Quick Start Program where they'll ship a developer a special Mac Mini that has an ARM processor in it. Then they say the first Mac with these new processors will be available by the end of the year. No word on which Mac model that will be. Then over the next two years they'll transition the whole line to these new processors.

But in the meantime there will be new Macs that will have Intel processors including some that will come out later this year. So Apple said  they plan to support both Intel and ARM Macs for years to come. So this is really exciting news especially on the Mac side as we're going to get a lot of cool stuff in Big Sur and a really bright future using Apple chips instead of Intel chips which should mean more frequent and also more powerful updates for Macs in the future.